[DebF_EONNext]

What is a smart home and is it really that beneficial?

The official definition of a smart home is: "A home equipped with lighting, heating, and electronic devices that can be controlled remotely by smartphone or computer”.

This however doesn’t mean that everyone's idea of what counts as a smart home will be the same. For some people it might mean something as simple as having a smart meter installed. It could mean having a smart TV or a smart speaker in the home or for others this could be going all out and linking up security systems, appliances, lighting and computers etc.

There are lots of smart products available on the market to help make your day to day life easier (smarter) such as:

• Video Doorbells 🚪
• Smart Speakers
• Smart T.V’s with every app you could ever need! 📺
• Smart Appliances (washing machines, kettles dishwashers etc that can be managed from your phone)
• Smart Lighting - You can control your lights at the touch of a button (I don’t mean the light switch!) 💡
• Smart Thermostats - You can control the temperature of your home through your phone when you're not even there!
• Smart Security Systems 🔐
• Smart Smoke Detectors

My Grandad is 88yrs old and he is amazed how far technology has come but like many he still struggles to see the benefit of a smart home. There are of course lots of benefits to having a smart home:

• Increased security
• Helping you manage household tasks
• For entertainment
• Making life simpler
• Energy efficiency

A smarter home could mean energy savings. If we think of smart thermostats for instance, being able to manage your thermostat at the touch of a button when you aren’t even at home can help you improve efficiency. You can turn off or lower the temperature when you’re not home and can even preheat your home before you get in, giving you more control.

What do you get when you cross a thought with a light bulb?...A bright idea! 😂🤓

Smart lighting is a great way to improve security within the home as you can manage your lighting when you aren’t home. For example with traditional timer switches they come on at certain times and go off at a certain time but it’s the same time each day, however with smart lighting you can turn them on or off and even dim at the touch of a button, when you aren’t even there and at any time of the day. If smart lighting isn’t really your thing there are also energy efficient LED bulbs which can be up to 6 times more efficient than a standard light bulb and they can last anything up to 30,000 hours, meaning they are much more cost effective in the long run too. 💡

What do you consider to be a smart home? Do you have smart tech at home and do you find it makes life easier? Does it save you money and do you find it more energy efficient to have these products?

My home isn’t very smart if i’m honest. We have some LED bulbs, a smart TV and smartphones but I would like to improve on this. Do you have any recommendations for me, anything that you just couldn’t live without in the home now?

[retrotecchie]

Originally Posted by Andy65

I think 'Smart' is definitely over used, to me it's just something that can connect to a network, there isn't much that's actually smart about these devices.

I wouldn't have a 'smart thermostat',

Nor would I, but I do have a 'smarter' thermostat.

Most conventional thermostats just send an on-off demand to your central heating system. If the house is too cold, the stat 'calls' for the heating. Once it has warmed up, the stat stops calling.

I replaced mine with a differential thermostat. It has the usual settings for inside the house (front room) but also has an external sensor for outside. It sets the temperature to a maximum of whatever you set, but if the outdoor temperature isn't so low, it shuts off the heating a little sooner. Weather compensation is another term used.

Individual LEDs themselves will happily last 30,000 hours, or more, but it's usually the very cheap electronics inside the LED lamp module that let's the side down. More often than not, the LED chips themselves are fine, but tearing down an LED bulb that has failed usually reveals a failed component in the power supply section rather than the light source itself.

If you have any interest in electronics or 'how stuff works', have a look on Youtube for Big Clive. He does teardowns of all sorts of stuff, but hacking LED bulbs to extend their life significantly is one of his favourite pastimes.

Many years ago I did a lot of work on energy management systems for commercial buildings. Our company was listed in the local Yellow Pages under 'Electronics Engineers' and we'd often get random walk-ins, in spite of the fact that our core business was military and police training simulators!

We had a guy turn up one day with a cardboard box full of what looked like light fittings, but turned out to be occupation sensors and movement sensors. All failed units and he wondered if we could fix them.

Have a go at anything in our lunch break, we would, so we took a butcher's at them. They were a mixture of infra red thermal sensors and ultrasonic motion sensors and were installed in offices and corridors in a large commercial building (Digital Equipment Corp). They were used to control lights in the building. If a corridor was empty, it would dim the lights after a few seconds to save energy. As soon as any movement was detected, the lights would come back up again.

Anyway, being mostly old fashioned discreet electronics, we fixed quite a few, cobbled a couple of duff ones into one good working one and gave him the box back...two of us ended up with a tenner each in the old trouser pocket and everyone was happy. A week later, he brought another box of dead kit in and off we went again, although on a more formal payment basis.

