Tag: home automation

Article

Home, health devices controlled by apps on the rise | The Age (Australia)

My Comments

A trend that is becoming very real in this day and age is for more appliances, home systems and personal healthcare devices to be linked to the home network and the Internet.

This is typically manifested in the form of the devices having control apps being made available for smartphones and tablets that run on common mobile-computing platforms, especially iOS and Android. Typically the device would like to the smartphone or tablet either via a direct Bluetooth link or the home network with the mobile computing device linking to that network via Wi-Fi wireless. Some of these devices that promote “cloud-driven” or “remote-access” functionality make use of the Internet connection offered by the home network or the mobile computing device.

Of course, you have to remember that the use of the “cloud” word is primarily about the vendor or service provider providing either simplified remote access to the device or having user data being stored on the vendor’s servers.

A lot of the apps offer various device control or monitoring functions, with some of the apps linking to a remote Web server for storing user data. This is more so with personal healthcare devices where the goal is to keep a record of measurements that the device obtains on behalf of the user.

Of course, the mobile-computing-platform app may not he the only way to benefit from the connected device’s online abilities. Here, the device could work with a Web-based dashboard page that users can view with a Web browser on their regular-platform or mobile-platform computing device. This situation would come in handy if the concept is to provide more information at a glance or provide greater control of the device.

There is a reality that by 2022 a household with 2 teenage / young-adult children will maintain 50 Internet-connected devices compared to 10 such devices in 2013 according to OECD data and this situation is being described as the “Internet Of Things”.

But there are some issues here with the current ecosystem for these devices and apps. For example, if a user has more appliances and other devices from different manufacturers or service providers, the smartphone or tablet will end up being crowded out with many different apps. The same situation may occur as a device comes to the end of its useful life and is replaced with a newer device which may be from a different vendor. It can lead to users finding it difficult to locate the monitoring or control apps that they need to use for a particular device.

Here, the situation could be rectified through the use of application standards like UPnP so that one can develop apps that can manage many devices from different vendors.

This could also encourage innovation such as the design of “car-friendly” apps or voice-agent (Siri / S-Voice) plugins so that one could benefit from a monitoring or control app when they leave or arrive in the car. Similarly, the software would need to exploit the abilities that iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 / 8 / RT offer within their platforms for “at-a-glance” viewing or user notifications.

It is a change that could take place over the years as the home network exists to be the easy-to-manage small network for an increasing number of devices.

Article

http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/10/honeywell-wi-fi-smart-thermostat/

From the horse’s mouth

Honeywell

Product Page

My Comments

Over the last few years, a Californian start-up had designed the NEST programmable central-heating thermostat which integrates with your home network via Wi-Fi for control via your computer or similar devices.

Now Honeywell, who is a well-known company in the central heating and air-conditioning field, have answered this device with a touchscreen-operated device, known as the WiFi Smart Thermostat, that also links with your home network. This uses an interface that most of us would find common with our smartphones or tablets; or with the recent HP multifunction printers like the OfficeJet 8600 series or the Photosmart 7510.

Like a lot of these network-based home automation devices, this thermostat uses Web-driven remote and local access for management. This can be facilitated through the mytotalconnectcomfort.com Web dashboard page or a client app for the iOS and Android mobile platforms. It facilitates the ability to have your heating or air-conditioning at home set to the preferred comfort temperature before you head home so you arrive at a comfortably warm or cool home.

It can work with most HVAC systems that use an outboard thermostat and also keeps tabs on humidity so you could use your refrigerated air-conditioning system to control overly-humid environments. The display uses a “multi-colour” background so you can have it integrated with your home décor as well as user control over its illumination so it doesn’t appear to be glowing too much.

Of course, it can work with most heating and air-conditioning systems but there are some setups which these thermostats need to cater for. One would be to work with hydronic (hot-water-based) systems that manage domestic hot water as well as room heat – a setup common in UK and Europe; as well as central heating and air-conditioning served by two separate systems – a setup common in Australia.

The NEST thermostat and the Honeywell WiFi Smart Thermostat will open up the market to increased real interest in network-enabled HVAC control.

Article

Iris Care Lets You Know When Your Parents Have Fallen and Can’t Get Up | Gizmodo

My Comments

As part of a new trend for the home automation and security industries, there is strong interest in technology to facilitate “independent ageing”. Here this allows older people or those of us with chronic illnesses to be able to live independently yet there is the gentle eye for illnesses or accidents.

Iris, which is sold through the US Lowes hardware-store chain, have set up an option for their home-automation and security offering which does this. Here, you have the standard medical-alert fob that hangs around the person’s neck but there is the ability to notify if certain things are out of order as you determine. For example, you could know if there is continual normal movement or, for example, know if the front door had been left open or the stove was left on at an odd time.

What I see of this is that the industry is answering to the ageing baby-boomer population which is becoming older; and a desire for “ageing with dignity” where an older person can live independently yet their relatives and friends are safe in the knowledge that they are OK.

Article

La Bbox seA lance dans la domotique – DegroupNews.com (France – French language)

My comments

If the marketplace for “triple-play” Internet service is so cut-throat, what can a telco, cable-TV firm or ISP offer to their loyal customers to increase service value? Could it be an Internet terminal like a T-Hub, or an Internet-connected device like an online picture frame or Internet radio?

No, it is another service that customers have previously bought through separate providers with names like Intamac or Chubb. This service is home automation and security, with monitored alarm systems and Internet-driven energy dashboards for residential users.

These solutions will typically link to servers or monitoring stations via the Internet link that the telecommunications company provides as part of the package. In some cases, there may be home-automation / security services that work “wholesale” and engage the telco or ISP as a reseller like they do with people like alarm installers. This is with the main goal of having these services available as an extra-cost a-la-carte option or as part of one or more premium communications service plans.

People in the security industry may discredit this move because of reasons like lack of “alarm-event response service” with security guards responding to alarm events, deployment of cheaper “quick-install” hardware rather than fully-installed systems, amongst other things. As well some of them may discredit single-box security/home-automation “panels” that can yield a single point of failure for both these functions.

The example cited in the DegroupNews news article is Bougyes Telecom providing a basic DIY system that links to their Bbox Internet gateway and uses a wireless link to the various peripherals.

This is available in two packages, with one focused on energy monitoring and remote control of appliances and the other focused on security, comfort and energy monitoring/ remote control. The first package, costing EUR€5 per month,would come with a home-automation “base”, a few plug-in appliance controllers and an electricity-meter interface which works with the newer smart meters being deployed in France. The second one, costing EUR€9 per month, has extra sensors for temperature and humidity, PIR motion detectors and a magnet-reed door-contact sensor; with the ability to send an SMS alert in case of alarm conditions.

The article described the provision of these services in a telecommunications package as “quintuple play” ï.e: fixed telephone, Internet, pay-TV, mobile telephone, home automation / security.

This effort of ISPs and telcos providing home automation could make the concept become mainstream and appealing to most householders. This is rather than the DIY “tinkerers” who have the time to mess around with these systems or rich people who own pimped-out “MTV Cribs” and have the money to have professionals design highly-customised home-automation systems.

For this to work effectively, the hardware and software infrastructure needs to work with known standards in order to permit these systems to be evolved through their long lifecycles. As well, these systems must work in a manner where they “just work” properly and exhibit graceful degradation to primary functionality when other systems in the network or key network links fail.

As well, a professioally-designed system must be able to be “re-worked” by other knowledgeable professionals or the householder. This is so that if anything happens with the regular or original installer, the system can be kept in good working order or evolved to newer needs.

I would think that the trend of telecommunications companies and Internet providers providing home automation and security services will become an interesting trend to observe.