29-January-2020 By Jeffrey Cooper

Smart Home of the Future

In 2014 I developed and presented a panel discussion called Smart Home of the Future for Samsung’s second Samsung Developer Conference. I felt that the smart home concepts floating around at the time were very immature, not interoperable, and had a long way to go for mass adoption.

Five years on, I still feel that way. There have been improvements for sure. SmartThings now connects hundreds of devices and are the dominant hub-based player. Voice control has entered the picture. Devices are easier to use- to a point, and sleeker. But mass adoption is still evasive and devices such as in-the-wall light switch replacements are tricky to wire for multi-gang installations- the average non-technical person will struggle to wire it correctly and there’s a high risk of destroying it if you make a mistake.

A recent announcement by all the big industry players, including Samsung and Apple, is a strong step in the right direction. By all supporting open connectivity standards, we have the best chance at interoperability and a unified consumer experience. But it still can be better.

Smart Home 2020

Having just recently completely overhauled my SmartThings installation with a new hub, complete removal and re-setup of all devices, it’s been on my mind a bit lately. A timely article showed up in my news feed titled How Voice Assistants Killed Automation And Saved The Smart Home. It was interesting to read as there is a great use case for voice, and given the difficulty for most people (especially non-technical) to set up literally any automated routine, I can see how people took to voice to do the simple things like set the temperature and turn lights on and off.

The title of the article calls automation “dead”. I agree to a large extent because it is it fussy to set up for most people, and even then, functionality is actually quite limited. Voice makes turning on and off lights as easy as flipping a wall switch when you walk by. There’s no app to open either. But it is imperfect as well. There are scenarios where automation is still a better option, and when you’re not there, automation is the only solution short of just manually remote controlling everything. When you are not there, you want lighting to still operate like you are, which makes it appear you are home to would-be burglars.

A Blended World

I said it in 2014 and it is still true- the best solution is a blend of elements:

1. Automation. It is still very useful, though most of it should itself be automated, picking up your normal usage patterns and replicating them. Manual programming should only be a last resort.
2. Voice override. While you have routines, you also deviate from it often enough. A simple voice command allows for easy and seamless overriding of otherwise automated scenes.
3. Anticipation. By fusing data from as many relevant sources as possible and deeper learning, the system can learn to anticipate your needs. Inputs include past inputs, as well as calendar, weather, and potentially many other sources, including even fitness and health.

These systems also much be much smarter. I don’t know any that remember state information currently. For example: My front porch light comes on at dusk and turns off at 10pm. I also have an automation where a motion sensor picks up someone approaching or my car entering the driveway. This works during all hours of darkness. If I pull into the driveway between dusk and 10pm, the sensor will turn the light on again, which of course does nothing since it’s already on. But the “On” state for several hours is obliterated and the new state is “Turn off in 5 minutes”, and the light turns off early. It does not remember that it was already in an On state. I could program that motion sensing state to only work after 10pm, which is a kluge workaround. If I then later change the duration of evening on time, I will also have to go edit the second automation routine to reflect the change. It is inelegant.

2014’s Smart Home of the Future is still the Smart Home of the Future

While there has been incremental progress, we are still very far off from the ideal vision. In the panel discussion in 2014, we discussed following areas

• Follow-me lighting, Lighting that follows you around the house. In cases where you have installed individual smart bulbs in recessed lighting, individual lights can operate independent of the others if you like.
• Better environmental controls. Predictive environment based on your systems response to varying outdoor conditions. Each house and each heating/cooling system is different. Each should be characterized to determine the entire system’s response to changing weather conditions, including both temperature and winds. The system itself has thermal inertia, and the quality of insulation in a home varies a lot. By characterizing the lag in response to a 1 degree change in temperature, the system can predict that while temps are in the process of changing, it can advance the timing of the system just enough to compensate for the lag, keeping room temps within less than 1 degree of difference, depending on the exact type of system you have. Forced Air vs radiative heating will have some differences.
• Better security through automation when absent, better cameras and people recognition, and even drone systems on the outside that can locate intruders automatically are possible.
• Smart Kitchen. This was the deep dive of the panel discussion

The Smart Kitchen

The smart kitchen will know what food you have. It will recognize food in the refrigerator. Importantly, there must also be a pantry solution. In 2014 I surmised that RFID tags will be the way to go, once the price reached 1 cent per tag. That still may be the best way since image recognition will struggle with the typical clutter of a pantry. For the 2014 session, I invited the CTO of McCormick Spices to participate just for this reason.

Knowing the food you have on hand, and knowing your taste preferences and those of your family, you can then ask your kitchen to “find a recipe for something with chicken and carrots”. The system will have learned your preferred tastes, your elasticity of taste for trying new things or sticking with tried and true recipes. It will understand your allergies, your activities (you should eat more protein today), weight goals and so forth. All of this will go into providing informed results. McCormick’s contribution to this came from their development of an extensive flavor database and rules of applying it for preference matching and elasticity.

When dinner is nearing ready, the system can summon the kids, who may be down the street, based on their distance to get home in time for dinner. Music can come on and TV can go off so the family can have a meal together.

Or it could be date night… the system will know. At this point, we will truly have achieved the Smart Home of the Future.

I’ve loaded a copy of the original 2014 presentation, if you’d like to see it. This unadorned version was for the presenter only, as the public facing version was a much simpler presentation. I make much better presentations these days, but it worked well enough at the time.