Remote home monitoring for the family
A very cool and useful application I saw today on DEMO is the iControl Networks "My iControl" home security and remote monitoring system. I have not seen anything like this. You can monitor your home from a remote location, not just view images of what's happening around the premises via a video camera, but also monitor the thermostat of your house. iControl has a central box to link all of the monitoring devices and a portal you can access anywhere via a web browser or cell phone to see what's happening in your home. It's great for monitoring vacation homes, garages, boats, businesses.
I am beginning to see a lot of remote monitoring applications but mostly for large apartment buildings and offices. For example, in Corpus Christi, Texas, the city has deployed a municipal wireless broadband network for, among other things, remote gas meter reading. In the Netherlands, large housing cooperatives are installing devices that allow the local utility to read electricity and gas meters. You can imagine how much time and money this saves everyone. It won't take long before iControl or a similar application will allow homes to be connected to the local utility office, whether it's for gas, water or electricity.
Posted by Esme Vos at February 14, 2005 05:57 PM