Over the next couple of years, we did a roaring trade and ended up with quite a few units in a scrap pile. One of the other lads, who was a right Steptoe, even managed to bring a few scrap units back to life and he took them home and wired them in to his house!

Smart doesn't need to be IoT, network enabled or controlled from your wifi by a smartphone app. It just needs to do a little more than just on-off.

[Waldi]

this is not real smart home. I could call this semi smart home. Smart home should be controlled by AI Changing the temperature in the room depending on the person staying in it, controling automatic gate when you very close home. Changing light temperature and insensitivity in room depending on the person staying in it. Voice control. Monitoring energy usage and reporting any abnormalities like water leakage etc. Making shopping list. Home should recognising person entering room etc etc. Most of real smart features are not available in kingdom of terraced houses.

[DebF_EONNext]

Originally Posted by Waldi

this is not real smart home. I could call this semi smart home. Smart home should be controlled by AI Changing the temperature in the room depending on the person staying in it, controling automatic gate when you very close home. Changing light temperature and insensitivity in room depending on the person staying in it. Voice control. Monitoring energy usage and reporting any abnormalities like water leakage etc. Making shopping list. Home should recognising person entering room etc etc. Most of real smart features are not available in kingdom of terraced houses.

Where does it stop @Waldi? I understand why some of these may be beneficial such as monitoring energy and reporting the abnormalities etc this would be a fantastic function to have.

I do often wonder if we are becoming too reliant on technology though, are we starting to lose a bit of touch with humanity in it all? I mean we go to the supermarket now and we self-serve so there's no need to speak with another human, we have technology that detects a presence at your front door are we now relying on this to keep us safe instead of using our own vigilance, does this mean we are losing our skills because tech can do it all for us, are we becoming too dependent on smart tech? When do the robots take over 👀🤖😆

[Andy65]

I think 'Smart' is definitely over used, to me it's just something that can connect to a network, there isn't much that's actually smart about these devices.

I wouldn't have a 'smart thermostat', it's just a thermostat that can be controlled remotely. I think if a person looks at the weather forecast and uses their intelligence then they're more likely to save energy doing that with a conventional thermostat than someone with a 'smart thermostat'.

Most of these things are brought to market simply to encourage consumers to buy/replace items with more expensive ones when they don't need to. I'm not against tech but for me it has to add value. Visual Voicemail on the iPhone is a good example of something that adds value.

LED lighting is good but I don't believe the lifespan is anywhere near the 30,000 hours that they quote.

Whilst it's nothing to do with saving energy, I much prefer the 'smart' tech in my car than anything at home, such as switching between dipped and full beam automatically.

[retrotecchie]

Originally Posted by retrotecchie

It has the usual **** and settings for inside the house

OK, the 'sweary filter' is a bit sensitive, isn't it? What's wrong with a 'kn0b' in the context of a rotary control or a user-twiddle-able dial??

[DebF_EONNext]

I agree @Andy65 I believe that the term smart seems to be applied to almost everything and it makes me wonder what comes next!

@retrotecchie haha believe me when I say that the filter is as strong as it needs to be 😅 some of the things we have moderated with that word in there would make your eyes bleed 👀

My Grandad was also an electrical engineer in his day, he worked on the oil riggs and in power stations most of his life and like you was (still is) a tinkerer!
He loves seeing how things work. I remember as a child watching him take apart one of the old big chunky T.V's that had broken: a little solder here, a little re-wire there and it was good as new I was so impressed, my nana not so much she used to tell him off as her garden always looked like Steptoe's yard as he would never throw anything away, you know because it could come in useful one day 😂

[meldrewreborn]

@retrotecchie

i think much of the complexity of smart metering is driven by the DCC who have a vision of themselves being the go to provider of secure digital communication and have designed their systems around that utopia. Unfortunately their Clients are not on the same level. 6-8 weeks to fully commission meters is ridiculous when on their performance stats over 90% of new installations make connection with the DCC in under 15 minutes.

[retrotecchie]

@meldrewreborn

Department of Confuscation and Chaos.

[wizzo227]

@retrotecchie
I thought that DCC was supposed to stand for the "Data Collection Company" which is intended to be the destination which all smart meter data gets sent to, so that there is no unallowed password change and stuff like that which cannot be changed when you "switch" which energy bill retailer ("supplier") you get the bill from. DCC are supposed to have a process in place to foward your smart meter data straight to the evil billing computer in Hannover for EoN or whoever it is. 6-8 weeks implies that the DCC uses British Thermal Units and Foot-Pounds or that EoN introduced a comparably counterproductive holdup.