Not to leave motorcyclists out!
The wireless bug is hitting motorcyclists too. Leading motorcycle helmet designers are adding Bluetooth to their products so that motorcyclists can talk on the phone while they ride. If you’re a cyclist and love your helmet now, you can get a Bluetooth kit and just add it — it’s not that hard of a project. The InterPhone hands-free and intercom Bluetooth helmet kit (from many online shops such as www.cellularaccessory.com, $135) can be used to provide Bluetooth in your helmet (in fewer than five minutes, says the manufacturer). Parrot (www.driveblue.com) sells a hands-free kit (SK4000, $150) that allows the motorcyclist to place phone calls, listen to FM radio, stream music wirelessly via a Bluetooth stereo-enabled device, or transfer music via a mini-USB cable. The SK4000 uses Parrot’s multiuser voice recognition software, which will recognize a contact’s name when you speak it and dial the number automatically. Also, the Text-To-Speech (TTS) voice synthesis feature on the Parrot SK4000 reads contact names from the user’s phonebook through the earpiece and will also audibly identify radio stations to help the driver select a station.
The other end of the pricing spectrum for D-Link is the DCS-G900 ($120), which is an 802.11g-based camera offering simple, basic streaming video to the Web. The image is static, depending on where you point and focus the camera when you install it.
D-link has the best selection of wireless cameras — you can probably find the perfect camera for your needs there.
Go to www.dlink.com/products/liveDemo/?model=DCS-5300W for a live demo of the D-Link DCS-5300 camera. See what it’s like to pan, tilt, and zoom!
Panasonic also has a large lineup of cameras. Its BL-C30A wireless network camera (www.panasonic.com, $299) allows as many as 20 simultaneous viewers to see as many as 15 frames per second (fps) of live-motion video at 320 x 240. Resolution goes up to 640 x 480 at 15 fps. Through a Web-based interface, you can perform remote pan and tilt functions and click to eight preset angles. Panasonic offers a stand-alone unit, the BL-WV10A TV Adapter ($499), that will stream your Panasonic images to your TV set.
Love pets? Panasonic has been specializing in the remote pet experience with a series of products marketed as petcams. For instance, its high-end KX-HCM110A PetCam Network Camera with 2-Way Audio ($329) allows you to see and talk to your pets from far away and see their reactions. (In truth, an IP camera with two-way audio can do the same.) Panasonic also sponsors a YouTube for pet lovers at www.seemypetcam.com. You can upload your pet’s IP wireless camera videos for others to see!
You can also get cameras from other players, such as Linksys (www.linksys.com), Hawking Technologies (www.hawkingtech.com), and TRENDnet (www.trendware.com). You will often find videocameras bundled into other packages; Hawking’s Net-Vision HNC290G Wireless-G Network Camera ($115) interworks with its Hawking HomeRemote Wireless Home Automation System HRGZ1 Gateway ($180), which enables you to turn lights on and off in the house remotely. Often you’ll find packages of three or four cameras for a lower bundled price as well.
Installing a wireless network camera is incredibly simple. These network devices usually sport both an RJ-45 10Base-T wired network interface along with an 802.11b/g air interface. Installing the camera usually involves first connecting the camera to your network via the wired connection and then using the provided software to access your camera’s settings. Depending on how complicated the camera is (whether it supports the ability to pan, to e-mail pictures on a regular basis, or to allow external access, for example), you may need to set any number of other settings.
Security varies tremendously among videocamera offerings. If security is important to you (as it should be!), you should check the technical specs of any camera before you buy. Panasonic’s BL-C30A, for instance, is an older model, and has only 40/64/128-bit WEP encryption to help protect your wireless network from illegal intrusion. The D-Link cameras top out at WPA as of this writing too. TrendNet’s TV-IP312W Wireless 2-Way Audio Day/Night Internet Camera Server (www.trendware.com, $220), on the other hand, supports 64/128-bit WEP, WPA-PSK, and WPA2-PSK.Look for a camera that has at least WPA2 Personal (PSK) on board — over time more cameras will have this.
