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What People Want From Smart Homes
Hallie Siegel writes: Despite the energy savings and environmental friendliness that has often been associated with smart home technologies, a recent poll showed that consumers primarily want their homes to optimize for their comfort level and personal preference (45%). Security/Safety and Energy Savings tied in second place (18%). Environmentally friendliness came in at only 11%. Note that the three most voted choices have direct advantages for the user, as opposed to Environmental Friendliness, which is primarily a societal benefit. What would you look for in a smart home?
Fairly simple sensor equipment on the house could help you with those though, and we've been able to send notifications via all manner of methods for years and years, via technology as low-end as 9600 baud TAP gateways through your cell provider worst-case.
You could monitor humidity in known problem areas like near hot water heaters and HVAC condensate drip pans with simple sensors fed by a two-wire solution. You could monitor wind speed and direction, plus temperature and rainfall through an automated weather station that sits on the roof. You could monitor basements and other low places for flooding with simple sensors that could also pack-in CO and fire safety. You could install RFID interrogators at the exterior doors and put RFID tags on your kids' backbacks (or use the ones built in to clothes or shoes or the like) to know when they've passed through the doorway, and you could even compare their RFID tag versus no tag when the doors are opened to know if someone else is entering. You could even use heat sensors to turn off lights in rooms that people have vacated and to turn off multimedia equipment like video projectors when no one is there to watch, if you're really feeling fancy, control the HVAC ducting to stop excessively cooling spaces that no one is using, like spare bedrooms, offices, workshops, dining rooms, kitchens, etc.
None of those features requires an Internet connection to use, though for convenience the ability to notify the owner could be handy. A quick e-mail or text message would be enough for most, and for things like potentially unauthorized entry, a camera picture could help the homeowner avoid false-positives with the alarm company and police.
What I really want a home to do though, is to clean itself. Self-clean the toilets, the sinks, the shower and bathtub, the tile, the carpet, the kitchen, and to be able to lift dust off of things and dispose of it. Do the laundry and sort/fold/hang it. That would be where the usefulness to homeowners comes in, not trinkets to automate processes that already aren't really inconvenient. It might also be convenient if the home recognizes the owner when he or she arrives, and lets them in without needing a key or other 'thing you have' on one's person.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You know, more and more I'm glad I grew up in a day before you could so easily be tracked as a kid, and no cell phones, etc.
It made it more fun to be a kid. Sure, I was mischievous, and well, frankly, some of the things we did as kids and teens would likely be categorized as borderline terrorism...but it was a part of growing up. Experimenting and well...just being a kid at the time.
When young, I would leave the house, go play with friends roam mine and the adjacent neighborhood...first on foot, then bike and skateboard. When really young, my Mom's basic rule was to call from a friend's home every couple hours to check in. When older, not really even that. My parents both worked, and I'd come home from school alone or go play with friends. During the summers as a teen...I'd be at home on my own, run with friends, make my own lunches...etc.
It was fun having that independence and I never got into what you would call trouble, no more than just being a boy growing up.
Nowdays...geez, I guess mine (and all my peers at the time) parents would be cited for child neglect.
Ok....now..GET OFF MY LAWN.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
When I lived in Germany I saw quite a few of them. Lawns tend to be smaller and flatter than in the U.S. Also, landscaping services are more expensive, in general, over in Europe. Last thing, and unfortunately I'm being serious, the U.S. is pretty litigious, so companies are hesitant to jump into the market.
I think there are about 10 companies or so making robotic mowers. Could be wrong, but I thought you could get a Husqvarna in the U.S. now. They require a wire to be buried along the perimeter of your yard so the 'bot knows when it needs to stop & turn around.
I';ve always wondered what happens if you lose power at home, and the buried wire no longer emits its signal. Probably a battery backup, and you have to tell the 'bot to run no longer than the battery can last.
What a shitty website. It's like Windows 8 threw up all over it. I'm sure these are probably neat devices but I'll be damned if I could tell anything from that website. It's unusable!