Sonos and WD TV

Monday I got my shipment of Sonos and WD TV. 6 Sonos Play 1 speakers and one WD TV box. Thanks to my cousins bought it, carried it back here from states via Bangalore! It was really heavy and a hassle to carry when you are travelling. Kudos!

I opened the same day and started the setup. That is when surprisingly my Airport Extreme refused to accept connections, may be because the internet connection  was down(?!) and the Sonos needed a WiFi Connection  to try. I took just one speaker and the WD box and a pile of wires (Each Sonos Speaker came with a Network cable and a power cable) and moved to Sister's house next doors where I could try  the connection.

Plugged in the Sonos both to the power and the internet and used the downloaded Sonos app, and the Radio was playing right away! Nice clarity, very low Bass. (My nephew put on their Boss speakers next to it and played one of his Yanni collection and the drums were very subdued on the Sonos! Means, I did not impress him much!- Bummer!)

Then I moved to the WD setup. The WD also got connected to the WiFi easily,  the app was simple and useful, once again,  cool start. Went around on  some Picassa old pictures(Nice recall!) But some video I guess hung up the WD. May be it was trying to download the video and play as Apple TV does, but there was no indication of what was going on. May be the net was slow or unreliable too. Anyway, it did not allow me to exit or break off from the wait. I had to physically unplug! Not a very good thing! Hope it does not happen all the time!

Then wanted to play some more songs on Sonos and realized Airplay does not work out of the box. I have to connect my Airport Express to enable that! But I can always play the music provided I have Sonos app on the device. Audio streaming from any app will not work though.

The remote quickly disconnected when I moved away from the speakers. The WiFi did not help it to hold on. I hope with multi room Speaker setup, I will have a better experience with different Sonos holding on to the connection.

Another concern I had was how do I play all my music collection lying on an external HDD via Sonos? Will I have to have the Computer on to do this? From the reading I did, it looks like WD and Sonos combination will be the answer to it. WD exposes a connected HDD as a NAS drive. And Sonos can be configured to play from the NAS. Have I tried it yet? Nope. That will be the project for the week. If that works, I will have my distributed music project complete.

What is the backup plan? I will have to get a Sonos Bridge and connect up the WD directly to it and then use that to stream the music.

Continuity matters

Before I got my first Mac, I had noticed a feature in Mac OS where I can take the call from Mac instead of the phone, provided I have the bluetooth connection. But then iPhone happened and this feature disappeared from the OS. By the time I got my Mac, it was no where to be seen.

Then couple of vendors came with this as a tool and it did not quite work well for me. I ended up buying one of them and soon the guy closed shop! And it always been a thorn in the flesh for me.

The reason behind it was because I wanted to keep my phone some place and still be able to take my calls on any other device which ever is accessible to me.

It was very nice to know  that the feature is back and with a bang! Its called Continuity now. I am really looking forward to this.

The phone calls may finally end up in my Apple TV also if I choose to, provided I can route the calls as airplay/hand off into AppleTV and continue using my iOS device Mic. This will work well when you want to use the home theater as a big hand free call. A simple integration to Apple TV to popup caller ID on screen will be big plus!

Continuity does not stop at handing off calls. When you work on something on one device, and you move your location and context and you want to shift to another device, Continuity promise to make it a cake walk!

Even though not called in under the continuity umbrella, I feel that one other feature worth mentioning is the ability to airplay without connecting the Apple TV to the network! This makes a lot of sense since now I can play from any network I am in into Apple TV without switching to just be in the same network as Apple TV!

You can get the full feature details Here. I like the way Apple is letting you move between applications and devices quickly by bringing them closer. (Notification Center, Apps to share data)

Homekit and Healthkit

In yesterday's WWDC, Apple launched two major things, Homekit and Healthkit. There had been a lot of time spent on other items like Yosemite and Hand off and other features, but I felt that the most disruptive of the announcements yesterday was these two. Why do I feel so?

There had been solutions for measuring your BP, for measuring heart beat, for measuring movements and activity and the like. (Nike Plus and Fuel band etc). And similarly there had been applications for controlling a lot of your appliances in using smart phone.

But all that remained in silos and never talked to each other. Having an opportunity to have all of these synchronized into one place and to orchestrate these into useful workflows is a major leap in iOS eco system.

The home automation and personal health are seemingly disparate areas but have some common touch points. When some one elderly wakes up in night and have to grope for switch, if the lights can come on, and when someone who needs attention wakes up and you are intimated about that immediately, it can result in a lot of useful usecases.

I am sure, someone will come up with, if not Apple in its Watch, a technology to measure your Vitals and identify your mood, and say sensing your are panicking may call some SOS contact you have on your phone or message them with your location, without you lifting a single finger!

Or you walk into the home tired, your home senses that, also remembers what you did last time when you were down, (Like drink a cup of coffee and slump into the couch to watch the TV) and reacts to the situation accordingly. The home can really come alive around you!