To allow anyone from outside your home’s LAN to view your camera feed directly (that is, not from a window pane published on your Web page), you need a static WAN IP address. Although you can probably get such an address from your broadband connection provider, it will probably be pricey. More likely, you will use a dynamic DNS service (DDNS), which allows you to assign a permanent Web address to the camera. A DDNS is easier to remember than an IP address and is static. Your camera vendor should help you do this as part of the setup process. D-Link, for example, has its own free DDNS service (www.dlinkddns.com) that you can activate during your setup process. Panasonic has its free Viewnetcam.com.
One of the cameras we like is the Linksys WVC200 Wireless-G Pan/Tilt/Zoom Video Camera (www.linksys.com, $270) because it shows the camera’s IP address in an LCD on the front of the camera. This makes debugging and setup issues easier. However, don’t pay for the Linksys SoloLink $19.95 DDNS service — check out free service such as DynDNS (www.dyndns.com/ services/dns/dyndns/) if Linksys is still charging for SoloLink when you read this. The WVC200 also supports only WEP and WPA as of this writing, not WPA2. While we prefer WPA2, WPA is more than adequate as far as network security goes — we strongly recommend you skip over systems that only support WEP.
Wondering about 802.11n? As we write, most of the IP cameras are still 802.11g or b, but some n-based devices are coming on the market. SmartVue’s S4 product line (www.smartvue.com) sports an 802.11n chipset, but is pricey — each professional grade camera retails at around $1,300. Over time, everyone will move to 802.11n — it just makes sense.
The wireless communication doesn’t have to be all 802.11 based, although we would argue that it makes sense to use standards-based gear whenever you can.That system uses 2.4 GHz to send the signals, but it’s not standardized wireless LAN traffic. We believe that over time, many of these systems will move to 802.11 or Bluetooth as chip and licensing costs continue to come down.
Controlling Your Home over Your Wireless LAN
Another area of wireless activity is home control. If you got excited about going from the six remote controls on your TV set to one universal remote control, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. (And if you still have those six remote controls, we have some options for you, too.)
The problem with controlling anything remotely is having an agreed-on protocol between the transmitter and receiver. In the infrared (IR) space, strong agreement and standardization exist among all the different manufacturers of remote controls, so the concept of universal remote control is possible for IR. (IR remotes are the standard for the majority of home audio and video equipment.) But there has not been the same rallying around a particular format in the radio frequency (RF) space, thus making it difficult to consolidate control devices except within the same manufacturer’s line. And then you have issues of controlling nonentertainment devices, such as heating and air-conditioning and security systems. Those have different requirements just from a user interface perspective.
The advent of 802.11 technologies, ZigBee, Z-Wave, and Bluetooth — as well as touchscreen LCDs and programmable handheld devices — offers the opportunity to change this situation because, at the least, manufacturers can agree on the physical transport layer of the signal and a common operating system and platform. We’re now starting to see the first moves toward collapsing control of various home functions to a few form factors and standards. We talk about these topics throughout this section.
See me, feet me, hear me, touch me
Cool new handheld devices — namely, Web tablets and stand-alone touch-screens, are sporting IR interfaces and can become remotes for your whole home.
You’re probably familiar with touchscreens if you’ve ever used a kiosk in a mall to find a store or in a hotel to find a restaurant. Touch panels are smaller (typically 6- to 10-inch screens) and are wall mounted or simply lie on a table; you touch the screen to accomplish certain tasks.
Touch panels have become a centerpiece for expensive home control installations. They allow you to turn the air conditioning on and off, set the alarm, turn off the lights, select music, change channels on the TV — and the list goes on. These are merely user interfaces into often PC-driven functionality that can control almost anything in your house — even the coffee maker.
Crestron (www.crestron.com) rules the upper end of touch-panel options with an entire product line for home control that includes wireless-enabled touch panels. The Crestron color touch panel systems are to die for (or at least to second-mortgage for). We would say, "The only thing these touch panels cannot do is let the dog out on cold nights," but if we said it, someone would retort, "Well, actually, they can."
Crestron’s Isys i/O WiFi, TPMC-8x is a modified tablet-style PC with an 8.4-inch screen. This product runs a specially modified version of Windows and communicates using 802.11b/g/a. With this device, you can control your home theater and home automation system, turn on lights, and basically control anything in an automated house. You can also listen to music files and view streaming video directly on the tablet itself!
