Very exciting news from Google I/O in San Francisco. Android@Home has been announced, a logical move and one which I would wager will be highly successful. With Google TV set to emerge in homes this year and a plan by Google to merge their phone, tablet and Google TV code into one build codenamed “Ice Cream Sandwich” at the end of the year, the company seem well positioned to take on home control. Google TV offers users the ability to control their TV from their Android phone amongst plenty of other features. This basic feature, to use your phone as a remote control for the TV has been something that users have been crying out for for years, with nobody paying any real attention to it. I do remember a great program called Nevo on the iPAQ on which you could control masses of IR equipment. I gained much amusement from changing the TV in the pub and works canteen to the confusion of the staff there.

Cost, Complexity and Fragmentation

Yet home control has never really caught-on. I put this down to a number of factors (which the mobile industry is well used to hearing): fragmentation, cost and complexity. The three factors have combined so far to prevent the market maturing in any sensible way. Yes, there are home control systems out there, but they are all pretty much proprietary. I’ve been considering whether to do some home control for years but the components are over-priced and I can’t interface with them with my own software. Take the example of a remote controlled socket kit from the UK’s B&Q or the control for remote lighting . Everything needs its own remote control. We want to use our mobiles! No doubt this is true of the designers and manufacturers of these products too, which is why I think Android@Home is going to be a roaring success. Others such as Bose may continue to sell the whole integrated system, continuing to target the niche high-end market but ultimately market forces will probably force them to ditch their proprietary system.

Setting up IP cameras in your home now also involves putting some software on your PC. A lot of users have switched to much better open source solutions such as iSpy just because of the poor quality and complexity of the setup of the proprietary (or badged) PC software.

So, in summary, as a normal person I don’t want to pay loads of money, I don’t want it to be difficult to setup and I want to run everything from the same software on my mobile phone.

In part 2, I will discuss some of the uses and why security is critical.