Outsmarted

Smart homes have been the talk of technology for decades, but never really hit the widestream acceptance that was predicted. From the heady space-age promises of the Jetsons to simple single-lamp lighting controls - did we outstmart ourselves?

It seems like we’ve been talking about intelligent buildings and smart homes for decades and that’s probably because we have. Apparently, the phrase ‘smart home’ was first used by the American Association of House Builders in 1984. Quite frankly, I’ve been unable to determine the context in which it used. After hours of combing the internet to uncover the reason behind that now familiar phrase first being uttered by a builder, I’ve come up with nothing.  Nevertheless, here we are nearly 30 years on and there’s no sign of the vast smart home technology uptake that was predicted. Sure, a focus on sustainability and efficiency has meant that it’s rare to find a new commercial building without some sort of integrated controls or energy management system, but smart homes are still not as prevalent as we thought they’d be.

There’s a million theories around why acceptance of technology in the home has been so limited: it’s expensive, there’s no common protocol or standard and, dependent on the system, it’s either difficult or near impossible to retrofit into an existing home. Based on those few issues alone, suddenly the potential market size has shrunk from the total number of dwellings in Australia or New Zealand to new homes owned by tech-savvy individuals who’ve had time to research and are in the top income tax bracket. Try getting that market information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

It really started to feel like things were happening in the smart home industry in the nineties, which is no surprise. The economy was in good shape, jobs were secure, spending was up and the housing market was booming - perfect conditions for a product that focused on lifestyle benefits and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Now, in a post-GFC world, things aren’t quite as carefree and the average punter probably has more pressing concerns than whether or not they need to stand up to dim the lights, or simply must active the spa heater on the drive home from work.

As far as technology goes, it doesn’t seem like smart home equipment has kept up with the pace of its cousins. Changes in computing and telephony, mobile or otherwise, have been huge, obvious and rapid. In fact, around about the same time the phrase smart home was seemingly coined, business people and billionaires in Australia were talking on Telecom’s 1G ‘mobile’ phones. They weighed a tonne, practically required the passenger seat in the car, cost about $10,000 and boasted a battery life of a couple of hours. If I can buy a smarter, faster, functionally superior phone today for about one hundredth of the price of a phone in the 80s, why does the price of smart home technology not follow? Of course, this has it’s upside: “The technology you buy today will still be relevant in five years” is quite a sales pitch.

Economic circumstance aside, I’ve always suspected that there are deeper issues at play when it came to the lack of broad uptake and it turns out I might have been on to something. In 2001, French-based mobile phone carrier Orange set up a fully equipped smart home in Hertfordshire in the UK. It was intended to showcase new technologies, but also to have families live in the home so they could determine how people really interacted with smart systems. As part of the process, Orange commissioned Professor Richard Harper of the Digital World Research Centre at the University of Surrey to study the families and report the findings.

The house was decked out with the usual bits and pieces: lighting, heating, security, AV, curtains and appliances which could be controlled through WAP, SMS and wireless technologies on PDAs (well, it was 2001) and web tablets. They expected a degree of diffidence towards some of the technologies and it seemed they were right.

According to Harper, the biggest problem was a perception of over-complexity. As smart home concepts had largely been drawn from intelligent commercial buildings, the functionality was often seen as unnecessary. Multifunction wall panels offered too much choice; common in a commercial environment, but deemed overkill in a residence. In addition, conflict arose among family members as they vied for ultimate ownership and control over the devices and systems. Seems we conduct ourselves somewhat differently in the home than we do at work. Hopefully.

Given the age of the study, a number of other findings have become somewhat irrelevant, due to advances in ICT since the research was conducted, but the overall premise is that the industry was too focused on pushing technology without due regard for usability. It seems that consumers want communication and connection, not automation. Makes sense and at least goes a little way to explaining why the industry never boomed as envisaged.

Harper’s look to the future called for a common standard to permit easy exchange of information between technologies. He determined this as fundamental to the success of the smart home industry. Technical and commercial considerations mean that this is still not the case and that proprietary protocols are still pretty much the norm.

