Nokia Announce Home Control

Nokia have announced their entry into the Smart Home world with the introduction of their “Home Control” program.  They are actively seeking third party partners to help develop their Linux powered hardware gateway (see specs below).

[googlead]The system will be available in late 2009 and features open APIs and support of Z-Wave.  KNX is also mentioned by Nokia and it looks like they will support as many Home Automation systems as possible.

Can the mighty Nokia succeed where everyone else has seemingly failed? With their huge power in the handheld world, and the willingness here from the world to reduce its energy bills, we’ll be watching this one with interest.

“Nokia Home Control Center is a solution based on an open Linux based platform enabling the home owner to build a technology-neutral smart home that can be controlled with a mobile phone, using a unified user interface. Nokia Home Control Center supports the most common smart home technologies, including Z-Wave as well as enabling the incorporation for proprietary technologies. Thus, it allows third parties to develop their own solutions and services on top of the platform, expanding the system to support new services and smart home technologies.”

Fully featured and extendable gateway

• 11n WLAN with 2 antennas
• Integrated antennas for WLAN, GSM/GPRS, Z-Wave
• 4 USB 2.0 host connectors for extensions
• 533 Mhz CPU, 256 MB RAM, 6 GB internal storage
• SD card reader with SDHC support for affordable storage extension
• 1 Gbps Ethernet connectors for 4 LAN and 1 WAN ports

Read the full article from Nokia here – smarthomepartnering.com