Just realized it's been 15 years since Hong Kong's return to China. Now they refer to it as "the Southern Chinese city" instead of "the former British colony".
Why is it that they make it sound like it's so high-tech and difficult to make the lights in a home remotely controllable?
I mean, I'm sure it cannot be hard to connect the lights to a central router or something, and it has to be a very simple task to write an app that controls light switches from a smartphone or tablet.
I don't believe setting all these up is beyond the abilities even an electronics engineer undergrad, with the help of a friend with some knowledge in mobile app programming.
Moreover, there are already apps out there that lets you create a blueprint of your home simply by taking photos of corners while standing still.
The light-switch app would only list switches in a simple numerical list and if it's combined with the app that makes the blueprint, the user can theoretically mark the locations of the lights the buttons control on a map of his home.
I imagine the combination could go like this: the user makes the blueprint for free using the already available app, saves it as an image file (on the iPad I could just take a screenshot if the app couldn't do it), loads it on the light switch app.
On this app, there is a list of 1 to maybe 50, each represented by circles with a number inside. The user would have to take note of which light is connected to each number, and he would drag the circles to the locations of the lights on the map.\
Of course, this means there is a need for additional hardware that would need to be connected to routers. However, it would merely be a like multi-plug except with more numerous but smaller slots for only electrical wires instead of sockets like in the photo.
This can't possibly cost much to make, and it's seriously low-tech.
And if the router is always connected to the Internet, the user can even control his lights from outside using 3G.
The only real work that the average guy can't do is rearrange the electrical wiring in his home to make sure the wires from the lights all go to the same place. This will call for a simple, quick renovation.
Nothing I've mentioned is complicated. Why isn't anyone doing it yet?
Think of all the possibilities that we can go from here! This is just a starting point, with the app only controlling the power switch.
Since the electrical wiring can also be a medium of data transfer, it's not impossible to eventually bring this to the point where you can control all electronics in your home via the app and router without calling it "high-tech".
Because it isn't. You just need a programmer and a contractor.
I just noticed I have 600 Safrapoints, probably for signing up for membership and for the insurance.
So far the best deal seems to be the SAFRA Rewards voucher that goes for $10 for 450 points, since all other merchants, regardless of the costs in points, are going at the rate of $2 for 100 points.
Except if I get that, I don't know what I can do with the extra 50 points. The last 100 points can be spent on only one thing - a $2 MCD voucher - so that's settled.
Since I have till the 31st of Dec to redeem the points, I'll just keep them just in case I visit any of the participating outlets.
If I don't earn any points by then, it won't matter if I choose the other vouchers since the 50 points will be wasted anyway. But I'll probably end up with the SAFRA vouchers anyway since I do have some electronics I'd like to buy during the year-end major sales and those vouchers can be used at quite a number of malls and merchants including Best Denki.
One of the things I want is a portable air cooler, since we're currently decided on removing our air-conditioning system altogether.
After almost a year without a functional A/C system, we've gotten used to it and the savings is just pretty damn good IMO. Moreover, past experience showed that it is very addictive, to the point where I'd turn it on even on cool days just in case it warms up later at night, or it rains at night and forces me to close my windows.
Having the air cooler is just an insurance for the really warm nights.
Another electronic item I'd like to buy is an air filter that uses both active carbon filters and true HEPA filters that can handle the size of my room.
After all this time, I've realized that cleaning won't work unless I'm willing to move the larger furnitures. There are just too many gaps and niches that have been gathering dust over the years.
My office is even worse. I don't even know how I can get rid of all the dust without an industrial-strength air filter that will likely cost 4-digit numbers. I thought about buying one of those cheap water-spinning air purifiers for the office but decided no matter how many discounts I can heap on it, it still won't be effective at all.
This was the one that tempted me. Though it says $18 here, it occasionally drops to $17 on Qoo10, and I can throw in a $2 cart coupon. Delivery is $3.90 so the nett price would be $18.90, which I believe is still damn cheap.
I've already got one at home, but how effective it is I don't know. What I do know is that it doesn't kill the dust mites that wreak havoc in my sinuses.
Water only kills dust mites when it's at least 60 degrees Celsius. I'd have to buy some pesticide specially formulated to kill the mites if I want it to work, and that stuff isn't cheap at all.
So right now it's just there to make me feel better.
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