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After owning HTC phones now for over 3 years, when will HTC start listening to people on forums like this one and htcpedia.com, then start making phones with the features that we are asking & waiting for. And just as important when will they start making accessories for these phones. Now owning a Touch HD for over a year I was looking at getting the new HD2, but it appears the mini usb port still does not support music or porting video through it (this is also true on the Touch HD yes I was disappointed when I found out). I would also like to have a built in FM transmitter. I think HTC are missing out on a great future for their phones.
Jez
P.S come on HTC sit up and take notice.
Contact HTC, if there are enough requests, they'll perhaps listen to you. Better than crying here .
Livven said:
Contact HTC, if there are enough requests, they'll perhaps listen to you. Better than crying here .
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Hello Livven
Not crying just disappointed with HTC and thinking maybe it’s time to change, to a phone producer that is listening ,it appears that’s exactly what apple are doing. Been in touch with HTC direct about a month after I got the Touch HD asking them to include certain things on the next model and a year later the HD2 was launched which appears to be a big screen HD with no more capabilities.
Cheers jez
I got tired of HTC's short-sightedness and bought an iPhone. It's a nice phone but it doesn't have nearly the feature set of a WinMo phone and Apple is a total pain in the ass. I'm still not thrilled about HTC so I just bought the LG Expo and, as I write this, I'm boxing it up to return it to AT&T. The hardware specs look pretty good but there are just too many things wrong with this phone that can't be overlooked. To start with, the UI is just awful. The bland, painful Microsoft stock UI is actually easier to deal with, in my opinion. It takes a dozen taps to do almost anything and you really need a stylus to get anything done. Which leads to problem #2...the stylus. It's like a little tube of lipstick which also means it's not attached to the phone. I wonder how many days would take before it got lost? You can attach it via a little string but it's beyond stupid that this got past QA. Then there's the GPS. It comes with AT&T's GPS app but I have my own that I've used for quite some over on a variety of phones without a problem. It will not recognize the GPS in the Expo, however, and therefore won't work. Strike three, you're outta here. So as I mentioned, I'm boxing it up and taking it back either for a refund or, if they'll do it, a trade for the Tilt 2 or something from...sigh....HTC. Despite some of the dumb things they do on occasion, HTC is still the best WinMo phone manufacturer I know of.
Hello markgamber
I know where you are coming from I had the Samsung Omnia last year for a month and sent it back because it was crap, it had the same idea for the stylus as well, a piece of string to attach it to the phone. Maybe Iphone is not the way to go then. It’s I’m getting politely frustrated with spending a small fortune on phones that do only half of what I want it to do. That’s the thing, these manufactures forget these phones aren’t cheap to us, it just seems to me they are thick and they think they know what we want . I know what I want on my phone
1. winmo
2. gps for satnav
3. fm transmitter
4. tv out.
5. usb port to play music through using a docking station
6. 3.5mm headphone socket
7. a 5+ meg pixel camera that actually works
8. gprs thats is quicker than the old 56k dial up
And so the storey goes on. Hopefully someone from HTC will read our thoughts and do something about it for the next model. If they do read these comments email me HTC and I will let you know what we want from our £500 phones. Bloody hell more money for a phone than a high spec laptop
markgamber said:
I got tired of HTC's short-sightedness and bought an iPhone. It's a nice phone but it doesn't have nearly the feature set of a WinMo phone and Apple is a total pain in the ass. I'm still not thrilled about HTC so I just bought the LG Expo and, as I write this, I'm boxing it up to return it to AT&T. The hardware specs look pretty good but there are just too many things wrong with this phone that can't be overlooked. To start with, the UI is just awful. The bland, painful Microsoft stock UI is actually easier to deal with, in my opinion. It takes a dozen taps to do almost anything and you really need a stylus to get anything done. Which leads to problem #2...the stylus. It's like a little tube of lipstick which also means it's not attached to the phone. I wonder how many days would take before it got lost? You can attach it via a little string but it's beyond stupid that this got past QA. Then there's the GPS. It comes with AT&T's GPS app but I have my own that I've used for quite some over on a variety of phones without a problem. It will not recognize the GPS in the Expo, however, and therefore won't work. Strike three, you're outta here. So as I mentioned, I'm boxing it up and taking it back either for a refund or, if they'll do it, a trade for the Tilt 2 or something from...sigh....HTC. Despite some of the dumb things they do on occasion, HTC is still the best WinMo phone manufacturer I know of.
