Ovolab’s Phlink provides Mac OS X users with telephony support, and Perceptive Automation’s Indigo enables Mac OS X users to automate their homes using X10 modules. Now the two companies have announced that their products work together, enabling Mac users to call their Macs from a remote telephone and control Indigo-enabled devices in their house.
The Phlink is a USB-based interface that plugs into a telephone line. It recognizes callers using Caller ID and enables you to turn your Mac into a telephony system, recording details about when calls were made and how long they took. It can also be used to record calls to hard disk as an answering machine, and can respond to key commands.
Indigo is billed as a “home control server.” It works in conjunction with X10 devices — modules which for years have enabled home users to automatically control light switches, appliances and other electrical devices, and have long been computer-compatible using separate computer interfaces. Indigo works with PowerLink USB X10 interfaces, as well.
Both applications make use of AppleScript, and the two developers have created scripts that integrate Phlink and Indigo together, enabling you to control Indigo over the telephone by press touch-tone sequences. It uses a menu system driven by remote synthesis that talks you through your options. You can listen to the status of devices, controlling devices, and execute “action groups,” macro sequences of home control actions.
Since Indigo dynamically builds and speaks the menu options to you, you don’t need to be an AppleScript maven to get the system to work, either. And Phlink can be configured to restrict access to Indigo functions to specific callers, and you can also lock those features with password security.
More information about Phlink and Indigo’s integration has been posted online.
Indigo costs US$89.95 and is available through Perceptive Automation’s Web site, where you can also download a 30-day trial copy. Ovolab sells Phlink for US$119.95 (€99.95) from its own Web site.