: your passport to the future

By: Jay Arcos
New Media Director


Best Buy

4x = Awesome   3x =Excellent   2x =Good    1x =OK

Did you know that your Mac, any Mac, could be doing most of your daily home tasks for you?

All you need is to load it with XTension and spend a few bucks to get the cheapest and most obedient maid ever, and she has a black belt in Karate with no salary, no benefits and no days off.

It all starts with Home Automation, and here is how.

Home Auto What?

Home Automation is simply that, to be able to tell your home how to behave, how to treat you, and how to make your life more comfortable and easy. This may sound like something from the future or out of your favorite sci-fi program, but the truth is, it has been here for a while and it's now easier and cheaper than ever to set it up and use it.

Home Automation is possible thanks to a technology developed by Pico Electronics back in 1976 called X-10 that allows the transmission of simple commands through an existing power line, something like your lights talking to each other on the phone only using the power line the same way your modem transmits commands or information through a telephone line. This way, by getting the right pieces of hardware (they are cheap I promise), you can actually communicate with your appliances and lights.

Attach a Mac to the X-10 pieces and you will have your custom made maid. But to help you manage the service staff you will need the aid of an amazing piece of software called:

XTension

Brought to you by Sand Hill Engineering a 14 year old company that first demonstrated a commercial dial-in AppleTalk bridge in 1985. Some of the partners at Sand Hill used to work for NASA, doing exactly what you can do with your Mac at home now, automate your daily tasks.

Now we get to the pulp of the review. I don't know where to start, there is so much this program can do for you it will be hard to cover it all. XTension to make a long explanation short, will talk to your house and make it act as you please, even learn how to react under different situations,

"The very essence of the idea is that it literally extends the 'Macish' look and feel and 'personal-izable-ness' into the rest of your home and life"; says Michael Ferguson from Sand Hill Engineering

The native scripting language for XTension is AppleScript one of the most valuable-yet-unknown miracles of the MacOS platform. With AppleScript, you can create a series of commands for your computer, such as, "check my email," "Open Filemaker Pro," or whatever else you do with your computer (not my business).

XTension uses the power of AppleScript and the X-10 technology to communicate with your home appliances. Tell your computer to check your email, wake you up in the morning, make your morning coffee, and these are just a few examples.

Imagine for a second to be able to centralize all your appliances to one point, just like a console, and not only be able to communicate with them, but to train them.

What can I really do with this?

If you can't let your imagination fly, here are a few examples of what other people are doing with XTension:

• Control your house lighting
• Control the temperature of each room
• Water the plants or the garden
• Make Coffee for you
• Turn all the appliances off when you are out
• Watch for unwanted visitors in your house
• Dial the police
• Restart your server automatically when it crashes
• Take pictures on a remote Mac
• Control all of your home theater
• Send Alphanumeric messages to a pager
• Now it's your turn to use your imagination

Try it, no risk

You can start by downloading a demo version of XTension. With this version you will be able to get more familiar with the software, and it can be used to model and experiment before you have to buy a single thing.

When you load XTension into your computer, an example floor plan of a house appears automatically, but you can also create your own floor plan with the help of your favorite draw and paint tool.

Also included with the floor plan is an icon of each appliance. There is a pre loaded list of home appliances ready for testing, such as your coffee maker, TV, lamps, etc. There are a number of excellent pre loaded scripts included as well, one in particular that will prevent your coffee from burning. Not only does this script tell your coffee maker to turn itself on in the morning, but it also tells the coffee maker to turn itself off after 1 hour, this way you don't burn the coffee or the house.

There are scripts to water your plants,your garden,call the police in case someone breaks in, or to open the curtains in the morning and then close them at night. A script to make the living room more cozy by adjusting the temperature,lights, and by playing your favorite music, also works quite well. As a matter of fact, there are scripts for anything you can imagine, and if you don't find one, you can create it yourself.

Scripting with XTension is as simple as typing plain English. There are many commands you can use such as: turn on, turn off, dim, speak and many more.

After getting a hold of the software and you decide how you want your house to act, you should get the final version of XTension and the hardware needed to talk to the appliances.

Modules and Interfaces

There are little gadgets called modules that will plug into your existing outlets. Plug your lights or appliances into these modules and they will be ready to receive commands such as on/off or dim.

With the aid of a transmitter, you then send commands to each one of the modules. Sending commands can be done without a computer, but hey! combine a Mac with XTension and you will feel like being aboard the Enterprise.

