Understanding Home Automation
By using the term “home automation,” you may come to the conclusion that I am speaking of a holistic system where everything in the home can be controlled by a central location. Yes, those kinds of systems exist, but they don’t paint the full picture. Home automation involves anything (or everything) in the home, from a vacuum robot to the fridge, talking to a conveniently-placed device. Now that we have that out of the way, there are two distinct ways you can approach home automation: A centralized approach or a decentralized multi-platform approach. Let’s talk about the centralized approach first, since it’s the easiest to understand.
Central Control, Over Absolutely Everything
With a centralized home automation system, you have tons of power! Your air conditioning system, fridge, vacuum cleaner, washing machines, food delivery, and even your telephone system all report to one single device. This device is often a console attached to a wall or appliance in your home. The console may or may not communicate with your smartphone to make checking on the status of your appliances and controlling them easier. There’s a problem with this approach, though: it seldom accounts for future developments. So, you want to get a new washing machine. The old one’s either busted or inefficient. Either way, you’re no longer happy with it. Since you want your new washing machine to connect with your automation system, your choices are limited to whatever is compatible with that system. If you buy a regular washing machine, it won’t communicate with the system. What if the manufacturer of your console only offers that same old machine? And what if that machine is discontinued? This can really put you in a pinch. Also, there are new types of household appliances appearing on the market. fifty years ago, washing machines were a novelty. What is going to appear fifty years from now? If you don’t know the answer, don’t worry. Your home automation system doesn’t know it, either! Added to this, having a central console is prohibitively expensive. Leviton, a home automation and security firm, says that it costs between $3-5 per square foot (24-38€, or £20-33 per square meter) to install everything. This means that for a 2,000 square-foot (~186 sq. m.) home, you’d end up paying between $6,000-10,000 (4400-7300 €, or £3550-5920) to wire it all up.
Decentralized Multi-Platform Home Automation Explained
One of the first things you do when you get a smartphone is look around for apps. The entire mobile ecosystem revolves around these little pieces of code that allow us to control more aspects of our lives in ways we never could have imagined a few decades ago. What if you didn’t have to have one single home automation system where the appliances you run in your home have to be compatible with an arbitrary platform? This is exactly what a decentralized home automation system looks like. Using a decentralized system, you can have a Whirlpool fridge, a Bosch washer, a Roomba vacuum, and a Siemens dishwasher hooked up to your phone provided they have such connectivity. They’ll send messages through Wi-Fi to a server that later relays the message to your app. This way, you can quickly check on the status of your appliances just like you would check your email. The advantages are plenty. First of all, you can get that new washing machine you wanted! Second of all, new types of household appliances don’t require any retrofitting. You just need to download the right app to your phone. Everything is fluid and interchangeable, sometimes even allowing you to get two devices to communicate with each other (e.g. your washing machine can tell your dryer to open its front door once it’s done).
Time For Some Cool Ideas!
Want to hop into home automation through your smartphone? Bertel has some great advice for this! If you know of some other appliances that can be controlled from your phone, write a comment below with the model number and firm. You’re also welcome to add your input and thoughts about what you’ve just read!
