We have been exploring smart homes for quite some time now. There are smart home technologies provided by appliance makers like Samsung or Haier that connect your entire home with smart devices.
We discussed smart home hubs which are speakers and other central units managing various IoT-enabled devices. Moreover, there are recent innovations, such as Local Home SDK, which bypass the Cloud to secure communication between your local devices and smart speakers.
The obvious question that arises is if so much of our lives is revolving around smart homes, what are they? How do they work, and what is their main use?
What Is a Smart Home? How Does It Work?
A smart home is defined as “any residential or commercial dwelling that is equipped with Internet of things-enabled devices that can be controlled by smartphones, computers, smart speakers or other smart home hubs.“
Additionally, a smart home requires the continuous presence of a connectivity protocol, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or low-power WAN technologies.
Smart Homes and Internet of Things
Smart homes have been identified as the most visible success of the Internet of things revolution in recent years. Considering the sheer number of devices that connect to control a smart home, there are many additional layers of a fully-functional smart home.
For one, there is the presence of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled units in various smart-home devices. A robot vacuum, for example, would use cameras and sensors to avoid running into objects or falling down the stairs.
Personal robots themselves are a step up in leveraging AI skills to ensure better coordination and control over home automation gadgets.
Most importantly, smart homes when viewed in the context of millions of units, generate a tremendous amount of information. This involves various stakeholders. Such a concept is called Big Data, which changes rapidly and contains a great variety of information to be processed.
In summary, a smart home adeptly integrates various concepts of Internet of things into one single practical example for all to see.
Advantages of Smart Homes
From RFID-controlled dumb objects to smart kitchen appliances and baby monitors to augmented reality applications, smart homes are becoming integral to the future vision of our living spaces.
The uses of smart homes pervade every aspect of our life. There are many reasons why we are depending on them for our future:
- Ubiquity: smart home gadgets are becoming widespread as the number of connected devices is forecast to cross 40 billion by 2025.
- Life-saving: from saving a person from cardiac arrest to toilet seats that can predict heart failure, smart homes are valuable in improving the human lifespan.
- Energy-saving: not only do smart home devices save human effort, they are also useful in reducing electricity consumption. In fact, many IoT devices are being designed to run on extended battery life alone.
Conclusion
You don’t need to change the way your house looks to accommodate smart home devices. Most smart home products readily integrate into your existing wall outlets and floor plans, replacing older devices.
The adoption of smart homes is gaining quick pace and in a few years time, almost every residential or commercial unit will qualify as a smart home or office.
Are you living in a smart home? Please give your feedback in the comments.
Image Credit: wipliance smart home
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