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hi Mark
I hear your frustration about the eXpo....I bought a IQ from Telus (the Canadian version of the eXpo) and really didn't like the UI AT FIRST. But the phone has really grown on me. Maybe you should consider keeping it for a couple of weeks, and then giving it back if you still want to.
1) I now find I am figuring out the UI and I am starting to like it. Using Throttle Launcher(free) or Spd Shell($) are both options that are very similar to the TF3D or Sence UI if you really find you want to abandon the S Class UI but I would say try it for a week or two and you may like it...there are things you can do faster than TF3D as well as slower.
2) The stylus situation really sucks. No argument. I have found that after I set my phone up, I can get by without one especially when you figure out how to use the optical mouse functions.
3) GPS I am on Telus, so maybe AT&T has screwed you, but my Garmin Mobile XT software works just fine on my Telus phone. I did have to play a bit though. I installed the Garmin software, and it couldn't find the GPS. I then went into the windows settings, and set up the phone to use COM port 4, and then went into the Garmin setup and selected COM4. STILL no joy. But I then changed the Windows setting back to controlled by windows, and the Garmin software found a "GPS Intermediate Driver". Works great! Locks FAST, and no lag like when I used the Garmin Mobile XT on my Touch Pro.
I have installed Opera Beta 2U, and it with the HSPDA data and the snapdragon it is simply is the best mobile internet experience I have ever used or seen.
Good luck with you Phone hunting,
Hi jez.stix
I have a similar list to you...I got a Telus IQ (Its a Canadian eXpo)
How the IQ compares to your list:
1. winmo
YUP 6.5 (21868)
2. gps for satnav YUP - but check into this (See above ATT may have locked to there software)
3. fm transmitter YUP....sorry! Read this as receiver, Has a FM receiver but no transmitter to go to your car stereo..
4. tv out. YUP
5. usb port to play music through using a docking station ...not sure what you mean here..if you mean like all the docking stuff they sell at Walmart for IPhones..NOPE..of course it has a USB connection.
6. 3.5mm headphone socket NOPE
7. a 5+ meg pixel camera that actually works YUP..works quite well with flash
8. gprs thats is quicker than the old 56k dial up YUP OH YAH BIG TIME
The real down side is that it is not a HTC unit so XDA won't support it the way they do a HTC product. I decided I could live with that but that was the hardest pill to swallow. The build quallity is heads and shoulders above my old HTC Touch Pro
good luck in finding your dream phone.
jez.stix said:
Hello markgamber
I know where you are coming from I had the Samsung Omnia last year for a month and sent it back because it was crap, it had the same idea for the stylus as well, a piece of string to attach it to the phone. Maybe Iphone is not the way to go then. It’s I’m getting politely frustrated with spending a small fortune on phones that do only half of what I want it to do. That’s the thing, these manufactures forget these phones aren’t cheap to us, it just seems to me they are thick and they think they know what we want . I know what I want on my phone
1. winmo
2. gps for satnav
3. fm transmitter
4. tv out.
5. usb port to play music through using a docking station
6. 3.5mm headphone socket
7. a 5+ meg pixel camera that actually works
8. gprs thats is quicker than the old 56k dial up
And so the storey goes on. Hopefully someone from HTC will read our thoughts and do something about it for the next model. If they do read these comments email me HTC and I will let you know what we want from our £500 phones. Bloody hell more money for a phone than a high spec laptop
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Click to collapse
The iPhone is actually pretty nice, I just had a couple technical problems with it and, being a dev, I grew really tired of Apple dictating what I can and can't do with my phone and my apps. The most notable thing about the iPhone is that it's fast. When you start a program, it's up and running in short order and stays fast unless it has to do something really intensive or relies on a slow network connection. This being opposed to WinMo where it can sometimes take forever to do anything. This is, of course, because the iPhone doesn't do much real multitasking but if that's not an issue, then the iPhone probably warrants a look. Another problem I had was that most of the world uses WMV/WMA for streaming audio and video and the iPhone not only doesn't support it, Apple has stated that it won't approve anything that does support it. Sometimes you can get around that using Orb but not always and that leads to the third big problem I had with the iPhone, Apple's little tinpot dictator attitude. I've been using Slingplayer for years on WinMo phones and yes, AT&T says you can't use it but the practical side is that as long as you're not an a-hole about it, they don't really care. The bottom line is that I can make the choice about whether or not I want to use it. iPhone's Slingplayer simply doesn't have the option to work over 3G. In fact, the only app of that kind which did was Orb and, as I hear it, Orb Networks just removed it on orders from AT&T and Apple. Technically yes, you can jailbreak the iPhone, install a hack that fools programs into thinking 3G is wifi and those various programs work, but it's a hack and not something you can count on working with the next system update since Apple is working hard to prevent those kinds of hacks from working. Plus they're starting to be exploited by hackers of a less than friendly nature. The iPhone also didn't support what I considered some basic functionality such as cut/copy/paste, MMS and bluetooth audio, for quite some time. When Apple finally decided to include that functionality, they acted as though they invented it. That continues today with the lack of quite a bit of multimedia types, refusal to allow Flash or any browser other than Safari, any kind of advanced bluetooth functionality, multitasking and so on. Again, if you don't care about any of the above, you should probably take a look at the iPhone if only for comparison. It's also *VERY* finger friendly, much moreso than WinMo, and you don't like having to wield a stylus at all, I'd definitely take a look at the iPhone.
