A recent announcement by Google means that you may well be able to use any one of your Android powered devices to control your home. Android@Home was shown off at the software developers conference in San Francisco this week and it looks, frankly, awesome.
Have you ever heard of M2M or Machine to Machine communication? Well, the field is vast and exciting (and some bits are not that exciting) and it is, in essence, the ability of machines to communicate with each other to achieve specific tasks – without human interference. We have already seen examples of this in parcel tracking, for example.
So the premise is that a part of M2M will be about the automation of the home. It will turn off lights in rooms you are not using, and one day it may even know you so well as to start that coffee machine to match the time you usually get a craving for a cuppa. It is incredibly exciting and driven by things like market demand and the increasingly low price of chips.
Now you have this new development from Google that looks set to shove us onto the next step towards the future. Google is planning on releasing a range of home electrical goods that will be able to use wireless technology to communicate with PCs, smartphones and pads. You can then use these devices, running the Android OS of course, to control them and record data.
While I am not entirely sure if I care about the data that my kettle shares with me, I do like the idea of sitting in my office, activating the kettle, and only having to go down to the kitchen when the water is boiled. Imagine the time saved?!
You can also save cash by using Android@Home to turn off lights left on, and appliances left running by accident. It won’t be arriving any time soon so don’t be expecting your home to do as you say before next year, but the future is here and Google has an app for that…
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http://twitter.com/David_I David Isaacson