Crestron is definitely high end: The average installation tops $50,000. But if you’re installing a home theater, a wireless computing network, a slew of A/V, and home automation on top of that, you probably will talk to Crestron at some point.
A popular, lower-cost alternative to Crestron is Control4 (www.control4.com). Control4 makes a line of home entertainment, control, and automation devices, ranging from home controllers that can centrally control all the devices in a home, home theater controllers, which centralize control of your home theater components, whole-home audio distribution systems, and ZigBee lighting and HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) controllers.
Control4 uses widely adopted standards such as Ethernet, 802.11, and ZigBee to keep its prices down while still offering the kind of space-age automation that used to be in the realm of only the truly wealthy. It’s the home control system "for the rest of us".
To keep tabs on all your automated and remotely controlled systems, Control4 offers touchscreens such as the 10.5-inch wireless touchscreen (shown in Figure 14-5). This device uses 802.11g and that big color screen to show you the status of all sorts of devices and systems in your home, and the 802.11g Wi-Fi connection can send control commands back to your Control4 home or home theater controllers from anywhere in the house.
If you’re interested in home automation and linking the various aspects of your home, try Smart Homes For topic, 3rd Edition (Wiley).
Figure 14-5:
Control4′s wireless touchscreen can control all sorts of devices in your home.
Doing your wireless control less expensively
You don’t need to spring for a $50,000 Crestron installation (or even a $5,000 to $10,000 Control4 installation) to get wireless control over devices in your home.
Maximizing your entertainment with macros
The most advanced remote controls can interface with your A/V gear through macros. Select Watch TV, for example, and the remote sequentially goes through all the motions to turn on the TV, turn on the home theater receiver, select the right inputs on the TV and home theater receiver, turn on the satellite receiver or cable set-top box, and do anything else that’s required to watch television. You can program the remote by simply plugging it into your PC or Mac (with a USB cable) and then selecting the components you use from vast libraries of components available online from the remote’s manufacturer. Answer a few questions about the configuration of your particular system (for example, do you listen to the TV through the TV’s speakers or through your home theater receiver?) and you’re on your way to one-remote Zen. Examples of remotes that use macros are Logitech’s Harmony line of remotes (www.logitech.com).
If you can forgo the fanciness and limit your ambitions, you can find universal remote controls (the kind of programmable all-in-one remotes that many folks buy for their home theater) that can move beyond the TV and DVD player and control other systems in your house without wires.
An example here is Monster Cable’s tidily named Home Theater and Lighting Controller 300 featuring OmniLink (www.monstercable.com). This $500 remote provides all the high-end home theater remote control features you’d ever want (including the ability to use macros, or a series of sequential commands that let you do a complex task with a single push of a button), and adds into the mix wireless lighting controls using the Z-Wave technology standard.
Monster sells their own line of Z-Wave lighting control modules (manufactured for them by the giant electrical company Leviton, www.leviton.com), including both dimmers and switches. These control modules are available as plug-ins (you plug them into an outlet and then plug a lamp into them) and in-wall switches (you replace an existing switch). Monster also offers an in-wall controller that can be used with the remote control, so you can turn lights on and off or dim them throughout the home from a single wall switch.
Sit, Ubu, Sit… er, Speak!
Your wireless network can help with your pet tricks, too! Although we’re not sure that this is what the pet trainer meant when she said that she would teach your dog to speak, speak he can if he’s Sony’s AIBO robotic dog. For seven years, Sony lead the market in robotic trainable dogs, until in 2005 it "put down" the line in a cost-cutting move. We don’t usually write about discontinued toys, but this one is so exciting (and still widely available on eBay) that we decided to tell you about it.
Now you can say, "Beam me up Scotty!"
Every once in a while, technology meets our imagination and you’re ecstatic. It didn’t happen for us with any of the Star Wars light-saber toys — "Lighted clear plastic tubes not laser beam be," as Yoda would say. Nor can any of the existing robotic dinosaurs really shake the earth yet like a true Tyrannosaurus Rex. (We actually think this is coming soon: A life-sized Jurassic Park has to appear sometime in the next decade.)
