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F E A T U R E

Home Smart Home

January 7, 2002
By Michael J. DeMaria


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Where are the flying cars? Years ago Hollywood promised us flying cars, not to mention personal cyborg servants. Well, it's 2002, and I don't know about your car, but mine is still terrestrial. We don't have Rosie vacuuming the floor. And we still haven't perfected light-saber technology or warp drives. But we were also promised that our homes would be lit and guarded and often filled with the tunes and images of our choice, all managed from a single remote control, and at least some of that future is available now. In this digital era of smartcards and smart phones, "smart homes" are coming of age as well.

Smart home is a generic term used to describe a wide range of products and facilities. Basically, smart-home technologies and devices add automation or add enhanced functionality to existing appliances -- typically through a converged networked infrastructure. In other words, networked audio, video, telephone service and data service is leaving the office and coming home. Many people have more than one television and multiple computers at home. Within a smart home, a television could be used for streaming Internet broadcasts, DVDs or broadcasts from home-security cameras. Stereo equipment could play digital music downloaded from the Internet without the need to burn the music to a CD first. This technology lets devices and appliances take advantage of data networks and the Internet to perform tasks that are not possible with standard appliances. These tasks can range from turning on the lights at 6 p.m. to turning off lawn sprinklers after a rainstorm, even to rerouting DVD output from the living-room TV to the bedroom TV at a certain time. The range of equipment, options and choices is amazing -- and expanding every month.

We know what you're thinking: Why is Network Computing looking at consumer-oriented devices? Granted, smart-home gadgets are a bit outside our usual coverage area, but we believe our readers, being the übergeeks that you are, will be the foremost implementers of this technology. (And we wanted to have a little fun to start the new year.) So we spoke to a few companies about smart-home technologies and got some demo equipment to test. As an added bonus, instead of just writing about smart homes, we decided to make an online companion video with the equipment we received. To see smart homes in action, look at our online movie.

The Future is Now

People have been using smart-home technology for years in the form of light timers, detectors and smart thermostats. For example, while you're away on vacation, your household lights might be on a timer, making would-be burglars think someone is home. Now you can run scripts on those timers with randomizer functions to simulate a person moving around the house to different rooms, turning lights and appliances on and off; some intelligent timers can learn your usage patterns and simulate typical usage while you're away. We know people who, almost a decade ago, installed rain detectors on their roofs so that when it drizzled the lawn sprinklers remained inactive, conserving water and preventing overwatering.

Finally, many people have thermostats that let them control their house heating and cooling systems -- automatically making the house cooler at night and warmer during the day, with separate settings for the weekend. Such automation can translate into a major savings on utility bills, paying for the system in a few months. While these are among the most primitive of smart-home gadgets, they help pave the way for the acceptance of other smart-home technologies. Sure, giving your refrigerator an IP address may sound silly today, but it might not be such a crazy idea in a few years. Your appliances will take advantage of and communicate with the data network and the Internet.