| William H. Magill on Mon, 18 Aug 2003 14:47:05 -0400 |
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On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 02:26 PM, Paul wrote: William H. Magill wrote:If you are looking at this stuff seriously, visit "Mr. House." It's a pearl based home automation system. Does everything but scratch your back and probably could have a module designed to do that too.Actually, I was just thinking about how to control MythTV from across a room in a practical way. I'm wondering how much range a wireless keyboard is has. It depends... If it is an IR keyboard, the "range" can be "trivially" (only takes dollars) extended to any room in the house. There are several different IR extenders available at Smarthouse or Worthington Distributors. Most IR systems will work across the room (10-20 feet), but they depend upon a clear "line of sight" path.... except that if you have "shiny walls," you can bounce IR off lots of different surfaces successfully. The usual problem with an IR keyboard is that it has the port on the "front" and expects you to be pointed at the receiver, i.e. the Computer. This is where the various IR extenders come in handy. (... but then you have to run the wires to support them. So while your keyboard itself is wireless, the receiver is not.) Then you can point at the TV while the Computer is behind you (or in another room). Bluetooth might be an option, but I don't know if there is a bluetooth keyboard on the market yet. Bluetooth should give you about a "room's worth" of coverage. But don't expect it to work through walls anymore than IR does. (Bluetooth range should be about 10-20 feet.) T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com _________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug
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