But we were awed into silence with a working Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) "communicator" that allows us to send and receive cellular phone calls. These are rare — each is custom made from Star Trektoy parts by a guy who, at the time of this writing, sells them only on eBay for around 8350. It pairs with any Bluetooth-capable phone, allowing you to make calls like any member of the Enterprise crew. It even is voice controllable — "Contact Starfleet Command, Uhura!"
A button on the back turns it on/off, accepts and rejects calls, and initiates voice commands. The two buttons on the control panel, under the grill, turn the volume up and down. The blue LED indicates pairing, the red LED indicates battery status, and the green LED illuminates whenever the grill is open. You get 8 to 10 hours of talk time and 400 hours of standby.
But what’s really cool is that when you flip it open, you hear the familiar grill opening chirps, just like on the show! Star Trek purists will be upset to know that the moire in the middle of the device does not spin. Apparently, it was impossible to include the motor with the Bluetooth electronics and speaker.
Working tricorders and communicator pins (Star Trek: The Next Generation) must be right around the corner. Sorry, these are available only in Federation Territory. (We can hear the Klingons shouting "ghuy’cha’" now!)
Don’t be misled and think of this as a cute expensive toy — this is one incredible robot. If you don’t know much about the AIBO, check out its Web site (http://support.sony-europe.com/aibo/) to find out about this robotic puppy. It’s neat how Sony has wirelessly enabled its robo-dog with an AIBO wireless LAN 802.11b card. Your pooch roves about, constantly linked to your wireless home network. With AIBO Messenger software, AIBO can read your e-mail and home pages. AIBO tells you when you receive e-mail in your inbox. AIBO reads your e-mail messages to you. ("Hey, Master, you got an e-mail from your girlfriend. She dumped you.") You can send an e-mail to AIBO asking it to take a picture on demand and send it back to you via e-mail. AIBO can read as many as five preregistered Web sites for you. And AIBO reminds you of important events.
With AIBO Navigator software, your computer becomes AIBO’s remote-control unit. From the cockpit view on your PC, you can experience the world from AIBO’s eyes in real time. (You know, there are just some things that a dog sees that we would rather not see!)
Through the control graphical user interface on your PC, you can move your AIBO anywhere you want. By using the sound transmission feature, you can make AIBO speak from a remote location.
We’re not sure that you’re ready to start telling people that your dog has an SSID ("AIBONET"), but this is one good example of robots now using your wireless home highway. Above all, make sure that you follow the security suggestions we give you in next topic(Can you imagine taking control of your neighbor’s unsecured AIBO — now, that could be fun!) You can find out more about setting up an AIBO on your wireless LAN at the Web site listed previously.
A mint condition, state-of-the-art, last-generation ERS-7M3 AIBO will run you $3,000 or more, but if you want the cutting edge of wireless toys, you cannot afford to be without an AIBO!
Wirelessly Connect Your Digital Cameras
When the first Wi-Fi connected cameras came on the market, we were jealous beyond belief. We hate cables (which is why we try to wirelessly connect everything we can). The problem was that only a few cameras had Wi-Fi (or any other wireless) on board, and it was not worth throwing away a perfectly good working camera because we were lazy about cables.
Well now, we can be lazy and happy with a brilliant product from Eye-Fi (www.eye.fi). Eye-Fi offers an SD memory card outfitted with Wi-Fi on board — how cool is that? Simply pop the card in your camera, take pictures, and watch the pictures upload automatically as soon as you return to your home network. Worried about security? No need — the Eye-Fi supports static WEP 40/104/128, WPA-PSK, and WPA2-PSK security.
You can automatically load pictures to sharing and printing Web sites, including Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Wal-Mart, Snapfish, Photobucket, Facebook, Webshots, Picasa Web Albums, SmugMug, Flickr, Fotki, TypePad, VOX, dotPhoto, Phanfare, Sharpcast, and Gallery. The Eye-Fi Service intelligently downloads your photos from your camera, handles log-ins and passwords for the site, and resizes pictures (if your site requires it) — all over a wireless connection. Photo uploads are free and unlimited because they are using your home’s Wi-Fi and Internet connections.
The Eye-Fi card uses 802.11g technology, so it is backward compatible to 802.11b and forward compatible to 802.11g supporting 802.11n devices. A 2GB card costs about $99 retail — and the great thing about these is that you don’t need to buy as large a card because it can be offloaded more easily and more often. Just too great a product to resist!
