What Makes Things Smart?

In the every day news and advertising media we hear and use the term 'smart home' almost without thinking. But, what makes this, and the associated technology, any different to the 'non smart' home?

We have had many electrical devices in our homes for a long time and we are used to some in-built 'cleverness' like the oven timer, smoke detectors, thermostats, and radio controls for tv, media and garage doors. But, these may have given us some labour saving control ability but they are not really smart.

As technology manufacturing, computing power, and software development has advanced the process of miniaturisation has developed at fantastic rates. There was a time not long ago when your watch, camera, address book, stopwatch, torch, tv, music centre, library, and many other high tech things were all separate devices. Now they are mostly all available in one hand held device - your phone. And we call these 'smart' phones.

Modern smart devices are generally controlled by an app on your phone (or some other mobile device) and connect to this and other products using the internet (and local network technologies like Wifi.) The control you then have personally could be as simple as an ON/OFF switch, but because of the software and miniaturisation you will often have a lot more comprehensive control features like timers, scheduling, scene control and interaction with other similar products and sensors. These smart devices that are controlled by your phone are generally leagues ahead of the previously equivalent 'dumb' products.

The premium price tag is gone

20+ years ago smart technology was an expensive business to install in the everyday home. You can still have very expensive smart home systems installed but they now compete with some very cost efficient DIY options.

The smart functionality that used to have a very large price tag can now be achieved for a fraction of the cost. As customers are are aware of these good value products and there are so many that are now marketing to the every-day consumer. You can easily buy smart devices from Bunnings and Mitre10, or you can order online from a huge range of websites. A large portion of devices are with battery powered wireless or require USB power and so the difference in country AC power at the wall plug is not such an issue (for smart control.)

What is smart?

So, there are a few distinguishing factors that we would say make a device smart:

• Respond and activate without human command
  Your heating system could just turn on and off with a timed schedule, but the smart way would be to use other triggers, like your GPS location, and when you move into a defined geofenced distance from your home, then the heating turns on. This way your heating could turn on and off earlier and later on any given day and not waste electricity when you are not there to enjoy the warm home.
• Interact with natural language commends
  By using any of the voice control technologies (like Amazon Alexa) you advance your 'smart' capacity to allow one or more people to 'talk' to your smart devices. This can not only provide convenience but safety, security and the opportunity for further analysis of user behaviour and preferences. This technology shows us just how close the science fiction movies we watch are close to reality now and not far fetched at all.
• Robot companions
  When you add motion and some human actions to a smart social robot you could not only have your smart home detect a event in your home but the robot could move to that location in the building, take a picture or video and send it to you. They could contact emergency services based on analysis of a humans fall to the ground (and subsequent lack of movement), or close doors and windows that are left open accidentally. The abilities of social robots are only limited by the mechanical ability really, as they can be programmed and interact with existing controls as their abilities increase.

Personalise

The next logical steps for increased 'smartness' in your home is for your central computing control to begin to create personalised experiences and develop the profile of choices and patterns it measures from you and the other occupants in the home. This might sound a big 'big brother-ish' but it can be very helpful to have a system that evolves and learns about the users. As the system sees simple patterns like what time you leave and return to the home on week days (or for shift patterns) this information can change the way the home tries to heat or cool the building, open and close curtains and turn on kettles, lights and electric blankets.

Many of these personalisation features are yet to really be widely explored but they have great potential.

Evolution - what is next?

This paragraph is still being written. As you read this technology companies are not only dreaming up new smart devices but the ways they can connect and interact. There are advances to be made in voice activation and interaction, predictive smart response, and no doubt many commercial inputs to help businesses make money from the growing number of smart devices integrated into our lives.

I am afraid this is another 'watch this space' section but you won't have to watch for long as this is a rapidly moving animal!