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What People Want From Smart Homes

Posted by Soulskill on from the lasers-please dept.

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?

9 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing. by weilawei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I want my home to be stupid, to not have a telescreen, and to not track me or sell my habits to third parties. ;)

    1. Re:Nothing. by Anrego · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yup.

      Personally I'd be way more open to this stuff if it didn't want an internet connection.

      Ultimately I see very little practical application for any of this anyway. As I said in a previous comment, I played around with home automation "back in the day" and while it's nifty, it doesn't really add a whole lot of value outside of some very specialized use cases.

    2. Re:Nothing. by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Where I really see benefit from external communication would be mostly Boolean data such as whether the kids made it home from school,

      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.........
    3. Re:Nothing. by Translation+Error · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      But a really smart home will eventually realize the most efficient way to keep the house clean is to eliminate the people and pets in it...

      --
      When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
  2. Yup by Anrego · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Isn't this what we all figured out back in the x10/smarthome days. After you get over the gee-wiz star trek appeal, there's very little that we actually want to automate, and most of those things are already well handled by stand alone devices which benifit very little from integration. My automatic coffee maker and thermostat don't need an internet connection, and having lights come on automatically when you walk in the room is cool and nifty, for about 20 minutes, then it is overcome by the annoyance of the lights turning off all the time because occupancy sensors suck. Sure we can try to make up justifications, and there may be some people who legitimately have a valid use case, but I think this is gonna be home automation fad part 2.

    My old x10 gear still makes an appearance around Christmas, and I still use some of it in my bedroom to control the lights and ceiling fan from my bed, but my (at one time) expensive ocelot controller and like a few dozen various bits sit in a box collecting dust.

    (Also usual warning that x10 is a terrible system that I wouldn't recommend to an enemy).

    1. Re:Yup by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From the article:

      General Electric, in particular, entered smart lighting market with the introduction of GE Link, a smart LED bulb that consumers can remotely control from anywhere in the world and sync with other connected devices.

      Wow, really? A bulb you can remotely control from anywhere in the world, huh? And I'll bet the service that let's us do all that will only cost us $9.99 a month, right? What a bargain. I mean, I've always wanted to turn my kitchen light on or off from the grocery store. That's going to be so handy!

      Meh. At some point, this phase 2 of the home automation fad will probably boil down to a few practical gizmos that people find useful, and history will simply laugh at our "smart bulbs" for the ridiculous overkill it represents in attempted convenience.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  3. Two Things Only by jamesl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I want a home that cooks and cleans. Cooks and cleans. I can take care of the rest.

  4. Re:I am going to live in the dumbest home by Sri+Ramkrishna · · Score: 4, Funny

    Make sure you also write a manifesto and grow your beard.

  5. Status Updates by cdu13a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Pretty much all that I want from a smart home, is the ability to be notified if things break or go wrong when I'm not there.

    I couldn't care less about anything else, I just want to know when I need to get my ass home to fix something, or deal with a disaster.

    Being able to get a notification as soon as the freezer fails, or the sump pump fails, or the furnace fails would make a big difference in just how shitty your day is going to end up being.