I don't know why these WinMo companies are so slow to adopt things that seem like basic functionality to many users but they do improve their products, albiet slowly at times, and they're still a magnitude better than the competition, in my opinion. The HTC Titan sold by Sprint was, without a doubt, the worse piece of garbage I ever owned. HTC actually had the balls to put a measly 128mb of ram in there, put WinMo 6 on it and then let Sprint add all it's worthless slop to it. The bottom line was that it took half a day to boot and when it was finally done, it left somewhere between 8 and 12mb free...not even enough to run Slingplayer. Sprint charged $600 for that chunk of s*it and when I raised hell about it, Sprint not only refused to take it back, they wouldn't even cut me a break on what I had to buy to replace it. That's why I'm now with AT&T. So HTC (and other companies) do improve their products. One valuable thing about the Titan was that I learned to buy a phone for what it can do, not what it's capable of doing.
That's my main problem with the Expo and why I returned it. On paper it's a nice phone and there's a lot of potential in the hardware that is either unrealized or lost in the mess LG slapped together. Hopefully LG improves the system over time but right now it's pretty awful, in my opinion, and no update will ever help that poorly implemented stylus and, most likely, the poor battery life.
htc response
thanks for your email. You are correct, The HD and HD2 do not have TV out. Only the Touch PR line of devices has TV out for using with presentations and the like. The TV Out function was not highly requested in the market research that we did, so we concentrated on what the request were mostly for...larger screen, multitouch, standard 3.5mm jack etc. TV out was very far down on the list of wanted features. As for the music abilities, the only thing i know of that was removed on the HD2 was the remote control. This has returned on the HD2 as we needed to develop one that worked with the standard 3.5 jack that the majority of our customers wanted. This was the only thing removed from the HD. We think we must be doing something right as we are selling more handsets than ever, and winning lots of awards for our handsets as well. However, obviously you cannot please everyone, and if we have failed to meet your needs then i apologise, and hope that whatever device you choose, whether it be one of ours or not, i hope that you will be happy with it and it is everything you want. Best regards, Pete W HTC
I once contacted HTC about their lack of attention to this site.
The response i got made a lot of sense sadly.
Because of all the ROMs made on here and all the software that we reverse engineer from them and others, they cannot associate themselves with us at all due to illegality.
But still, this being the case, I think they could still use this site as a good place to do market research upon. Just because xda-devs is the largest collection of winmo users in one place that I know of, it seems to be the perfect place for them to go to see what their end users want.
I am a designer myself and it seems stupid to ignore the biggest resource of research and ideas.
I wanted to break this off since the other topic was looking to be mostly about the LCD's
floatpoo said:
I wanted to see if the blank sockets on the system board were active. So I grabbed my multimeter and tested each pin to see if any delivered power. I don't know if these sockets are controlled by software, but it looks like these sockets are inactive.
(cant post link ref other thread....)
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Click to collapse
I'm an electronics tech (avionics really) just so you know my background, and I am by no way a programmer i just hack my way throught when i need... poorly at that. I'm a long time reader but don't post much.
I havent taken mine apart yet, I bought it for the wife to use as an ereader she was using her evo before and already has bad eyesight I just dont think reading on that small screen is good for her. However we planned on returning it today because she couldn't get anything to work... But i loaded VAGAn-Tab rom on it and she likes it ALOT more now, but we still might be returning it (she thinks it to big and heavy to hold). So all I have to work with is the internal pics posted by other members and I thank you for them!
