At some point in the last two or three years, chatting to our gadgets became semi-normal.
Granted, you’ll seldom see anyone barking orders at Siri in the supermarket, but devices like the nifty (if imperfect) Amazon Echo are slowly making their way into more and more living rooms. I now begin every day by asking mine for an inspirational quote. It seems to like Will Smith.
Anyway, YouTube’s Allen Pan has taken smart home tinkering to the next level. Using his love of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as inspiration, Pan has customised his home automation system so that each function is activated by a different melody from the iconic video game, which he plays on an ocarina (obviously).
It all looks enormously complicated, but can anything be dismissed as too time-consuming when the end result is unlocking your car to the tune of Epona’s Song? Quite easily, yes, but the inner geek in us is giving him a standing ovation.
The obvious issue here is that surely a musically-trained, Hyrule-literate robber could very easily whack out his ocarina and stroll straight through the front door. But let’s not get bogged down with security concerns. Bravo Allen Pan – please take out insurance.
[Main image: YouTube]
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Matt Tate is a freelance journalist and contributor at for Shortlist. Formerly Stuff Magazine’s news editor and based in the UK, he’s been writing about consumer tech for around eight years, with a particular focus on gaming.
For his sins, Matt is a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan and unfortunately spends a lot of his time scanning his published work for Spurs-related digs that may have been slyly inserted by editors. Otherwise, he’s often buying Lego sets he can no longer accommodate and trying to perfect his carbonara recipe. He can be found tweeting (mostly about football and video games) at @MattWTate.