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How Far Away Are We from 3D Printed Homes?

Dennis Burger — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:31:19 +0000

3D Printing has come a long way in the past few years, what with 3D printed guns causing a big brouhaha, 3D printed food becoming an actual thing, and 3D printers for the home become more and more affordable and attainable every day. That’s in the home, mind you. But what about 3D printing an actual home? Like, brick-by-brick?

The bloggers at Movoto are getting their hands on a spanking new 3D printer soon, so the thought occurred to blogger Randy Nelson: exactly what would it take to 3D print a livable home, and moreover, how long would it take, and at what cost?

The results might…

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Oklahoma Residents Save Big with Smart Meters

Dennis Burger — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:47:07 +0000

Via greentechmedia this week comes news of an smart meter/smart thermostat initiative by Oklahoma Gas & Electric that has exceeded all expectations in terms of energy and money savings. The demand-response initiative, which signed up 40,000 customers in its first year, taps customers into the smart grid by way of a smart meter and a programmable thermostat, and charges more for peak energy usage, but gives discounts during…

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NASA Paves the Road to Mars by Funding Green Tech on Earth

Jeff Kleist — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:47:38 +0000

When you’re sending people on a 100 million-ish mile round trip to our nearest planetary neighbor, you’re going to need to bring along a lot of stuff with you. Preferably stuff that won’t run out of gas, degrade, or otherwise break down easily when the nearest Wal-Mart is millions of miles away. To develop the new innovations required to make the trip, NASA is sort of turning an old trend on its head. Whereas thousands of technologies developed by…

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Xfinity Adds EcoSaver Energy-Saving Cloud Service

Dennis Burger — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:21:39 +0000

Via EarthTechling comes news that Comcast has added a new service to its Xfinity home automation service, designed to intelligently adjust your thermostat settings for increased energy efficiency. On paper, the new EcoSaver service sounds pretty much exactly like ecobee’s “Home IQ,” in that it analyzes the performance characteristics of your Xfinity Thermostat to get a more »

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Ubi: Giving Your Smart Home a Voice

David Glenn — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:21:06 +0000

We talk a lot about smart home technology here at HomeTechTell. And while there’s no doubt that the modern smart home is in fact a gigantic technological leap forward from what we’ve known in the past, it has yet to really reach the same level of smartness as the more prevalent mobile smart devices. That’s completely understandable; after all, a smartphone is a compact, contained computer system, whereas a home is an amalgamation of various systems and standalone equipment. As technology marches forward, however, the reality of the integrated and truly “smart” home is getting closer. Take the Ubiquitous Computer, Ubi, for example.

Think of it as J.A.R.V.I.S for the Common Man.

Ubi is an unobtrusive miniature computer (4 X 4 X 1.1 inch) with no…

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How “The Man” Kept the House of the Future Down

Jeff Kleist — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:17:55 +0000

We’ve all seen the highly entertaining “house of the future” short films put out by companies and futurists alike. Some of their retro-future predictions, like fax machines, projectors and such in the home have absolutely come true, while others, like the kitchen that makes you dinner itself, are still in the future.

But PaleoFuture has an interesting new post up about a concerted effort on the part of the building industry and, yes, even the U.S. government, to not only temper expectation about the house of the future at the end of World War II, but to outright turn consumers against the concept.

During…

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Tell + Netatmo Urban Weather Station Giveaway

Dennis Burger — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 21:30:49 +0000

Netatmo and HomeTechTell have teamed up to give one lucky winner one of the Urban Weather Stations we first told you about earlier this week. The Giveaway runs between now and June 30, 2013, so it might not make the timeliest of Father’s Day gifts, but if your dad grumps about the lateness, you can always keep the Urban Weather Station for yourself.

The contents of the…

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Intel’s Upcoming Haswell Processors Save Energy and Money

Jeff Kleist — Thu, 30 May 2013 14:29:28 +0000

Our smart mobile devices and advanced consumer electronics feature highly specialized hardware, much of which is designed to be extremely efficient. Your PC, on the other hand, is designed to do pretty much anything that’s asked of it. That’s why your Blu-ray player can deliver a 1080p movie to your screen using just 25 watts, more »

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Home Automation: The Key to a More Energy Efficient Future?

David Glenn — Wed, 29 May 2013 21:49:23 +0000

Whether you believe that global warming is a serious (or surmountable) problem or not, there is no denying that we need to cut down on our energy consumption. It’s easy to get caught up in the belief that is too big a problem to solve at the individual level. But it is actually the small, forgotten, day-to-day things that can actually make the biggest difference; those things that increase our own personal carbon footprints. Wasted energy at home, unnecessary trips in our cars, overuse of water — these are all things of which most of us are guilty. But they are all preventable with a bit of effort, and a bit of help from smart home technology.

Is Home Automation the Answer?

Home automation is revolutionizing our home lives and completely changing the way that we do…

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LivingPlug Inlet: a Safer, Prettier Power Outlet on Kickstarter

Jeff Kleist — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:12:26 +0000

The mains outlet hasn’t changed much in 100 years. With the exception of adding grounding, the outlets are pretty much the same that your great-granddaddy encountered. A new Kickstarter project for a neat new outlet — called the Inlet — seeks to transform your outlets into safer, greener, and more attractive hubs in your household. Here are just a few of the issues that Inlet was designed to address:

AESTHETIC
Outlets are architects…

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