There are basically 4 types of interfaces to communicate with your Mac:

• The CM11a ActiveHome from X-10 USA
• The LynX-10 controller from Marrick Ltd.
• The "Two-Way" controller from Home Intelligence Corp.
• The CP290 controller from X-10 USA

Each interface differs in price, shape, and performance. The LynX-10 being the most expensive and advanced; and the CP290 the cheapest and most limited. We tested the CM11A and it worked fine for us. See prices at the end of the page.

No expensive technician needed, only your fingernail (ok, you can use a screwdriver instead)

1. Install XTension in your Mac

2. Connect your Mac to a transmitter or interface

3. Connect your appliances to the modules

You don't even need to read the manual, although I highly recommend that you do read it. XTension can be installed by simply following your instincts, it works with your Mac remember?

Each module needs a name or number. You can name each module with a letter from A to P and a number from 1 to 16. By assigning each module a name, you can have a total of 256 units connected to your Mac. Start with a couple of lights and a couple of your appliances. Once you get used to the system, expand your network, you don't need to buy everything at once. The best thing about XTension is that it is totally scalable.

For testing, we used two lamp modules, two appliance modules, a motion sensor, and a wireless transreceiver. Fifteen minutes after I opened the package, and a few hours after I downloaded the demo version of the software, I was able to do the following:

Any time someone would walk into our lab, my PowerMac would say "Hello" and at the same time, turn on the light in the reception area. I could then instruct my Mac to make coffee for the newcomer, dim the lights in the resting area, and play soft music. Easy, easy, easy...

Add-ons

Ok, let's assume you've programmed XTension to turn on and off your lights, to start your coffee machine, and how to detect motion in your house. Up until now, all we did was type or program the Mac to execute these tasks. With XTension you can also talk to your Mac. Once XTension is installed it becomes just like a friend or an assistant and you can tell "it" what to do.

With the help of Apple PlainTalk, which you can actually download for free, and a microphone, you can actually come home and tell your computer to "turn on the lights." With XTension you will see how obedient your Mac can be.

Imagine the implications of all these features. You can actually talk to your Mac and control your entire house. The Macintosh has always been known as a friendly machine, it's always been there for you, but now it's a better friend than ever. A friend you can talk to, that will understand, talk back to you, and be the perfect house aid. Think about people with disabilities, now they can wander around the house, and the house will react to their movements, and they can even tell the house what to do. The 21st century is here big time.

Now when I get home, I tell my Powerbook to check my email, turn on the music and dim the lights. This is how the Powerbook responds to me,"it is a pleasure to help you."

The only drawback about XTension is that, I'm so into my Mac now (and my Mac is so into me),I don't miss human company anymore! Which is very useful when you live in New York.

And How much for all this madness?

The best XTension feature is that it runs on any Mac starting with the Macintosh Plus. So you can take that dusty old Mac out of the closet and make it amazingly useful.

XTension Lite costs about $35, with XTension Lite you can communicate with the house but the house can't communicate with you, it's a one way thing.

The XTension commercial version retails for about $100, which is pennies considering how much it can do for you.

The modules that control your appliances cost somewhere from $10 to $30

The modules that talk back to your Mac, the motion sensors, cost from $15 to $100 each, but remember you don't need to buy everything at once.

The interfaces or transmitters cost from $60 to $180

A startup kit including software and some modules for lights and appliances could cost around $200, now how much did Bill Gates spend automating his house? Never mind.

All these items described below can be found in your local Radio Shack's or Home Depot. Additionally you can go to specialized resellers like Advanced Services Inc.

In Conclusion

The future is really here. XTension is so simple and so powerful it should come bundled with every Macintosh sold nowadays. I'm seeing the TV commercial already: "A new friend that you can trust, talk to, and leave the house to manage, your Macintosh with XTension loaded"

Additional Resources

• Sand Hill Engineering is to blame for XTension. They provide outstanding support, tutorials and discussion groups.
• Advanced Services Inc. where you can buy most of the stuff mentioned here and more
• Home Automation Systems is another place to shop.

Special thanks to Michael Ferguson @ Sand Hill for bringing to life a machine that was supposed to be for dummies, and to Mark Rheault from Advance Services Inc. for providing the right tools to make this review possible, and to both of them for introducing me to the fascination of Home Automation.