I was thinking about using a mini pci card with 3g/4g and GPS to solve my problem like this one for Sprint Customers looks very nice and they claim android support. Could someone please verify the length available for the card from the socket to the mounting holes? It should be around 50mm but i cant tell from the pic.
I cant post a link so google
franklinwireless
M600_datasheet_v1.pdf
Then after more research I figured out that think I can get the GPS to work on the board. I found that the RXM-GPS-SG-T looks to be the exact chip they are using, the pin look to match exactly VCC, GND, RX, TX, RF, VOUT. So they are using an active GPS antenna (but could be modded for passive). They use NMEA-0183 or SiRF Binary output selected by a serial command. So we need to figure out if the TX is going to U39 making U39 the interface to the unit, or directly to somewhere else (idk need to see board) I hope i can attach my pic i made or maybe an admin can post it for me.
However the PCI slot might be just as hard to use, the pin 20 that has 3.3v isnt what we want, but it could be a software control to disable/enable the card. However we still need A+ on pins 2,52 (3.3V), 6,28,48(1.5V) and maybe 24(3.3V Aux) dependeding on the card. We could be dealing with a "Non Standard" connector, they are out there but most OEM's dont bother with them. More likely to find them on a Asus product ect. It's common for the SIM card to be powered by the PCI card itself and the board looks wired that way. I have 2 Digi International Mini PCI express Wifi/Cell Development boards and thats how they both power the SIM card. Pin 16 should goto Pin 1 on the sim card, 14->2, 12->3, 10->6 but maybe 7 or 8.
Getting the Power to it could be software or hardware. Looks like around U8 on the frontside could a Vreg setup, Or it could be as simple as putting in some 0 ohm resistors around R15 and R14. We also see that U7 is unpopulated on backside. So that leave us with U7,U8, R15, and R16 which could mean they are all part of the same circuit if they laid it out with any logic. TP1,2,and 3 also make me believe this is true, however they match up to LED_WPAN#, LED, WLAN#,and LED_WWAN#. I sure wish they match the power input pins, but that means all those missing resistors could just be for unpopulated status LED's. Like I've said over and over i cant tell ya unless i can probe around the board.
As far as the memory, yes its possible, I do BGA replacement at work. What I am afraid of is that the other memory chips look to be exactly on the other side and I'd be afraid of messing them up. I'd have to look at my jig at work and see if I could set it up without any problems.
I'm no electronics expert but I dabble. I'd be interested in internal GPS and a memory boost. I'm pretty confident in my soldering skills and would try something if directed by someone smarter than me.
This is something I am very interested in. Any new info on this?
ihaveathumb said:
This is something I am very interested in. Any new info on this?
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I sadly no longer own a G tablet, wife thought it was to heavy to read books, and hated the screen. I cant argue with her on either of those points, so we returned it. However I got the ok to buy a referb on if i can find one, but when I did at my local store i showed them the paper and they told me they dont sell that stuff there and send me away. I talked to 3 different people too basically all told me to go f off. I even tried another time with the 7" they sell same results. I dont know why it gets listed on the website if they wont sell it.
Not to get sidetracked, but i even did by the proper bga fittings to solder the ram chips too lol..
So no its probably not going to go any farther from my stand point, if anyone wants my help I still read the forums everyday.
I'm just gonna wait and see what comes out in the future that XDA gets behind, because I'de never buy anything that didnt have an active community here.
IF you were looking for a reader fo rher mainly, you should've really gone with the Nook Color... eInk devices are good too IF you don't really need good PDF support and/or need it to read more complexly formatted documents, e.g. technical manual, mathematics texts, etc. i.e. eInk is best suited for ficiton and other simply formatted documents, but it VERY readable except in poorly lit conditions where you'd need external lighting of some sort.
Very true I should have bought her a nook, but now she doesnt want it because its not powerful enough for her needs imo. She also wants to login to her school (blackboard) and be able to use overdrive. Plus she likes dungeon defenders and I dont think that can handle it. We are just gonna wait it out and see what comes along, mostly cause we have our first due next month, so trying to be frugal.
mystkrh said:
Very true I should have bought her a nook, but now she doesnt want it because its not powerful enough for her needs imo. She also wants to login to her school (blackboard) and be able to use overdrive. Plus she likes dungeon defenders and I dont think that can handle it. We are just gonna wait it out and see what comes along, mostly cause we have our first due next month, so trying to be frugal.
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Click to collapse
Yep, you'll want a full blown tablet then and I suspect that the NC would be too much of a bother to get setup for her for what she wants it for...
