Google Glass Mod Will Control Your Entire House

We knew from the beginning that the Glass would be a highly complex instrument and that we’re just toying around with the tip of the iceberg at the moment. Google has bigger plans than what we’re allowed to see. Among the many functionalities developers have found during this time, our attention was drawn in particular by a method discovered within the UC Berkeley’s CITRIS lab by some of their undergraduates, which allows the user to control house appliances via Glass. This was possible with the addition of a microcontroller and pairing the devices via Xbee 802.15.4 WiFi radio frequencies. Thus, you could schedule some of the appliances to do certain tasks or you could simply turn them on and off by commanding this to the Glass.

And since every new component addition to the Glass might be designed so that it wouldn’t be visible in the appearance of the device, you can imagine that the system built by the guys from CITRIS lab it’s as simple and unobtrusive as possible. So, after the implied appliances are paired with the Glass via an infrared transmitted ID, all the user has to do is to look at the appliance he wants to control in order to establish a connection and then speak a command. The first question that popped in our mind was: …ok, but what if you have two appliances or more in the same visual area, then what? On what basis will the Glass know how to select exactly the device you want to control? Obviously, there is a solution for this as well.

In order to eliminate this issue, the developers also created the software that will display on Glass’s tiny screen every appliance within the user’s visual area with a representative number. As soon as the pairing is successful, the user would have to blink in order to confirm the intended device. Besides, if at some point you would want/need to commute to a different device you could put the connection on timeout or switch to the other device by selecting it from the screen panel displayed in the first place. However, it is obvious that during tests, more and more questions will appear and it is too early to speak up a prediction. This way of using the Glass remains one of the most practical deals suggested so far.

Considering the above, in probably a year or so, we will be able to turn on the TV by a simple blink of an eye.

How’s that for science fiction?!