Orange obviously determined that there was indeed a future in smart homes. At the 2012 Digital Home World Summit in London, a number of European telco providers, including Orange, announced their intention to enter the smart home market. Swiss-based Swisscom will launch a suite of smart home services including monitoring (home and energy) and home automation. This is in addition to a service they currently offer through a joint venture which monitors energy use and turns devices on and off through powerline plugs. Spain’s Telefonica will also take a punt on the industry, as will Deutsche Telekom. Both companies intend to offer a gateway that will enable connectivity required for utility providers.

So, will the model we are used to still be with us in the long term? As it stands today, a homeowner wanting smart home technology needs to speak with a specialist and have a system designed that will meet their current needs and consider future additional requirements. Load controllers are determined by the equipment in the home (lighting, pumps, window dressings, AV equipment etc) and, while wireless systems exist, they are generally regarded as less robust than wired solutions, so someone will need to come in and pull the data cables. Integration devices are required for subsystems to talk to one another. There are choices to be made about user interfaces: mobile devices, sensors, wall panels, time clocks and touch screens. The load controllers and integration gateways need to be located somewhere that meets space and ventilation requirements. Once the system is designed and installed, it still needs to be programmed to function as required. The entire process is complex, time-consuming and requires specialist skills, so it’s no wonder that it is still relatively expensive.

Will this be the norm in decades to come, or will we see a move to smaller interconnected elements rather than a whole dedicated system? There are new ideas popping up every day that challenge the traditional control concepts and are attracting investment dollars.

At the simple end of the scale is LIFX, an energy-efficient, multicoloured LED light bulb that is controlled using Wi-Fi via a smartphone app. Launched on web-based funding platform Kickstarter in September 2012, designers of the product were looking to attract US$100,000 from investors. At pledge closing in mid-November, they had received a total US$1,314,542 from 9236 backers, more than 10 times their investment goal. The product is simple and the sales pitch even simpler: “No electricians or ugly control boxes.” It performs basic lighting control functions including on/off/dim up/dim down, and can be programmed to animate to music and change colours to match any decor. According to the Kickstarter website, the LIFX uses a master/slave concept to connect to a home Wi-Fi router via 802.11n, then on to each of the other bulbs via an 802.15.4 mesh network. They claim that the lamp is rated to 40,000 h/up to 25-year standards. There’s no information on pricing at this stage, but that kind of lamp life suggests they won’t be giving them away.

The LIFX is not the only new invention to challenge the traditional conventions. The Spark Socket screws into a standard light bulb socket and connects for control in much the same way as the LIFX, again over Wi-Fi via a smartphone app. The difference with Spark Socket is the promotion of an open application programming interface (API), which means that any developer can create an app to interact with the lights featuring the Spark Socket. In effect, lights could then change based on the weather or a Twitter feed. Spark Socket’s inventors also claim that lighting is just the beginning and that they are partnering with a number of companies to provide “an ecosystem of products that work together through open standards and collaboration”.

Neither product is currently commercially available, but the interest in funding suggests that there is definitely a market. While controllable light bulbs and sockets are not direct competition in the short term for established providers of full integrated smart home technology, they do provide an entry-level product which will undoubtedly fill the needs of the low end of the market. Think of it as a flat screen TV for someone who dreamed of a full-scale home theatre; it’s enough to scratch the itch.

It’s interesting that both examples address the issues that have long plagued the industry and those that were identified in Harper’s analysis of the Orange house study. Usability is a key factor in product development; designers have opted for control methods via a familiar interface - the ubiquitous smartphone. They are also actively promoting open standards and communication, with a view to simpler interconnectivity and integration.

On the other side of the coin, demand for energy efficiency and smart systems in commercial buildings is on the rise. An increase in the number of efficiency rating schemes, both government mandated and self-declared, has ensured that technology has a permanent place in enterprise.

It seems we can turn a blind eye to usability when we are in the office. Usage patterns are different, ambiance is not as valued and the approach to funding is nothing like building a home. No one is going to have to choose between the European appliances and granite benchtops or the building automation system. Everyone just wants a Green Star rating.

None of this is to suggest the death of the smart home industry, it’s obviously doing well enough to support a healthy number of suppliers and installers in ANZ, but things won’t stay the same. Other technologies will appear and one of them may just be disruptive enough to turn the market on its head. Hope we haven’t outsmarted ourselves.