Sphinx (home automation system)

The Sphinx (Russian: СФИНКС, romanized: SFINKS) was an experimental Soviet project for a home automation system, commissioned by the State Committee for Science and Technology and designed by Dmitry Azrikan, in collaboration with A. Kolotushkin and V. Goessen, in 1987.

[1] Sphinx, an acronym for Super Functional Integrated Communication System (Russian: Суперфункциональная интегрированная коммуникативная система), was intended to be an ensemble of modules that would allow consumers to easily interact with information systems.

The home environment, as described in a 1987 issue of Soviet magazine Technical Aesthetics (Russian: Техническая эстетика), would be composed of "spherical speakers, a detachable monitor, headphones, a handheld remote control with a removable display, a diskette drive, a processor with three memory blocks and more".

According to Sergey Moiseyev, Head the VNIITE (Russian design research institute): The SPHINX equipment was designed to have everything integrated into one single system, and it was not just about creating a smart house: it also had a lot to do with solving some of the more important problems facing Soviet men and women.

Ergonomics too had its share of issues, since quite often even the appearance of the TV and the recorder had little, if anything, in common.The configuration of the Sphinx station, with detachable monitors and speakers, prefigured the environment of computer stations with peripheral touch pads and accessories that characterises informatics systems in the beginnings of the 21st century.