The people over at the Eaton Corporation are no strangers to cool technologies… heck they are the makers of the 300 Series Passenger Car Mirror Actuator, which, get this, stabilizes your vehicles’ mirrors (side/rear view) if they are vibrating… why doesn’t my car have this!? Or what about VORAD? The EVT-3000 Collision Warning System that detects obstacles in front or side of your car. They have products any true geek would love… and stuff for normal folk, like pumps.
The latest and greatest is The Home Heartbeat. I know that my home is pretty extreme when it comes to home automation and control… most people don’t want or need that much. The Home Heartbeat system seems to be the perfect solution for people that don’t want total control of their home, but would rather have the ability to know the status of their home at any given point. Here’s how the system works, the Home Heartbeat Starter Kit includes a base station, a Home Key (pictured), and a detection sensor. Using a new wireless networking standard, IEE 802.15.4 (also known as Zigbee) everything communicates nicely wirelessly. The Home Key has a LCD display that is used to monitor the home’s status. If you get out of the base stations range (which can be expanded with extenders) the Home Key captures a snapshot of the current state of the home. Can’t remember if you left the iron on or the garage door open, you can look at the LCD display for the answer. That’s hot. They also have the ability for the base station to e-mail or text message a cell phone if a sensor changes state. It’s such a simple system (very Apple Computer-esque), yet I can see it being very powerful… I bet that’s why they won the Design Innovations Award at CES 2005.
The Starter Kit and accessories will be shipping this Summer. I don’t have official pricing, but I hope they hit the $150-$300 range for the starter kit.