Technology experts are convinced that in the near future, most houses will to some degree be smart homes. Having a smart home can mean that you have a simple voice-compatible devise like the Amazon Echo, but it can also mean that you can control your house completely with just one application on your smartphone. How far developed are smart homes at the moment and what will our future homes look like? Keep reading and you’ll find out!
At this point most people probably own or know some devise that can make a home a smart home. One well known device already mentioned earlier is the Amazon Echo: a voice-compatible device that lets you ask questions about the weather, the news or your schedule for the day, which will be answered by the voice of Alexa. However, she goes further than that. When the Amazon Echo is connected to other systems in the house like the light network, the laundry machine, or even the door locks she will be able to control these when asked (Profis, 2017; Chen, 2017).
Just like Amazon, Apple also launched a smart-home system named HomeKit (Chen, 2017). With this system, people with iPhones and/or iWatches can control their smart-home from these devices. The HomeKit is made to be integrated into already existing homes. However, Apple is even going further than that. This year, the company started a partnership with Brookfield Residential, a homebuilding company (Flemming, 2017). The new partnership lets Apple design smart-homes from scratch, in which the HomeKit system is completely integrated. At this moment the companies built 66 houses together in which everything is connected to the residents’ smartphone.
So, everything is already possible if you connect the appliances in your house to your smartphone with one of these systems. Are there still opportunities for the future? Yes! In the future of smart homes it seems like there are no limits. It is very likely that our homes will know us so well that we will never have to push a button in our house again (Wired, n.d.). To achieve this, some adjustments to our homes and lives are needed. First of all, you need to choose a platform that you trust, because it is going to have a lot of control over practically everything you own. This could be Apple, Amazon or Google, but there are also some less known brands that focus on consumers with a higher budget and offer even higher quality. Once you made your decision and installed the system into your home you’ll need a devise that will be able to track your location in the house. Whenever you wear this device (e.g. an iWatch or Amazons’ Moto watch) the smart home system will know in which room you are at all times and it will adjust the temperature and lighting to your personal preferences. For example, if you usually go to bed around 11 PM, the system could start dimming the lights at 10 PM. Whenever you enter a room, the lights will dim and when you leave they will go back to their normal state or turn off.
Do you think you are ready to give your house and the companies that own these systems this much power over your life? And do you think you will invest in them in the near feature? Please don’t hesitate to leave any opinions about smart homes or experiences with them down below!
References
Chen, B. (2017). How to Make Your House a Smart Home. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/technology/how-to-make-a-smart-home?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fpersonaltech&action=click&contentCollection=personaltech®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront&redirect=true [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Flemming, J. (2017). As smart homes become smarter, tech companies rush to get in the door. [online] latimes.com. Available at: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/hot-property/la-fi-hp-smart-homes-20170923-story.html [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Profis, S. (2017). 10 reasons we can’t stop using the Amazon Echo. [online] CNET. Available at: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/the-best-things-you-can-do-with-amazon-echo/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
WIRED, S. (n.d.). Smart Homes of the Future Will Know Us by Our Heartbeats. [online] WIRED. Available at: https://www.wired.com/insights/2014/10/smart-homes-of-the-future/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
Great post and good writing! I have read a lot about homes getting smarter, but didn’t know some of the features in the article. Personally, I would invest in these new features to make my home smarter and ‘my life easier’. But there is one downside. Everyone now has a smartphone and IT security has been getting better and better, however hackers are getting better as well. The future burglars are not strong and light-fingered anymore, but they are geeks who know how to hack the devices in your home. So, I would invest in these new devices, but until a certain level…
Thank you for the great post!
To answer your first question: I already do. I own both an amazon echo and use HomeKit for all my smart devices. However, as a user I am actually a bit disappointed how dumb the smart home still is after years of development. Sure, you can ask Alexa to turn stuff on and off, which is great (especially if you are lazy like me and don’t like to get out of bed to turn the lights off), but most smart home integration doesn’t let you do much more than a universal remote.
You might ask, what about home automation? Sure, you can use sensors, web services and set timers to trigger events such as “Dim the lights at 10PM”, but those aren’t usually very smart and unless your daily schedule is always the same, I wouldn’t recommend it. It actually gets quite irritating when your lights randomly do things and you don’t remember that you ever set that up. And using geofencing is shaky at best. Sure, it might work when you live alone and your phone never runs out of battery, but it can get pretty annoying when you’re leaving in the evening to have a beer with your friends and your girlfriend is taking a shower and the bathroom lights turn off…
Still, I think that there is a lot of potential and at this point I wouldn’t want to go back to a dumb home. But still, sensors and automation needs to get better and I think that will only happen if manufacturers open up and develop industry standards that allow for better integration.