All the 10" tablets are fairly heavy too, so you'll probably have to stick to looking for 7/8" tablets and I suspect Tegra 2 or multi-core cortex-a9 SoCs from other mfgs... not much in the way of 7" ATM other than the elocity a7 (was c. $300 around xmas), but it's not very hacker friendly and I don't know if they ever got the USB port to run in non-host mode... probably best to not even look at it...
The g Tablet would, as many have already said, be a great tablet if it had gps mainly and increased memory. Adding pci-e would be even better. I would be extremely happy with the addition of gps. I would be very tempted to allow somebody with expertise and high level of confidence of success to experiment on my tablet.
GPS+
Just bought my Gtab yesterday. As you know the stock Roman/UI sucks big time. I installed Clockwork followed by CyanogenMod 7 and what a difference. Anyway I looked on the web for a dock and it seems there is a Chinese version of the Gtab that has higher spec's including GPS. It would seem logical to assume the U.S. motherboard has the same circuits built in. Who knows what's possible....
It's too bad that more people don't feel like tearing up their electronics to start soldering things to them.
So, feel free to flame, but I was writing something in another thread about tablets and the following came to mind:
Are tablets worth what we pay for them? Or are they just a marketing 're-deploy'? Allow me to expound:
Literally just before tablets careened onto the current computer scene(I know windows failed to promote tablets years back), there existed Netbooks. What it seems to me is that Netbooks are what the Industry thought we would want, A very portable yet still completely functional computer. As if even the small laptops weren't small enough...anyway. What I think happened is these things weren't cool enough. Maybe not powerful enough either, but that point should be moot because modern hardware can support this, as proven by current tablets.
I bought a Netbook and loved it, BUT I don't do a lot of gaming, just some simple web browsing, skyping, some skript kiddie type hacking. Plus for me the ultra small design was essential due to the nature of my work/constant traveling blah blah. This thing played movies, had the latest support of my favorite *nixes and performed pretty well except for battery life(typically a measly 3-4 hours) and of course gaming. Then came tablets; they look cooler, offer touch screen capabilities which sometimes feel as cumbersome as alt-tabbing, and have much much better battery and gaming performance, with the added benefit of blending nicely with the current "app store eco-structure".
Ahh, finally my point!!!:
A trend I see rising with tablets is the ability to add a keyboard and mouse....really? So what, then you have a laptop again? Or just the ability to go from cool-tech-but-not-too-nerdy tablet guy, to an fully functional device, and back again? I don't get it, other than the obvious shift to more clever marketing and selling us yet another device. On top of that I can use a USB 2.0 anything on my netbook, or be stuck with a proprietary connecter as with the Transform or iPad. Why would we choose this other than to look cool or because it's being shoved down our throats? What I see is a device (tablet) that is less fuctional, less productive, and more money compared to the more practical, just as portable netbook. I just miss the support of my Netbook, which I only paid $200 for....
Any thoughts...like maybe I'm a crazy hippy that needs to go live in a commune?
my points why my a500 is better use then a netbook,.
portability - no one can say its not easier to carry a slim tablet with a integrated keyboard
functionality - being able to do such things as stand in the street looking through the tab with the camera and seeing augmented reality deal, offer, new location without having to open startup, login and hold a massive block of hardware to do the same, and also a whole plethora of other uses such as barcode scanning, video making ,etc etc imaging scanning barcodes to find cheaper prices with a netbook,,,.,..one handed possible? probably not
battery life, my tablet can go 2days on a single charge with medium usage, a netbook would last a few hours,
i can do pretty much anything on my a500 i can do on my laptop.
i can access and use my laptop with screen and sound from anywhere else in the world.....from my a500 tablet (phonemypc)
also most usb devices connect to my a500 i think the only thing my lappy has that my tablet doesnt is a dvd drive, but the one in my lappy is dusty as hell as i download all my movies and move them between devices to play in diff' areas anyway. and then again my laptop has no gps. and only a front camera
if my laptop im writting this message with was a tablet it would probably be a crap one lol
no gps,no touchscreen, no back camera, front camera is weak no accelerometer no hdmi port lol etc etc
Major edit:
I see your point and don't want to convolute my thoughts too much. I just think a lot of the things you mentioned could be implemented, if the money was there.
You have pointed out that I have kind of answered my own questions...
