Recently in Home Automation Category

Now that I have an increasingly automated home, it makes more and more sense to me, since it is much easier to localise a visible light transmission to a single room than an RF transmission. The downside is that such a transmission can also be blocked by clothes and other obstacles. However, I think this could be a viable solution to certain problems with presence detection and identity that some people have been trying to solve with RFID or even Bluetooth sensing.

And there is also the converse possibility. Imagine a configurable remote control device, some kind of portable touch screen or web tablet. Have each room have an IR beacon that transmits the room ID and the tablet receive and process it. The presented interface can now be very easily made appropriate to the room the control device is residing in. I can think of ways of mocking this up now.

I already have an IR TX/RX infrastructure provided by my ceiling mounted Idratek modules. This was obviously conceived for RC4/5 remote control purposes, but my devious mind is busy thinking up some other uses. One of the advantages of the Idratek system is that it is not a passive IR distribution system like, for example, Xantech stuff, but actually attempts to recognise frames and can process them. It can also forward unrecognised frames to Cortex. I'm not sure whether I am constrained to RC4/5 frames, at least with the current firmware, but even within that limitation some interesting possibilities spring to mind ...

... must read up some more on RC4/5 and IrDA, and find out whether the Idratek modules can do IrDA ...