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!

HDMI:A Home theatre perspective

I am not technically competent to comment about the quality of HDMI vs some other technology. But HDMI combines the audio and video connection into one, which takes away a lot of clutter behind the Entertainment center, especially with so many devices occuping the rack these days, Blue ray player, Media player, Some game center, Apple TV/ Roku/Amazon Fire to name a few.

The real challenge though, comes when you want to conceal wiring. The HDMI connectors are big and a conduit to pass these later, will have to be equally big, mostly to a level of being prohibiting. Unlike many other connectors, you cannot crimp/end the HDMI on your own according to experts. Another limitation is HDMI does not work well for beyond 25-50 Feet.

A lot of google later, I found that there are few alternatives available.
1. You can have a Mini HDMI to HDMI conversion connectors at both the ends and the cable concealed can have a Mini HDMI both the ends.I haven't found the challenges in this yet, but something tells me, this is not a good solution
2. There are Faceplate pairs available with HDMI female ports exposed to the front and back. The HDMI female port behind the plate, you can connect using a cable laid inside the conduit. This will work if the conduit size is not a concern for you as you are required to still pass the fat end of HDMI to be passed through the conduit first. Just that the external connection part does not have to bother you.
3. You can have a conversion between HDMI and Cat6 or Cat5 cable and use that as the middle tier. There are converter face plates as well as devices which does this for you. They are called "Balun". There are Baluns with or without power supply.

When you evaluate all these options, one thing you have to keep in mind is what kind of digital content are you planning to transmit. Is it 3D, Full HD or just 1080i? The HDMI connectivity is not just the same across. There is something called Highspeed HDMI which is required to transmit the 3D content or Full BlueRay content. Else there will be a degradation of quality across. Again, I am not sure if the 3D will stop working all together if you use a lower spec HDMI or it will just loose the impact, but one should know there is such a difference before plunging in to buy one of these solutions. Somewhere its said that its better to buy a powered balun since this will ensure reduced loss in transmission and better quality.

So I am off now to educate my Automation consultant on these because, I think he has not considered the connection between the Media center and TV as his head ache or he is planning to have some channel disguised as something else to be there as an eye sour to take care of this!

Wireless Power

Getting some automation at home had been my task at hand and every other time I am running into the same challenge of Power supply.  Some cases its making sure the items only available in American market works with 220V 50Hz supply India has, and at times, its a surprise sprung up from vendors that the Calling bell/Door Bell uses a different connectivity across the continents. In India, for the wired bells, its just another power switch with the only difference that it is a hold-to-turn-on switch. Else the power supply etc are the same as the 220V AC power directly wired between the Bell and the switch. I found out that in US may be that is not the case, with a transformer in between which makes sure a lower DC volt is used for the buzzer and the main supply do not pass through your switch at all.
What does that do to me? Well, I have to build a transformer to my otherwise normal bell circuit if I am planning to use the Skybell or similar products.
The challenge is that this will require changes to electrical diagrams etc, I will have to have different power points planned. Once the conduits are in, and the plastering covers it, its not easy to change things up here with out having ugly exposed conduits or false decorative fixtures spoiling the aesthetics.
Wireless power may change a lot of this. I do not have to decide where I keep my stuffs to power it. But  will the wireless power be strong enough to power my washing machine? If it is, will it be safe for me to walk through the magnetic field it uses to send the power around? Can the field be channeled through some layer of wall where I can plug in power points and draw the power out to connect my devices? I don't know if those answers are out there.

But for today,  I am still wondering how to be able to connect a good looking Door camera hooked up to my connection without again asking for a electrical wiring change to the builder! 

Internet of things

It had been my Gripe that many of our home appliances are a collection of redundant components not fully utilizing their potential. If we could define any display unit as just display unit, any audio unit as a player or receiver of audio etc, we could have any source of information, by just having a mediator external to the systems translating it for the right target consumer, could send or receive information across devices. My concern started from the initial requirement to show my caller ID on my TV, without having to depend on the cable/TV provider. Ideally, all I would need is a device connected up on the point before the TV input, some place on my receiver or so, to translate the caller ID information coming from my phone on bluetooth connection. My car head unit can do this, why can't my TV do the same?
(Well there is the fact that the car head unit switches the display completely to the bluetooth screen, but with PiP etc availabe with TVs, it must be fairly simple for them to allow this. Another option they could have opened up is TeleText which can be overlayed on the screen. If only I can send any text to a component in the TV which can do this.)
Taking it to next level, it can even allow me to take the call right on my home theater system if I have a mic connected up, pausing the program running on the TV at the moment until I complete the call and resume from there. Same with any security event any place at home.

