singlecue Gesture Controlled Smart Home
Walmart’s Ares 8 by Nextbook is not only an incredibly cheap 8 inch android tablet, but it’s also a high performer with a quad-core Intel Atom (bay trail) processor running Android 5 Lollipop on an 8″ 1280 x 800 IPS display making it a great candidate for your next home automation project. Sure, there are many other sub $100 android tablets on the market, but they are usually terrible compared to the Ares 8.
Ares 8’s Specs:
- 8″ inch High-resolution 800 x 1280 IPS Screen
- Intel® Atom™ Quad-Core /1.8GHz (Z3735F)
- 1GB DDR3L; 16GB onboard storage
- WIFI 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0
- Front facing 0.3 MP camera and Back facing 2.0 MP camera
- Micro HDMI Port
- Micro-SD card slot for expansion to 64GB
- Support 3 -axis G-sensor
- Built-in microphone
- Android OS 5.0 Lollipop
Here is a quick (2 minute) video review by Brad Linder of liliputing.com, one of my daily reads these days. The only drawback seems to be the 1GB of RAM and a teeny tiny bit of bloatware, but look how fast!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpSSozC-2IA
A powerful Android tablet like this has tons of potential in a home automation context. Three use cases come mind off the top of my head.
- Wall mounted home automation console(s)
- Stand mounted home automation console(s)
- Universal Remote(s)
All 3 of these use cases are accessible to guests in your home potentially solving the problem of personal smart phone only control of your home automation.
Also, notice I appended “(s)” to each use case. When you can buy a fully loaded touch screen computer for $78 dollars you can really start to think about using 2, 3, 4 or even more of these to turn your house into the Star-ship Enterprise and your bedroom into the captain’s quarters!
I will flesh-out some of details as well as pros and cons of each use case in a future blog post so follow this blog on your social network of choice so you don’t miss that post!
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