What I would like to see from Apple Eco system this year

WWDC is just around the corner and I am sure Tim Cook will not have enough time to re plan just because I published my wish list:-) But I would put in what I would like to see so that in case it aligns with what really happens, I can feel happier:-)

1. Its anybody's guess looking at the graphics  of the WWDC that "Apple TV encircled with many objects" is the theme. So I would safely guess the HomeKit enabled Apple TV will be announced.  Tightening the loose ends on HomeKit and HealthKit will be in the cards. If we have all those individual remotes merging into a unified interface at some place, I will be very happy.
2. I would hope that media streaming options will converge. What I mean is either Apple start supporting some of the other competitions' protocols (My interest specifically on SONOS) or others align with Homekit. When Airplay does look a great way, its not the only way. So I would be happy if Apple opens up a bit here.
3. Workflow being integrated into iOS. With the HomeKit coming up strongly, ability to build up workflows will have to be native to iOS rather than a third party implementation. This way, Apple can also choose to allow certain level of integration with the Phone app and Message app. This will greatly improve the flexibility and scope of automation.
4. Siri will have to develop further. One challenge we face now is that even for operations which can be done locally, we need a connection to be active. This may not be practical if we want to use Siri for Home automation. I may be in basement and may be my WiFi is not working for internet, but I may still want to control the in house appliances; Using Siri:-) The challenge is that Siri requires a net connection to understand me in the first place. Not sure if that can be brought down in to say my Apple TV so that the local functionality can still work with out the internet round trip.
5. Apple should show some love to Indian Crowd:-) Especially in Maps. If they cannot, they should atleast allow user to choose which mapping app should be set as default mapping app. That way we can use google map when we cannot use Apple Maps.Even though I can still start the Google Maps from the App, having Siri to find my way using Google Maps is something I will be grateful to have.
Thats it for now, Tim! I am sure you can manage this! What are friends for afterall?

Know your own power

I had been looking around for a device which can measure the power consumption at home and which can report back as much detail as possible. More than taking away the shock Electricity Bill delivers, I wanted to be aware of the power consumption as it happens and may be some of the event triggers can be utilized too. Like when say the power draw crosses a point when I do not expect it to.

There are solutions which requires you to plug in your appliances via the device into the mains and it in isolation or in conjunction reports the data. These works out cheaper. But then there is no triggering any action based on it. There is no consolidation. And there is the pain of having multiple plugs all to be connected all over the house. With multiple layer of adapters the connections across the house becomes painful.

Then there are other devices which could measure the consumption based on the current drawn from mains using CTs. This was less intrusive and could be done in one place. The device also had ability to set alarms for levels of consumption to alert you of you exceeding quota of usage.

This was a definite improvement to what I started off with. But then came Smappee. A much smarter device which can measure the consumption using the CT like the device I talked about before, but also could report it as triggering actions using IFTTT integration. And it is going to work with Homekit too!

This itself was a big leap for me! But the fun does not stop there. What I was missing in the previous solution of not able to know which device is drawing the power immediately, is taken care of in Smappee! They use some complex algorithm internally to understand the power usage signature of different appliances from the entry point. Then they report the power consumption split into these buckets of appliances. Well, they cannot do it to all individual points, as some DNA of power consumption is indistinguishable, but they can do a fairly good job. (Is it my personal experience? No. I have not used it. Its right from the site and other reviews! But I intend to find out!)

Its available in India, and it can work with Solar panels also! Which means, they can report how the power is being used from the power generated on the Solar end of my supply! That is now the icing on the top. If it all works the way it is stated to work, I will be a happy camper!

Only time can tell!

Ray the remote

There had been universal remotes from quite some time. Some which needs us to map key by key and some which allows us to map using a device ID. There had been some with Digital display and some which were apps lying on your iOS/Android devices.

I have tried a few. Some worked fine with limited capability. Like the STB remote for the Satellite TV which allows me to map my TV remote also into it, and Universal Remote, a device from gear4.

The STB remote worked fine, though with a bit of effort, when I had the TV remote from which the universal remote could learn. But recently when I had to connect to a TV for which the Remote was not working anymore, I ran to a dead end.

