Wireless Home Networking - Index of

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Part IV: Using a Wireless Network
Maximizing your entertainment with macros
The most advanced remote controls can interface
with your A/V gear through macros. Select
Watch TV, for example, and the remote sequentially
goes through all the motions to turn on the
TV, turn on the home theater receiver, select the
right inputs on the TV and home theater receiver,
turn on the satellite receiver or cable set-top box,
and do anything else that’s required to watch
television. You can program the remote by simply
plugging it into your PC or Mac (with a USB
If you can forgo the fanciness and limit your ambitions, you can find universal
remote controls (the kind of programmable all-in-one remotes that many folks
buy for their home theater) that can move beyond the TV and DVD player
and control other systems in your house without wires.
An example here is Monster Cable’s tidily named Home Theater and Lighting
Controller 300 featuring OmniLink (www.monstercable.com). This $500
remote provides all the high-end home theater remote control features you’d
ever want (including the ability to use macros, or a series of sequential commands
that let you do a complex task with a single push of a button), and
adds into the mix wireless lighting controls using the Z-Wave technology
standard (a mesh wireless control network, which we discuss in Chapter 3).
Monster sells their own line of Z-Wave lighting control modules (manufactured
for them by the giant electrical company Leviton, www.leviton.com),
including both dimmers and switches. These control modules are available
as plug-ins (you plug them into an outlet and then plug a lamp into them)
and in-wall switches (you replace an existing switch). Monster also offers an
in-wall controller that can be used with the remote control, so you can turn
lights on and off or dim them throughout the home from a single wall switch.
Sit, Ubu, Sit . . . er, Speak!
cable) and then selecting the components you
use from vast libraries of components available
online from the remote’s manufacturer. Answer
a few questions about the configuration of your
particular system (for example, do you listen to
the TV through the TV’s speakers or through your
home theater receiver?) and you’re on your way
to one-remote Zen. Examples of remotes that use
macros are Logitech’s Harmony line of remotes
(www.logitech.com).
Your wireless network can help with your pet tricks, too! Although we’re not
sure that this is what the pet trainer meant when she said that she would
teach your dog to speak, speak he can if he’s Sony’s AIBO robotic dog. For
seven years, Sony lead the market in robotic trainable dogs, until in 2005 it
“put down” the line in a cost-cutting move. We don’t usually write about
discontinued toys, but this one is so exciting (and still widely available on
eBay) that we decided to tell you about it.