Home Automation

We’ve written about artistic urinals, football urinals and even a urinal containing an LCD to pee on. In our ongoing quest for the coolest urinal we’ve finally come across one that is ecologically friendly.

According to Mister Miser toilet flushing accounts for 40% of domestic water usage. In order to minimise this they’ve come up with a system that only requires 10 ounces of water per flush. I couldn’t find much information on how the technology actually achieves this but as I live in area with a hose pipe at the moment saving water is pretty high on the agenda.

You can get further info (not a lot) and buy online from Mister Miser.

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If you find putting up your patio umbrella too much like hard work then you’ll want one of these remote controlled umbrellas. Goes up or down by the flick of a switch, crazy!

Available from Smart Home.

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I’m getting quite into home automation at the moment. I’ve just got a Roomba vacuum (blew it up on the first day so more to follow on that one) but disappointedly it cannot open doors, this is where this remote controlled swinging door could come in handy.

You attach the swinging door opener to to the top of your door (and wall). You are then able to open the door via remote control. This could be useful for disabled dwellings or just plain OTT in most houses. Still looks like a cool gadget to me though :).

Available from SmartHome but be warned it’s quite pricey. [Found via Gizmos for Geeks]

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The only gadget like curtains I’ve seen before are those with little motors that open and close them with a flick of a switch. This may of been cool 10 years ago but now just seems dorky instead of geeky.

The new flexible electronic curtain from Japanese company MicroReactor System Co has got to be the coolest curtain I’ve ever seen (and if it could be combined with LED windows that would be awesome).

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There are 3 cool ideas here, especially if you’re a gadget freak cum couch potato like me. From left to right there is:

• A remote control that doesn’t need a battery – very friendly to the environment.

• A voice-activated remote control, because I’m too lazy to pick the thing up and press the button.

• A universal remote control because I have six different remotes in the living room and they make the place look untidy.

I’m not sure about the universal remote control though; I had a really bad experience with one a few years ago…..

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Did you ever leave for the office in a hurry wondering if you left the iron on or a window open, or even forgotten your rich auntie’s birthday card? Well with a Home Heartbeat system, you needn’t have any more panic attacks because you can just call home to find out the status of every item in the home you hook up to the system. This gadget won a Consumer Electronic Association Innovations Award, and I’m not at all surprised.

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This is a “green” gadget; a multi-way adaptor that acts as a surge protector, but at the same time automatically switches off devices that have been left in standby mode for a pre-determined time.

Most people think that when they put an electrical appliance into standby mode, the only energy used is to light up the red LED. Searching around the net for material for this article, I was shocked by some of the reported statistics on the energy wasted by devices left in this mode.

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