The Universal Remote, Unity remote from gear4 would have worked well (even though the app was not very good) provided they had used WiFi in place of Bluetooth. Now the challenge is that the batteries get drained so fast and by the time you are ready to use it ,

I hear there are other remotes which work well, but end of the day I feel the flexibility lacks in a fixed keyboard remote as you have to have a lot of keys there.

This is the area where Ray is relevant. Ray tries to have some of the common functions as physical buttons as volume control etc and the rest all as soft buttons. It also tries to integrate some of the old Google TV into the remote. With support for many STBs including what is in India, they are making it extremely interesting for the subcontinent. So now you can see detailed program guide as well as additional information about the program. It can learn from your choices and suggest more programs for you. (Some of the wish list items I had in another post in this blog:-)

I also happened to see a demo given by Ray to recode which showed some stability issues with the remote which may be a deterrent if that slips into the final product. May be a little too early to start worrying about it.

In India especially the demography of people who watch the TV may find it a little too techie to start with, but if the device really simplifies the remote by adding snap shots of the program and name in native language etc, it can really be an interesting product to have. I will keep a watch on this to see if I want to get one. As I said earlier, a lot may depend on what Homekit finally grows on to be.

Kitchen Farming and technology

I love the concept of harvesting your vegetables from your own backyard. Why I do not do that already? Well, one is you have to spend some time with the plants, water them, understand them better, prune them in some cases, feed them and generally tend to them. Isn't that fun? Yes it is. Will you be able to do it every day? I am right on the fence on that. Not that I want to ignore, but I can forget. I can be away, I am down right lazy.

You have to remember is I am not talking about doing farming as your primary source of Income or even any source of income. Its not even going to be your only source of food. Far from it. Its about having a basket full of vegetables and fruits freshly plucked from your garden sitting on your kitchen slab atleast once a week.

I am sure many are there in my league. Now what all these can technology  address?
To start with, first thing there are quite a few sites which talk about what can be planted and how and when. There are, if you are in India, agriculture offices across the country which can help you. Or you can ask the grandma or grandpa who had done it successfully!

You can get the seeds/saplings, plant them with a small spade or some sharp stuff if its handy. You can pour the first doze of water, and you are on the way.

Watering the plants is one major act. This has to happen regularly. The drip irrigation system  can reduce the amount of water you send into each sapling enhancing its absorption. You can set an alarm which can remind you to open or close the tap. Or you can have a gadget do this for you. There is a DIY version explained here. Or you can go for one from Parrot which is a bluetooth sensor which can read four parameters like humidity, fertilizer, sun and wind and report it back to you. It can cover a small bed of plants provided they all have comparable conditions.

There are also self contained techno green house solutions in the making like Niwa of which I have my own reservations:-)

There are many others which will make you feel gardening can be easy. But the fact remains that controlling the pests and caring for the plant is a lot more personal and that is what makes it fun.

SONOS, Will you listen to these others?

SONOS, I am so used to them  playing some audio around now. Its a great feeling to be able to just search a track and play it quickly. (Inspite of the Bridge being there, I still get some drops of signals. May be due to the Internet is dropping intermittently. Slightly larger tracks are not streaming at times)

I move them around once in a while, And it comes up on play quickly again. I like that flexibility and ease.

With a lot of home automation planned, I was checking out how easy it will be to automate SONOS. When I say automate SONOS, I do not mean just play and pause a track planned before. What I mean is play the alerts through SONOS if possible dipping the track voice. Being able to use my iOS mics to announce something across into some room of choice.

SONOS Voice is an app which caters to the second use case some what. So I will have a PA system with a small app loaded into all my iOS devices. Not sure how reliable the app is, but for the time, it will do.

For the first one, things are not that easy. There is no quick way to automate SONOS. I went all over the net and some sites have some promising options. But there are none which will immediately solve it and not meant for non programmers mostly.

There are Hubs which already built in automation of SONOS into their workflows, Ninja Sphere for one.

Apple and SONOS do not have a good working relation in the past, But I do hope when the Homekit takes off, SONOS will implement the required hooks for Homekit into their App. That will make a world of difference to people who are using SONOS.

