Ultimate Environmental Control
April 19th, 2006 | by dnw |
Just watched a video Hugo Ortega has made about a potential UMPC controlled ‘home Automation’ system that uses IP. By doing so he’s just made my dream of a Horizontal computing solution more real. (By Horizontal I mean while in bed)
This whole ‘Home Automation’ thing really is a broad consumer focused edition of what has been known for years in the disability arena as an Environmental Control System (ECS).
Environmental Control is one of the big issues facing people living with a disability. Let’s face it, managing one’s way through an environment primarily designed for walking people who’s body works is an obstacle that people living with disability face constantly and encompases much more than home automation.
Getting a system that encompasses home automation but adds more, and that’s affordable, is a big hurdle. I’ve commented previously about what I term ‘convenience technology‘ and how the good spinoff of the ‘mass consumerisation’ of devices like these is that it makes more accessible (read affordable) what people with disability NEED to live more independent and quality lives…..well nudges the devices in that direction anyway.
What excites me personally is that after my Tablet experience I was leaning toward a UMPC based format for my horizontal computing platform, not for it’s portability but its size, and therefore potential ’stick-reachable’ area. The ‘home automation‘ aspect in the same device as my intended horizontal computing device is a piece of convergence that has tremendous practical application.
In this case, the thing that makes this convergence possible is the IP based route taken.
Openness wins again.
Links:
Video
Hugo
Superna
Openness
Convenience technology
Tablet experience
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