Apple's Big Home Automation Announcement

A couple of days ago I ran across an article that said Apple was going to announce a movement into home automation. Every time Apple coughs, the news services go orgasmic and start showing everything they can, the tech copycat articles start popping up using text they stole from some other site, and the news aggregators (huffington and the like) duplicate the articles all over the place.  I knew this was going to be fun.  Here's a link to the article I ran into <link>

So, today was the day that Apple was going to make their earth-shattering announcement.  The home automation part of it didn't really get out there until several hours latter, the copycats were too busy talking about the Beats purchase and maybe some new changes to iOS.  But, I found one here <link>, I'll bet the audience of Appleophiles were going all big eyed at what was possible.  Why, you can shut your garage door, set your thermostats, turn the lights on ... I actually laughed out loud.

For goodness sake, folks like me have been doing this for years now.  We control our pool, measure the weather (inside and out), and even measure the level of our septic tanks; we mix and match devices, services, and web pages to our hearts content.  We don't pay monthly subscriptions and are not at the mercy of a single supplier.

We are free to handle our house the way we want to.

I think it's a good thing that they are doing this because it won't be long before one of us hacks into the various devices and makes them work for us.  This means more devices we can play with, more things we can automate, more of Apple's research we can leverage to our own ends.  I don't think they think like I do though; they'll want a monthly fee for web services and get even richer.  I'll be chuckling as I take apart their devices to see how they work.

Another good thing, Apple's announcement will open people's eyes to what is possible.  Much more so than my little blog and the hundreds of others out there that do the same kind of thing.  There's a whole lot of us that are doing it ourselves, and this may enlist more of us.  Sure, we're outnumbered by the folk that just buy a solution, but where's the fun and satisfaction in that?

Meanwhile, I got a notice today that I'm going to get a smart meter on the house.  Finally, the powers-that-be are moving technology out into my neck of the cactus plants.  Now, I may have to build up a device to read the pulses from the meter and get power readings that are as accurate as theirs, but much more current than what they provide.  I suspect I won't be able to crack into their monitoring signal, but I don't really need that.  However, you know I'm going to try.