Pick your friends and foes

When you are into Gadgets, you tend to buy all sorts of stuff. Like me, I have couple of Bluetooth headsets (Bluetooth never worked for me well) One projector, A Handy Doc Scanner, A Livescribe pen, a Belkin OBD adapter, and the list goes on. Most of these, I do not use anymore. Some, I am happy I picked up.

I picked many of these stuff for not just its geeky value. I picked because I had a plan. I had a plan to use them in a business when I decide to switch. But the challenge was, until then, they had hardly any use. And some of the products had some short comings.

The Projector from Axxa was a very handy one with LED projection technology. But the built quality was very poor and soon it started having issues with connectivity. The HDMI failed first. And the color did not come through well when I connected the iPad using their connector any more and soon it started gathering dust some place.

The bluetooths, one from Plantronics, the loop broke. So I ended up not using them, and the battery lost its life and it does not charge any more to any usable state. The same issue happened with my Jaybird over the head headset. Both these had Bluetooth and had charge retention  issues after a while. May be things are better now with the Bluetooth 4.0, but as of now, I am scared off from the bluetooth headsets:)

The Handy scanner was a neat stuff which says you can scan all sorts of stuff when you are on the move. It sucks in the doc from one end and spits it out from the other and in the process scans the document. It had issues soon after I got it. The scanning  head used to get dirty and the scanning used to be all patchy. And the software accompanied also did not give too good a result.

Livescribe pens I did use for some time. But like any device with chargeable battery, it died since I stopped using it for some time in between. The specialized refills were to blame as I had to get it from US and during that time, it just stayed in  the draw.

Now, I have changed my strategy a bit. When I make large investments, I pick a platform. It has its own merits. Evaluate your platform well, and pick a product which does one thing, and that one thing well. And also see how it is open for integration to the whole story if you need it to, later.

SONOS, Philips HUE, Apple, all fall into my plan thus. There is a bit of Microsoft as in XBOX and a bit of Google as in well, google:-)

I am looking to identify one platform for my Security cameras now. There are many out there but I am not convinced about any at the moment. iSmartAlarm is very  high in the list with their iKeepCamera, but as I said, yet to take the plunge. I have looked at other products too, like iSmartThings, DropCam, Canary, (all in paper, never tried hands on yet) some are still presenting their case and some have fallen short. (DropCam for the simple reason of the heavy netusage. I do not have a 50GB upload bandwidth to plan for just a camera. Not yet)

Microsoft HoloLens

The latest and greatest from Microsoft is out and its a 3D Glass to create an Augmented reality interface for you to interact with a system to best of my knowledge.

The first impression I got is, its a good Gaming interface. The Kinect and XBox together makes a good gaming environment to me as I hate having to carry wands in my hand. Imagine now the TV also removed from the mix and the objects all hang around you, With the aptly lighted room, you can probably have a much better experience with may be part of the image on the screen and the rest of the strip spread out infront of you in virtual reality. Much more live experience. And possibility for accessories like Boots and gloves to give you feedback on contact with  other objects! The experience can be good, geek worthy, atleast!

In a real world, where do I use it? I can think of designers, Scientists, using it, with imaginary objects flying all around us as in Iron Man Design room. Again, pretty snazzy at that! e-Commerce also has a potential use.

Will I be thrilled to have a normal computer screen and windows floating around me in virtual field when I want to use it to say send a mail or deal with files like in Mission impossible or Minority Report? May be not. Again, for a social interaction scenario like Skype call or facetime call, it may be interesting. Not so much for facebook!

I understand these interfaces also can change if we have new methods to interact with the ether world. At this point, I do not fancy myself having to wear some dorky glass and acting crazy trying to grab or nudge invisible objects!

Another reason I am not betting with this is that, Microsoft do not have a history of making something like these a success. XBox was a pleasant surprise to me. And they have a very bad history of stretching their timelines beyond reason.

Google glass has come and withdrawn for the time. Not sure if it will resurface. Only time can tell where these products will lead us. If not Microsoft, lets hope that this will kindle some ideas elsewhere where it will come out as a usable product!