openremote

OpenRemote: Community will drive home automation

Marc Fleury, founder of the successful JBoss open-source project and company, is largely considered one of the great open-source pioneers.

Not many people can claim to have have built a project that continues to inspire tens of thousands of downloads each month, plus the commercial envy of Larry Ellison and $350 million from Red Hat.

Fleury can, but he's not resting on his laurels. Having upended the application server market, Fleury is now funding OpenRemote, an open-source home automation project that was inspired while Fleury was shopping for a "geek chic" home automation system and discovered that … Read more

iPhone to become a home systems OpenRemote

Marc Fleury (of JBoss fame) and Mark Spencer (of Digium fame) have a significant side project: turning us all into couch potatoes, but doing it with open source.

Their project, OpenRemote, is the world's first open-source remote for home automation. Given the plethora of systems (entertainment, lighting, etc.) that need to feed into a home automation system, opening up a central repository of controls to enable developers to plug in new ones feels like the right way to go.

Part of the OpenRemote team's vision is tying into the world we already live in, not merely making our … Read more

OpenRemote: What's in a name?

I wonder why Marc Fleury and Mark Spencer decided to call their open-source home automation project OpenRemote. Reading the most recent update on the project, it's clear that these guys are making progress, but its progress toward a much bigger future than "remote" connotes.

The site talks about controlling audio/visual setups, full-home automation, etc. The sky is the limit.

Or is the name the limit? To me, a remote is something I point at my TV. The Marc/ks want me to point it at my house, and who knows how others will extend it?

Ultimately, … Read more

Marc Fleury's OpenRemote gets into databases with Beehive

There are relatively few markets that would benefit more from open source than home automation, with its myriads of different electrical nodes and associated complexity.

It is this opportunity that led to the creation of Marc Fleury and Mark Spencer's OpenRemote project, and that recently led them to release the Beehive database, a "Web-based open-source application to collect, format, and distribute home automation codes."

Similar to the Volantis Mobile Device Database which serves as a central repository for the growing array of disparate mobile devices (i.e., data on screen size and resolution, keyboard, etc.), Beehive promises … Read more

Marc Fleury starts an open-source home automation project

It's good to see Marc Fleury go public with his new project, an open-source home automation project (not yet a company) called OpenRemote. We had talked about it back at Open Source Goat Rodeo 2008, but he seemed to be taking his time to actually release something.

The problem that I see with this idea? We already have an excellent Linux-based home automation company called Control4.

Control4 was started years ago by a pair of serial entrepreneurs, Will West and Eric Smith. That broadband in your hotel? They are almost certainly the ones who put it there (iBahn).

I used to be involved with Control4 during my time as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, an investor in Control4. The company was doing fantastically well back then (2003/2004), and I'm betting it has easily cleared $100 million in sales by now, and has signed up every major distributor and OEM (original equipment manufacturer) one can imagine.

This is a very, very well-run company. Is there room for an open-source competitor?… Read more