LG is trying out a networking of its devices chatting up  to you taking English like commands like Siri does. Check the link. Its an interesting development when your House comes up alive and active to tell you what was going on during the day or act as a home secretory, asking you for a go ahead to pay your bills and handle your laundry!It can also tell you when you are running too much of a bill in spite of its best effort switching off things which can be. When it starts receiving feeds from your vehicle, it can take care of managing a bit more than that! I think time is ripe for some standards are defined in this area so that different brands will still be able to work easily in this colony of devices.

Now with the internet  of things brewing up, Soon, I will be able to have that.  The only question remains, with all this extra time, what do a common individual do? What will it mean to him to take away all those small chores he used to do by hand?

Android TV And some TV concept thoughts

I was looking for a solution to have my media collection a bit more easy to navigate around with. I did not want a computer to be powered on to stream all my media into the TV. I would prefer to have a simpler setup where the media source lies on an ip node wired to a media management system allowing me to easily add more media, manage it, tag it from my computer, yet, easily see it at my Entertainment center even with computer turned off.
The rumor was abuzz about a new TV solution from Apple, but somehow it seems buried with its visionary. I checked out on the web about Western Digital's Live TV, even added it to my wish list on the Amazon, when I had second thoughts. I read something about Boxee, XBMC and VIZIO Co-Star. The Google TV was on the radar again! And then my cousin, the Android of family, told me that Google is planning for Android TV.

Searching for more information  about Android TV, I came across this articale
http://gigaom.com/2014/04/07/the-technology-behind-android-tv-how-google-wants-to-reinvent-apps-for-the-living-room/

And the Article sparked some thoughts. What should be the future TV like? What features should it have which will make it useful for the Geeks and Greens?

One thing I can think of right away that will attract me is an ability to know what other programs are running at this point which is in line with what I watch. For that the TV should first understand who I am and who I am not. What I mean by that is it need to know me from other members of the TV viewing community at home and me as my interests and dislikes. Google, known to do a lot of research in customer profiling should be well positioned to do this.

People do not watch channels, they watch programs. I do not want to watch HBO or any other channel, I want to watch some nice movie or some program I am interested in. Changing channel is so passe.

When I turn my TV on, or even before that on my Google Now, I get an alert saying,  this program of your interest is on in a channel you have subscription to, and it is at this stage of playing and it will be again available at this time, and present me with a set of options to watch, record or ignore will be a good step in the right direction. So I get to see all the possible programs of my interest lined up for me when I choose.

With the kind of voice recognition Google has now, it can easily allow people to switch to source which is playing their favorite program. If I want to watch an action movie,  I can be presented with all the action movies playing now or will be starting soon.

It can also happen that  someone whom I know who is also with the TV solution  watching a program feels that I will be interested in, suggests that to me over the social network on my TV, and this program gets added to my to be viewed  list with my approval.

When I start watching the programs I may want to know more about it, on the location, the people acted in it, technicians, source of story, adaptations if any,  other programs or contents of similar grain and genres, etc, which I can say, add to my viewing list. In case of informative programs, related information from  the content can be shown. So if I am listening the news about a bill being passed by the congress/parliament, I may want to know more about it, what some of the leading comments about it etc accessible to me. If the Sources can deliver along with the content, some tags and header which gives all the useful information, this can be done easily. (Well, getting them deliver that information in itself, can be a challenge. But the framework should start aiming at it is what I feel so that people will start adapting in future hopefully)

If I like the program, I may want to rate it, then and there and let the source know what as a consumer, I feel about it. This can be a great input to them to plan and prepare their program contents. TRP ratings will have a more live touch to it this way!

It is also possible that when a specific news is being watched, I want to tweet it, or facebook it so that people come to know about it; right from the TV.

A new channel of advertisements can be started by giving an option for people to choose and order things from the program by tagging different things.  Like if a movie is showing a beautiful scenery and a tour operator has one to offer in that area, he can let people choose it right there from a corner of the TV using an alert or something telling there are active components on the scene, or by just adding all those as collections to a separate area where people can go and check later!

One big gripe I have about today's TV or many appliance is that they do not use their full potential. If I have a surveillance system at home, or when I have my phone ringing,  if the TV can pick up those streams and allow me to see who is at door, or who is at my phone and if required, open the communication channel right there at the entertainment center, it will work great!

If the framework allows all the other devices to easily post some alerts to the TV, voice or not, it will work wonderfully going forward since with this single device I am much closer to a connected home! After all, most of the guys are found in front of the TV slouching when at home, and what is the better way of reaching them than to target the TV?