indigo posts

Filed under: Software

Indigo 3.0, increased geekiness for your home

by Brett Terpstra (RSS feed) on May 7th, 2008

Once upon a time, my house was alive. It would wake me up with an hour-long procedure of ramping up the lights and using a zen chime at increasing intervals. Once the hour was up, it would check to see if I had opened the bathroom door yet and, if not, scold me with increasing levels of profanity for sleeping too late. It would read me the weather and top headlines while I brushed my teeth. It would turn lights on and off as I moved through the house. It had everything but an omnipresent, glowing red eye.

And it was grand, until a series of events (that I can now look back at and laugh) resulted in the PC it was all running on devouring itself and the connected backup drive. Now, in addition to an offsite backup system, I've got a lot of switches, sensors, motion detectors and the like and haven't had the heart to build the system again. But here I am with an extra Mini, and Perceptive Automation just released a new version of Indigo. My inner geek is just itching to restore my home to its former blinking, talking, almost-sentient glory.

Continue reading “Indigo 3.0, increased geekiness for your home”

Tags: home automation, HomeAutomation, indigo, perceptive automation, PerceptiveAutomation

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, Mac mini

Indigo Home Automation

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Jan 18th, 2007

We just told you about the Lithium server monitoring app but what if, like most Mac users, you're more likely to monitor and control your house (or at least your lamps) than your servers? Adam Goldstein has a nice introduction to the Indigo Home Automation and Control Server over at MacDevCenter. Indigo is a Mac application for home automation using INSTEON/X10 switches, dimmers, sprinkler controllers, etc. It does this via a USB interface device which communicates with the special switches, etc. through your existing power lines. Thus, your Mac can both monitor sensors of various sorts (e.g. motion sensors) and send commands to various appliances plugged into control modules (either external ones that go between the appliance and the wall socket, or internal ones that actually replace the wall sockets). There are a variety of sensor and control modules available.

Indigo can be controlled in many ways: pre-made schedules, Applescript, Salling Clicker (Bluetooth), a Dashboard widget, the phone, or even over the internet via the built-in web server. As of now, your Mac server must remain on at all times (though a future version will be able to upload commands to the USB module and then shut off).

Indigo is not cheap at $179.95 (introductory price, $199.95 regularly, demo available) and obviously requires a considerable investment in INSTEON modules ($10 to $200 each), but if you're the geeky type like me this is just begging for a mac mini home server. The main thing missing for me is some sort of thermostat interface and perhaps more sensors.

[Via MacDevCenter]

Tags: home automation, HomeAutomation, indigo, insteon, x10

Filed under: Audio, Cult of Mac, Odds and ends

Make your Mac sound retro

by Scott McNulty (RSS feed) on May 2nd, 2006

Sure, all these new Macs are great, but sometimes you just want your Mac to sound like System Seven. Luckily, Uneasysilence has heard your pleas and has made several 'retro' Mac alert sounds available on his blog. Wild Eep, Sosumi, ChuToy, Submarine (which is my favorite)... they are all there! Go get 'em and give your Intel Mac a little more soul.

Tags: droplet, indigo, quack, retro, sosumi, system 7, System7, wild eep, WildEep

Filed under: Hardware, iMac, Apple

Rig of the Day: I just gotta be me

by Dave Caolo (RSS feed) on Jan 30th, 2006

Ok, so technically this isn't someone's rig, but that lone green iMac among a sea of blue reminded me of that old Far Side comic in which one penguin among a multitude was trying to assert his independence. You go, lime iMac. As an aside to ghostofchicken, who posted this shot: If you don't need those iMacs, I'll be happy to take them off your hands.

"imacs" posted by ghostofchicken

If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an image every day to highlight.

Tags: imac, indigo, lime, rig of the day, RigOfTheDay

Tip of the Day

Holding the Command key (aka the Apple key) and pressing Tab will cycle through your open applications. It's easier to Cmd-Tab if you are Copy (Cmd-C) and Pasting (Cmd-V) to and from various applications.

Learn More

TUAW flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

Featured Galleries

TUAW bloggers (30 days)

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Steven Sande	51	4
2	Dave Caolo	36	1
3	Mel Martin	31	0
4	Mike Schramm	31	0
5	TJ Luoma	24	31
6	Joachim Bean	18	2
7	Victor Agreda, Jr.	17	7
8	Michael Rose	17	15
9	Erica Sadun	16	2
10	Josh Carr	13	22
11	Ken Ray	11	2
12	Sang Tang	11	1
13	David Winograd	11	17
14	Brett Terpstra	9	8
15	Megan Lavey	5	9
16	John Burke	4	3
17	Kent Pribbernow	4	0
18	Tim Wasson	4	1
19	Chris Ullrich	4	1
20	TUAW Blogger	3	0

More Apple Analysis

AAPL on BloggingStocks The Apple category feed from BloggingStocks.com
AAPL Quote, News & Summary The AAPL financials page from AOL Money and Finance
iPhone analysis from BloggingStocks iPhone tag feed from BloggingStocks
Macintosh news and reviews on Download Squad The Macintosh category feed from Download Squad

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)