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smart home
Examples of Smart Home technologies
Nearly every aspect of life where technology has entered the domestic space (lightbulbs, dishwashers and so on) has seen the introduction of a smart home alternative:
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Smart TVs connect to the internet to access content through applications, such as on-demand video and music. Some smart TVs also include voice or gesture recognition.
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In addition to being able to be controlled remotely and customized, smart lighting systems can detect when occupants are in the room and adjust lighting as needed. Smart light bulbs can also regulate themselves based on daylight availability.
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Smart thermostats come with integrated Wi-Fi, allowing users to schedule, monitor and remotely control home temperatures. These devices also learn homeowners' behaviors and automatically modify settings to provide residents with maximum comfort and efficiency. They can also report energy use and remind users to change filters, among other things.
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Using smart locks and garage-door openers, users can grant or deny access to visitors. Smart locks can also detect when residents are near and unlock the doors for them.
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With smart security cameras, residents can monitor their homes when they are away or on vacation. Smart motion sensors are also able to identify the difference between residents, visitors, pets and burglars, and can notify authorities if suspicious behavior is detected.
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Pet care can be automated with connected feeders. Houseplants and lawns can be watered by way of connected timers.
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Kitchen appliances of all sorts are available, including smart coffee makers that can brew you a fresh cup as soon as your alarm goes off; smart refrigerators that keep track of expiration dates, make shopping lists or even create recipes based on ingredients currently on hand; slower cookers and toasters; and, in the laundry room, washing machines and dryers.
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Household system monitors may, for example, sense an electric surge and turn off appliances or sense water failures or freezing pipes and turn off the water so there isn't a flood in your basement.
Smart Home Pros & Cons
One of the most touted benefits of home automation is providing peace of mind to homeowners, allowing them to monitor their homes remotely, countering dangers such as a forgotten coffee maker left on or a front door left unlocked.
Domotics are also beneficial for the elderly, providing monitoring that can help seniors to remain at home comfortably and safely, rather than moving to a nursing home or requiring 24/7 home care.
Unsurprisingly, smart homes can accommodate user preferences. For example, as soon as you arrive home, your garage door will open, the lights will go on, the fireplace will roar and your favorite tunes will start playing on your smart speakers.
Home automation also helps consumers improve efficiency. Instead of leaving the air conditioning on all day, a smart home system can learn your behaviors and make sure the house is cooled down by the time you arrive home from work. The same goes for appliances. And with a smart irrigation system, your lawn will only be watered when needed and with the exact amount of water necessary.
With home automation, energy, water and other resources are used more efficiently, which helps save both natural resources and money for the consumer.
Smart Home implementation
Newly built homes are often constructed with smart home infrastructure in place. Older homes, on the other hand, can be retrofitted with smart technologies.
A smart home is not disparate smart devices and appliances, but ones that work together to create a remotely controllable network. All devices are controlled by a master home automation controller, often called a smart home hub. The smart home hub is a hardware device that acts as the central point of the smart home system and is able to sense, process data and communicate wirelessly. It combines all of the disparate apps into a single smart home app that can be controlled remotely by homeowners.
Some smart home systems can be created from scratch, while others can be purchased as a bundled smart home kit -- also known as a smart home platform -- that contains the pieces needed to start a home automation project.
In simple smart home scenarios, events can be timed or triggered. Timed events are based on a clock, for example, lowering the blinds at 6:00 p.m., while triggered events depend on actions in the automated system; for example, when the owner's smartphone approaches the door, the smart lock unlocks and the smart lights go on.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming increasingly popular in smart home systems, allowing home automation applications to adapt to their environments. For example, voice-activated systems, such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, contain virtual assistants that learn and personalize the smart home to the residents' preferences and patterns.
In addition to security, many smart home opponents worry about data privacy. While smart home device and platform manufacturers may collect consumer data to better tailor their products or offer new and improved services to customers, trust and transparency are critical to manufacturers building trust with the users of their smart products.
However, home automation systems have struggled to become mainstream, in part due to their technical nature. A drawback of smart homes is their perceived complexity. Some people have difficulty with technology or will give up on it with the first annoyance.
For home automation systems to be truly effective, devices must be interoperable regardless of who manufactured them, using the same protocol or, at least, complementary ones. As it is such a nascent market, there is no gold standard for home automation yet.
Another major issue is smart home security. If hackers are able to infiltrate a smart device, they could potentially turn off the lights and alarms and unlock the doors, leaving a home defenseless to a break-in. Further, hackers could potentially access the homeowner's network, leading to worse attacks or data exfiltration.
