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The term "smart home" seems to turn up in tech circles every so often, only to fade into the background again without much sign of ultra-connected dwellings becoming a reality. Honda's at least putting one foot forward, with a just-unveiled test house in Saitama, Japan featuring a system for controlling and monitoring energy usage. The Honda Smart Home System (HSHS) consists of thin-film solar cell panels, a rechargeable home battery unit, gas and hot water supply systems and the Smart e Mix Manager. The latter is the central part of the energy-control system, and it keeps track of all the other components in addition to monitoring the home's use of power supplied by the grid. In emergency situations, it can also provide electricity via the home battery unit. On the day-to-day level, however, the system is there to let home owners know what sources of power they can kill. Honda also integrates its Japan-only Internavi system for controlling home appliances remotely. The car maker hopes to use the house for extensive demo testing, with an ultimate goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 50 percent. No word on how many decades till we actually call this sort of place home, though. Click on past the break for a look (in Japanese) at the test home's features.

Continue reading Honda test house features Smart Home System for controlling energy usage

Honda test house features Smart Home System for controlling energy usage originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 May 2012 19:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you've ever dreamed of thumbing your nose at big energy and its expensive, polluting ways, then Tesla and a solar panel leasing company called SolarCity might be taking you a baby-step closer to reality. Although recognized mostly for its EVs, Tesla reckons it knows enough about batteries to solve a key problem in the solar energy chain -- namely the storage of power for use when the sun, power grid, or both go offline. The battery design, consisting of many laptop-style lithium ion batteries stacked together, was chosen after two years of research and a $1.8 million energy grant. The two companies are now waiting for tax credits from the Fed and California before rolling out the tech. And being kissing cousins -- with Elon Musk as both Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla -- certainly can't hurt.

Tesla pairs up with SolarCity, will power off-grid homes as well as cars originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fatal Error: get('adsPerSlot') in Admin Options don't exist (not an array)!

If you've ever dreamed of thumbing your nose at big energy and its expensive, polluting ways, then Tesla and a solar panel leasing company called SolarCity might be taking you a baby-step closer to reality. Although recognized mostly for its EVs, Tesla reckons it knows enough about batteries to solve a key problem in the solar energy chain -- namely the storage of power for use when the sun, power grid, or both go offline. The battery design, consisting of many laptop-style lithium ion batteries stacked together, was chosen after two years of research and a $1.8 million energy grant. The two companies are now waiting for tax credits from the Fed and California before rolling out the tech. And being kissing cousins -- with Elon Musk as both Chairman of SolarCity and CEO of Tesla -- certainly can't hurt.

Tesla pairs up with SolarCity, will power off-grid homes as well as cars originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fatal Error: get('adsPerSlot') in Admin Options don't exist (not an array)!Google passed, and Microsoft reckoned it had better things to do, but Zuckerberg's Castle is seemingly willing to pick up where those two left off. In what may go down as the strangest Facebook decision since the rejection of Valentina Monetta's video as best in the whole wide world, the company is launching a new social energy app that'll tap into technology from the National Resources Defense Council and Opower. Initially, the app will reach some 20 million households, and it's designed to help eco-curious Earthlings compile and benchmark usage data to see how their home stacks up against others. Within territories with utility participation, people can connect their utility account directly to the app to track progress and share energy saving accomplishments with friends. Unfortunately, the whole process looks rather manual for now, and privacy overlords will no doubt question the motives for requesting even more information from Facebook users; that said, it's totally possible to engage in the Opower tracking sans a Facebook account. To get going, give those source links a look.

Facebook inks partnership with Opower, looks to socially compare home energy usage originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Comments Off:ATI Catalyst™ 10.4a Preview Win7 / Vista 32/64more...

download: ATI Catalyst™ 10.4a Preview Win7 / Vista 32/64 (113.94MB) added: 22/04/2010 clicks: 1117 description: AMD released the ATI Catalyst 10.4a Preview driver suite. In the run up to Catalyst 10.4, the company wanted to quickly resolve an important issue pertaining to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 game load times, which made it release a series of preview drivers, starting with Catalyst 10.4 Preview which resolved the issue for ATI Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs, and now the Catalyst 10.4a Preview, which resolves it for ATI Radeon HD 4000, HD 3000, HD 2000 series GPUs. With this hotfix applied, users will experience reduced map game load times on Bad Company 2. Catalyst 10.4 WHQL will be released later this month.

Comments Off:Xstreme PrimeCores 2010 V 5.0.0more...

download: Xstreme PrimeCores 2010 V 5.0.0 (5.18MB) added: 21/04/2010 clicks: 132 description: PrimeCores 2010 is a new generation diagnostic benchmark, that is based on a very fast prime number finding algorithm. PrimeCores 2010 supports multithreading features and CPUs with up-to 12 Cores. It does not use specifically optimized math routines therefore it can also be executed on less recent CPUs.