Why tablets, because the phone market was so successfull and it allows for a lot of control on the developers end of the OS, so it's easier to implement the apps, market place as apposed to a traditional PC software sales setup.
r0zj0k3r said:
I think that depends on what you want to do. with my netbook, I literally could do everything I could on my computer because they were the same OS!!! That means, compiling software, video/audio editing, skype with group video , a similar app store could be integrated into a netbook style os (see ubuntu store). The industry just doesn't want to push it, and because it was easier to shift from phones to what amount to "really big phones"
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Do you think that the new windows OS will allow you to switch between a Tablet and your Netbook without loose of functionality?
warus1 said:
Do you think that the new windows OS will allow you to switch between a Tablet and your Netbook without loose of functionality?
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Click to collapse
I think it would be a great way for windows to break away from the pack, but I don't think they want to do that now. They seem to be in the same mode as everyone else, lets follow the market instead of trying really new things.
hi
Does anyone know what happened to the 'clambook' notbook dock for MHL kind of devices...
I guess all we need is a MHL-HDMI display and a bluetooth keyboard, or did Apple buy them out of making those devices.
Any other brands any one knows....
I am hoping we will have a Ubuntu App/version for this phone and this would double up as a ubuntu notebook for mobile use.
G
http://clamcase.com/clambook-android-and-iphone-laptop-dock.html
I've been watching this item carefully for months now hoping it would pop up. There has been nothing of late. I found this post just by checking for updates on google.
I imagine that they're still working on it but with a mixture of things like the new Nexus 4 using a non-standard micro HDMI and Motorola's abandonment of Ubuntu has thrown a bit of a wrench into their system. They're probably still looking to release something like it but since they've gone silent for so long I'll bet that they've put this on hold until they can create a system that will functionally work for almost every high end phone on the market (not a menial task).
I need a new computer and I had a master plan of building a nice tower that will support a lot of my engineering software and then remote desktopping from a Clambook is not going so well. It would be nice to have some kind of ETA from Clamcase, I'm not going to be happy if I buy a new portable computer only to have it released in a month.
This thing looks amazing
I need to find IMHO these are the future of personal computing...
Maybe I am dreaming here a little bit but I want to use an android mini PC for home automation. Basically I want to have a total of 4 mini PCs in my home 3 on TVs for using xbmc Netflix etc and browsing on TVs, 1 as a brain sort of. I want to be able to control all through my LG Nexus 5 remotely and my hip street titan 2 tablet. The components in which I would like to control are a coffee maker some outlets and a few sets of lights for now. I realize the mini PC it self is probably incapable of this (unless your able to get a kind of on off switch controller for it) but I'm open to maybe using something like an arduino (with much more education of course lol) anyways looking for any input ideas and or education. I plan on using tasker app to handle command processing. I also have a desktop with event ghost that could play a key roll as well.
I know this is very open ended but I'm just trying to gather information ATM.
This sounds like a very cool little project.
Take a look at X10. It is a protocol for communicating between automation units. Also, I personally would consider using something like a Raspberry Pi as the main controller. In terms of power consumption, I would expect it to be less than an Android phone (especially the new Model A+). It would also be easier to program for and find home automation software for a linux distro than for Android. Raspberry Pi would also integrate with Arduino better or possibly even remove the need for that altogether.
Good luck. Post your progress on here, it would be good to see it.
I have little to no experience with arduino and rasbeery pie both. I really want to use ifttt software triggered by tasker for android as I have tons of experience with both, but at $50 for a duplex recepticle its going to get very expensive very fast... Also for say my coffee maker has simple on off switch. I would like to be able to put coffee and water in it and when about 10 mins from home trigger it on so my coffee is ready when I get home. When I get home I want to NFC my phone on door and have it unlock (or when I'm coming up hall but I don't think I will be able to get a precise enough GPS location fix to do so.) I want to have my lights follow me as I walk through house at night. Ie when I enter living room the light turns on when I leave it then turns off. And I want to be able to shut off outlets when I leave home in case I leave something on I shouldn't. My idea was going to be using an arduino on power wires to switches or outlets. Now I think that could get expensive as well. So even something homebrew could work just as long as it meets the "cheap" criteria I'm happy lol.
I love your idea to transpire. I wish you goodluck with that.
So far the cheapest way I have found is the smart things. They will trigger with IFTTT, but the hub alone is $200 and each accessory (is, light switch, recepticle etc) is $50. I've got 6 light switches I want to control ($300) and 4 outlets ($200) the hub ($200) and want a door lock ($300). We are talking nearly $1,000 not really in my budget.