What Makes a Smart Home ‘Smart’?

A smart home is a house or apartment that contains appliances which are able to connect to the internet and be controlled by a user interface. The user interface can be an app on your smartphone or tablet or a voice-controlled receiver such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home.Smart Homes can have varying levels of intelligence depending on the number of internet-enabled devices and their interconnectivity. As the number of devices increase, the system becomes more intelligent because there are more ‘sensors’ feeding information to the database. For example, if you only have one lightbulb connected to the smart home network, the system cannot accurately monitor the electricity consumption of the house. On the other hand, if all the light bulbs in a home are connected to the network, then the system can effectively monitor your electricity consumption resulting from the lights. The system’s Artificial Intelligence mechanism can make recommendations and shut off lights when you are not home.Smart Homes can enable you to control your thermostat, turn on and off your lights and appliances and lock and unlock your doors from anywhere by using your smartphone, and voice control make it even easier. The communication with Smart Homes is a two-way-street: they can send information to their owners too. Text message alerts can be sent by washers and dryers to let their owner know that their cycle has ended. Devices with built-in web servers allow owners to access online info and enable refrigerators to create recipes based on the ingredients stored inside, or trash cans to order replacements online based on what was thrown away.Many of today’s applications concern the field of security: cameras with infrared for the exterior, motion sensors, and alerts from the security system immediately sent to the owner’s phone and to emergency professionals.Smart Homes are developing so fast, every single idea and prediction about future applications seem realistic.Being able to manually (or vocally) control everything in a home from a smartphone is already seducing, but in the future, we will see more and more devices that will automatically adjust to our preferences.The latest innovations in the Smart Homes sector have been mainly about security and thermostat. A cooperation between the devices could lead to other applications such as energy conservation or appliance diagnosis.

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