NEXT STEP Smart home in the age of IoT


 

NEXT STEP Smart homes: home automation and the smart home in the age of IoT

Home automation and smart homes – roots and realities

To illustrate this fact let’s look at some of the existing standards, technologies, functions and realities in two different areas, home automation with its increasingly importance of ‘smaller’ building management systems and small building automation on one hand and the smart home ‘segment’ as it’s often understood in the sense of connected appliances, remote controls and, today, IoT-enabled appliances at home on the other hand. Two separate, yet converging worlds as we’ll see.


You will find some of the many mentioned standards in the high-end segment of the home automation world, for instance with regards to that aspect of light and room control which is part of the smart home automation ecosystem. 

You might also find them in a smart building automation system for buildings that are larger than the average home as this building automation example shows. You might even find them in even larger buildings and in an Industry context as well, albeit it integrated with other standards. There are overlaps and more standards out there which really are used in various contexts, including home automation – but not solely.

Smart house, intelligent home, connected home and smart home

Just like home automation and its evolving protocols aren’t new, the ‘vision’ of a smart home as most people see it in this day and age of connected IoT devices, isn’t really new either.

The example of the connected fridge and all it would be able to do goes back to the early days of the Internet. In fact, at the end of the nineties these kinds of connected appliances already existed, albeit in limited ways and not as they look now.

More importantly, as we’ll see a smart home is not one with a bunch of IoT-enabled and connected kitchen and other appliances. And smart home automation is a different thing. However, the notion of the smart home has been broadening and gradually including appliances on top of longer existing home automation realities such as temperature control, blind control, energy management solutions and the mentioned lighting and room control to name a few.

Over a decade ago the term smart house used to be quite popular. However, the meaning of a smart house wasn’t really defined.


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NEXT STEP 

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Location: Romania

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