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Thinking Home
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You don’t need a Bill Gates budget to make your home interactive! Mac users can operate gadgets using their voice; or make lighting turn off when a room is empty for a while; or schedule your electric blanket to warm your bed.
For energy savings, security and convenience, Thinking Home is your solution. Having lights turn off automatically is just one way to save energy. Turning on sidewalk lighting as someone approaches saves energy and adds a little security, too. The options are endless!
You can schedule your electric blanket to turn on an hour before bedtime. This allows you to lower the thermostat at night while you’re in a warm, comfy bed.
Something like that can be stored in a controller, so you can turn off your Mac. You can also use your Mac for smarter actions 24-7 and make use of Mac-only things like speech, scripts, email, instant messaging and web access.
Highlights of the Newest Features
Schedule Sets When going away on vacation, many people want a different schedule to be used. Instead of turning on the coffee maker, you may want a couple of lights turning on randomly for a more secure, lived-in look. Schedule Sets provide this convenience via a simple popup menu in the Schedules window.
1-Wire Affordable temperature monitoring is just one of the benefits that 1-Wire delivers. It’s easier than ever to check the temperature of the water heater, greenhouse, wine cellar, solar panels or the outdoors.
Device Status Now you can keep tabs on the status of each device or sensor and use it in a smarter, more energy-efficient home.
Search Fields With more than 130 models of gadgets to choose from, the search field in the Gadget Guide makes it a snap to quickly find what you’re looking for. You’ll be amazed at how well it works — it practically reads your mind. It’s also very handy in the Schedules window, to narrow down your numerous events to just those involving a particular device, time or action.
And So Much More…
Built-in Voice Commands You say “Turn on the living room lamp.” and it does!
Setup Assistant Want help to get started? The Setup Assistant walks you through the steps.
Gadget Guide This is the place to see what’s available and where to shop for the best deals.
Three Standards INSTEON, X-10 and now 1-Wire are the technologies for your home automation solutions.
Events and Responders Scheduled events and smart responders can operate gadgets, open web pages, play audio, all kinds of actions to make your home interact the way you want it to.
Desktop Remote This innovation operates your gadgets directly from the Finder. You don’t even have to open Thinking Home to quickly turn off that fan.
Sherlock For users of Mac OS X 10.4 and earlier, the Sherlock plug-in is a great way to find answers in home automation forums, wiki’s and newsgroups.
Web Access Designed to fit seamlessly with Apple’s built-in Personal Web Sharing, Thinking Home makes your gadgets available to you on the web.
Click to Developer’s Site for more info.
Click to macZOT for more detailed info about today’s ZOT!
Operating System Requirements:
- Mac OS 10.3.9 – 10.6.2+
Additional Requirements:
- Non-USB controller models require a USB-serial adapter.
- The Sherlock feature is available on Mac OS 10.4 and earlier.