HomeWindow

Abstract

Computation is increasingly prevalent in the home: it serves as a way to control the home itself, or it is part of the many digital appliances within it. The question is: how can home inhabitants effectively understand and control the digital home? Our solution lets a person examine and control their home surroundings through a mobile display that serves as a 'magic lens', where the detail shown varies with proximity. In particular, HomeWindow is an augmented reality system that superimposes an interactive graphical interface atop of physical but digital artifacts in the home. One can get an overview of a room's computational state by looking through the display: the basic state of all digital hot spots are shown atop their physical counterparts. As one approaches a particular digital spot, more detailed information as well as a control interface is shown using a semantic zoom. Our current implementation works with two home devices. First, people can examine and remotely control the status of mobile domestic robots. Second, people can discover the power consumption of household appliances, where appliances are surrounded by a colorful aura that reflects its current and historical energy use.