Here’s the deal:
- I have an air conditioner with a remote control
- I have a computer permanently attached to the internet
- I have a mobile phone
Is it too much to want to combine these three independent products into an amazing climate controlling super duper force to make my life that much better?
Imagine my life with an amazing climate controlling super duper force (ACCSDF):
I’m walking to the train station after finishing a hard day at work. It’s a stinking hot 35 degree day in humid Brisbane. Before I’ve walked half a block I’m dehydrated and dreaming of a cold beer and ice. Instead I look forward to a house that has been locked up tight all day and enjoys imitating hell on a hot day.
With an ACCSDF I could pull out the mobile and "phone home".
Dear ACCSDF, please make my living room a bearable 21 degrees please.
The ACCSDF knows the rest. By the time I get home all I have to worry about is opening the beer. I can then barricade myself in the coldest room in the house and pretend I’m in Siberia.
It shouldn’t be that hard to create. All I have to do is
- buy a learning infrared transmitter
- hook it up to the pc
- create a web interface/email system that is able to send the on command to the remote receiver on the air conditioner
Penguins will then arrive quickly at my house to squat.
So then why hasn’t someone created some EASY linux software to do it? Everything I find is related to X10 which was a technology created in the 70s. The closest I can find is Misterhouse which is a bit too complicated for my needs. I suppose I could spend 3 weeks going through the LIRC documentation to see if it’s possible but I’m a supremely lazy person and want it all to be done for me.
At the moment it looks like I’m going to have to use the thoroughly boring timer feature on the air conditioner, but what will happen if I decide not to go home until late that day? I’ll be wasting energy!
Surely it can’t be any harder than teching a myth box to change the channel on a FoxTel box?
And obviously the web interface/email system would be a cool breeze for an uber web geek like yourself.
Yeah, it’s not tooooooo hard, but when you have to balance all the OTHER computer projects you’ve got going, plus all the tv/movies you have to watch, plus pander to your family’s whims, you find yourself longing for a ready made rpm to do it for you.
I guess if I finally get round to doing it I can do a howto blog entry. That would keep the Jo Beth Taylor porn searchers happy. 😀
Not quite sure why the mobile phone needs to be in the loop? As you now have a super dooper intelligent Apple iBook, can’t it just read your mind?
The Eviscerator should be able to predict your daily mood, estimate the time you will be home, extract itself from its storage space, fire up its bluetooth and start up the air con automatically (and get the beer out of the fridge).
If you have a look carefully at the Mac keyboard, you’ll see the “magic” key (it’s between the “apple” key and the “lobotomy” key. Press it and see what happens…
your very very lazy amy and you should be ashamed of yourself tsk tsk
Look, for a start it’s not an ibook it’s a POWERBOOK. Big difference. 😉 One is white and one is really sexy silver.
I do plan to write an applescript that will go to the bom website, find the temperature, check my blog for comments about heat, look at the expression on my face in the webcam and see how much water is left in the dog’s bowl. Then, based on those results it will know whether or not to turn on the air conditioner.
Once the air conditioner is on, it will send an email to all the old school pc users who are still looking in the registry as to why their profile is f**ked. The email will say “It’s all cool in the house of Apple”. 😀
iBook, PowerBook, Lisa, HAL… err, whatever. This Macintosh Orange stuff is all very confusing. Not like the world of the PC User (Super Multimedia System, now with Xenon power-boosted quadrophonic morphing processor!)
Now while your air-con sits lifeless through the powerless summer (brought to you courtesy of Energex), the “old-school user” will be at home in his hammock on his back deck, with a icy drink in his hand being gently and naturally cooled by the sea breeze we get on the northside of Brisbane.
I thought the only breeze you got on the northside of Brisbane was methane from Luggage Point.