An improved home automation system is provided to facilitate senior care, as well as to facilitate care for individuals suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementias. A home control unit is provided that is connected to, and interfaces with, a combination of health equipment, smart home appliances, a smart medicine cabinet, a smart pantry, wearable sensors, motion detectors, video cameras, microphones, video monitors, speakers, smart thermostat, lighting, floor sensors, bed sensors, smoke detectors, glass breakage detectors, door sensors, and other perimeter sensors. A distributed computational architecture is provided having a CPU associated with each video camera and an associated proximate microphone and speaker, wherein speech detection and processing, and video processing, is performed by each such CPU in conjunction with its associated video camera, microphone, and speaker. Remote backup for such distributed speech processing is selectively provided by a remote server based upon confidence scopes generated by each such CPU. The distributed computational architecture is also utilized for video processing to facilitate peer-to-peer video conferencing communication using industry standard formats and to reduce latency and response times that would otherwise be encountered using remote servers.

An application gateway including application service programming positioned at a user premises can provide voice controlled and managed services to a user and one or more endpoint devices associated with the application gateway. The application gateway can be controlled remotely by the application service provider through a service management center and configured to execute an application service provided from the application service provider. The application gateway can execute the application service at the user premises upon voice command by a user and independent of application services executing on the application service provider's network. An application service logic manager can communicate with an application service enforcement manager to verify that the request conforms with the policy and usage rules associated with the application service in order to authorize execution of the application service on the application gateway, either directly or through endpoint devices.

An information processing system includes: an image display apparatus provided in a space and configured to display an image; a sensor apparatus carried by a user who is present in the space and configured to output a signal for detecting position information of the user in the space; and an information processing apparatus. The information processing apparatus includes circuitry configured to store a plurality of pieces of position information of a plurality of users including the user, who are in present in the space, in association with the plurality of users, the plurality of users being detected based on signals output from a plurality of sensor apparatuses including the sensor apparatus, and control environment effect production that supports communication between the plurality of users by the image displayed by the image display apparatus, based on each of the plurality of pieces of position information of the plurality of users.

A power module is configured to accept power from a cable, wherein the power module may be inserted into a standard wall cavity via a small hole. A processor module coupled to the power module comprises a processor and is configured to accept power from the cable for the processor, wherein the processor module may be inserted into the standard wall cavity via the small hole. A sensor module coupled to the processor module, comprises a sensor and is configured to accept input from the sensor for the processor, wherein the sensor module may be inserted into the small hole.

A network device is configured to (i) play back a media item indicated by a remote playback queue provided by a cloud-based computing system, (ii) receive an indication that a playback device is available for playback, (iii) display a now playing screen including (a) information identifying the media item, and (b) an icon that indicates that the network device is not in a connected state with any other network device, (iv) receive a first input selecting the icon, (v) in response to the first input, display a list of one or more available network devices including the playback device, (vi) receive a second input selecting the playback device from the list (vii) after receiving the second input, update the list to indicate that the playback device is selected for playback of the remote playback queue, and (viii) transfer playback of the remote playback queue from the network device to the playback device.

A wireless media player and a related system and methodology are provided. One aspect of the wireless media player system pertains to a virtual connector system, apparatus, and method for the automatic establishment of wireless connectivity with other electronic devices. In one embodiment, the media player device displays one of the stored display content, communicates configuration information with at least one target device via a proximity wireless link, establishes a communication link with the at least one target device in accordance with the configuration information communicated via the proximity wireless link and transmits a content which corresponds to the display content being displayed on the display unit at a time of establishing the proximity wireless link to the at least one target device over the established communication link.

A slave relay station is adapted to serve and/or host pages comprising a simplified graphic user interface (GUI) encoded in a widely recognized format such as, for example, HTML or WML. The GUI embodies activatable links corresponding to control functions for configured appliances. A wireless phone or other device with network access and the capability to process and present such pages, for example via a Web browser, may then be utilized to effect control of such appliances by simply navigating to the network address of the slave relay station, obtaining an appropriate GUI page, and interacting with the links.

A system and a method render internet multimedia content in a network using an application to render the internet multimedia content and/or locally stored multimedia content on one or more rendering devices in the network. The application may provide web browser functions, such as, for example, receiving, processing, decoding and/or rendering the internet multimedia content. The application may have an enhanced user interface which may enable a user to select the internet multimedia content and a rendering device in the network, send the internet multimedia content to the rendering device and/or control rendering of the internet multimedia content on the rendering device.

The present invention provides a CCTV monitoring system for registering a camera and managing permission, and a control method of the system. In other words, according to the present invention, a manager having an installer terminal granted with temporal authority over the camera, can install the relevant camera, check whether the camera operates, and then, entrust/set authority over the camera to a terminal of an end-user through cooperation among the installer terminal, the terminal of the end-user, and a service server. Accordingly, convenience for a user can be improved and it is possible to more efficiently manage an installed camera.

Disclosed is an electronic device that includes a display, a communication module, at least one microphone, at least one speaker, a processor operatively coupled to the display, the communication module, the microphone, and the speaker, and a memory operatively coupled to the processor. The memory may store instructions, when executed, causing the processor to transmit, through the speaker, a first audio sound including first information, receive, through the microphone, a second audio sound including second information responding to the first information from a first external electronic device, transmit, through the speaker, a third audio sound including third information for acquiring a distance to the first external electronic device after receiving the second audio sound, and receive, through the microphone, a fourth audio sound including fourth information responding to the third information from the first external electronic device.