ROSIE Review: Savant App Brings Whole House Automation Home

Remember Rosie, the Jetson’s loyal if befuddled robot maid? Well Savant has gone her one better and I don’t mean just by capitalizing her name. ROSIE is an iPod Touch app that replaces the easily lost, rarely picked up and almost always annoying remote that comes with every company’s whole house automation systems.

The remote is supposed to be easy to use and something that you will always have with you, but that’s only in theory. The reality is that for a control to be truly ubiquitous, it needs to be something you can stick in your pocket and that you have on you most of the time anyway. That sounds like an iPod Touch or iPhone. Hmm - so maybe ROSIE can be an app to use on it with Savant’s whole house automation systems?

That’s exactly what ROSIE is for - to work as the controller for Savant’s Protégé home automation product which has been built from the ground up to work with the Touch (and the iPhone too for that matter). Protégé’s purpose is to control and distribute audio throughout a single room or across the whole home. ROSIE compliments that by controlling the embedded features of Protégé or even other A/V equipment.

And by control I mean touch screen and easy access to an integrated iTunes media server that can deliver up to eight independent audio streams simultaneously. Or handle Security systems or cameras. Or HVAC or lighting. Or Satellite, AM/FM and HD radio. Or even trigger motorized shades when it’s time for the home theater to take over.

Savant’s system might not come cheap (neither is the app at $49.99) but that’s not the issue. The fact is that ROSIE has pointed the way to why whole house automation systems have been so derided. Will that change now that Apple’s app store has come into play? You betcha!

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Savant