zmote - amazing piece of technology
For zmote: Wi-Fi Universal Remote
Zmote is an amazing piece of technology. Nice look, small and compact yet powerful! You just connect it to your WiFi and voila! Use your mobile, web browser or home automation software to control your audio, TV or air conditioner. I am surprised it is so affordable - you can easily build quite dispersed architecture for your home/house automation (as I plan to do). Just place several zmotes in your rooms - it is so easy, no LAN cables, just WiFi. You can either use existing library of remotes or define your own ones (this is what I'm planning to do, as my Yamaha Pianocraft remote was not in the library).
But even bigger surprise came with realization how 'open' zmote is! It's API is at your disposal, so just use your imagination to integrate zmote with home automation application of your choice. And define automation scenes to suit your needs.
One suggestion for improvement - the list of available access points (displayed during WiFi setup phase) seems to be too short. It displayed dozen or so APs, but not the one of my interest (which was in pretty close proximity anyway). My suspicion is that current zmote firmware might work well in moderate urban environments, but perhaps fails to display all APs in my saturated (30+) apartment building. As a result, I had to connect zmote to my another access point, which had a better luck :-) and occasionally appeared on the zmote's list.
Overall - wonderful, powerful and affordable product. Good packing and delivery as well.
-DarS
