6 Smart Home Technology Trends To Follow

Have you ever been in a situation when you were leaving work after a long day and the weather was piping hot? You're so tired and exhausted that all you want to do is get home and just lie down. You pick up your phone and automate your smart AC to turn on. And as soon as you reach home the temperature is already cool enough to relax your mood. In today’s world where everyone is in a rush, comfort is the key to our life. A person will try to make each task as easy as it can get. We all want everything we do to be as convenient as possible, so it's no surprise that this is one of the most compelling reasons to invest in a smart home.

 

 

What is a Smart Home?

 

Smart homes are the Internet of Things(IoT) household aspect. In recent years, we've grown accustomed to connecting common household gadgets to the internet and to one another in order to make our homes more comfortable, affordable, amusing, and safe. In a nutshell, a "smart house" is a home with several gadgets that automate chores that would typically be performed by humans. 

 

Smart technology, whether it's smartphones, smartwatches, or smart TVs, is a technology that learns and minimizes the effort required by a human to perform a task. The same idea applies to smart homes: this technology recognizes the homeowner's usage patterns, lowers work, and improves the house's security and safety.

 

( Also Read - Top 10 IoT Examples )

 

Although there has been some buzz surrounding a wide range of smart home gadgets in recent years, the champions are gradually becoming more evident. Likewise, smart speakers, to name the most well-known category, are already prepared for a higher degree of adoption, with customers demanding more and opting for more integrated frameworks. 

 

For example - Amazon Alexa is now gradually becoming the go-to speaker for anyone, because of its virtual assistant feature which can easily automate your daily tasks just by your voice commands.

 

 

Smart Home Trends

 

In terms of innovation and availability, the smart home industry has witnessed the following developments in recent years:

 

1. Voice assistant technology

 

What is a smart home if not a way to relax and unwind? This technology may also provide you with new and interesting ways to be amused and informed. Connected speakers can play music, provide news and sports scores, and even help you control other connected devices when coupled with AI-based digital assistants. In addition, connected gadgets can help you find a suitable movie to watch. 

 

With voice assistants being able to comprehend a user's context meaning, smart homes have become even easier to operate, marking a significant development in speech technology. There are several smart speakers available, the most popular of which being Amazon Alexa and Google Nest. In place of normal speakers, people are preferring these due to their additional Voice assistant features other than just being a normal speaker.

 

(Related Blog - Mickey - The Voice Assistant ) 

 

2. Enhanced Security and Privacy 

 

Security is the most important thing you need to have to protect your privacy when you are living in a world where you are always surrounded by gadgets that are constantly tracking your every move, listening, recording, and watching you, since even a single smart home product with insecure security procedures may jeopardize the entire ecosystem. 

 

To cope with such issues, security firms are developing the next generation of smart home security systems that will safeguard individuals while transferring data over different networks in a secure manner. AI-based biometric authentication, secure routers shielded from cyber-attacks, and so on are examples of such systems. 

 

Security will continue to be at the forefront of all smart home initiatives for the foreseeable future. While alarm systems may be purchased to secure your house, smart homes can provide additional protection. 

 

Lights, cameras, and even doorbells that are connected to the internet can help make a house safer. If you're home alone and someone is looking to see if they can break in, putting these gadgets around may deter them.

 

(Also Read - Security Issues in IoT)

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Interconnectivity between all Home Appliances

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3. Smart Lighting

 

Let’s be pretty clear, You should not host a party at your home if you use simple White LEDs. One of the first smart home solutions to achieve widespread popularity is smart lighting. If you want to make your home smarter, start by replacing those White LEDs. Depending on your mood or the occasion you can choose the color of your choice by its mobile application or by giving voice commands to your Voice assistant speaker. “Hey Google, Set the lights in the den to something relaxing.”

 

(Read More about this -  IoT in Lighting )

 

 

4. Control the temperature

 

Some gadgets include smart capabilities that help you heat and cool your home more efficiently, saving you time and money in the long term. Companies like the subsidiary of Alphabet - Google, the pioneer in linked heating, are developing smart thermostats that keep your home automatically set to the temperatures you want. You can control these using voice commands on both Google Home and Amazon Echo. 

 

Using these without the need for any remote, you can just command your personal voice assistant to set the temperature of your AC to “16” and it will do so. You can set a particular time at which the geyser will automatically start itself. Just think, How good you are going to feel on a cold morning if you have one of these installed at your place. No need to wake up early and start your geyser so that you can have a comfortable bath. Your Smart Thermostat will look after that. Relax!

 

 

5. Focus on Healthcare

 

Because of their poor lifestyle, issues like high pressure and diabetes have become rather common these days. Smart healthcare has the potential to alleviate some of the strain placed on traditional healthcare channels such as physicians and hospitals as they provide in-home solutions to such issues by constantly tracking your activity levels, sleep quality, and diet to assist you in living a healthy lifestyle. 

 

There are also numerous such gadgets that allow communication with medical professionals via the internet, inform family members when an older person falls in their home, and even diagnose ailments using AI. During the pandemic, several of these healthcare wearables proved to be quite beneficial, since they continuously checked the users' Oxygen levels, giving an in-home medical checkup and thus making the users’ life easier. The current Apple Watch can do an electrocardiogram (ECG) to look for patterns or irregularities in heartbeats that might indicate early signs of a heart attack.

 

Related blog - Big Data in Apple

 

 

6. Faster networks mean smarter homes

 

Speed Matters. What if you've installed all of these smart home equipment but don't have a strong enough internet connection to power it? Then there's no sense in installing them because they're not going to work. 

 

We are moving into the era of 5G. There is not much time left for the global rollout of 5G. 5G has the potential to transform the delivery of IoT services, including smart home technologies (Related blog - Emerging technologies), by allowing devices to operate without the use of wires or connections while requiring very little power. 

 

It also lets considerably more devices connect at the same time than was previously allowed with prior mobile network standards. Improved WiFi technology, such as WiFi 6, will connect smart home devices to faster, more powerful networks, allowing for better access to web data and processing resources. Faster networks imply more than just faster data transfer between devices. It also means that more complex applications based on larger, quicker data sets will be possible. Smart thermostats and automated security systems, for example, will have access to more diverse and up-to-date data.

 

( Suggested Reading - Introduction to Internet Of Behavior )

 

 

Conclusion

 

Smart Homes can make life a lot easier and more comfortable for you. It's as if all of your gadgets are communicating and cooperating to offer a seamless user experience. Smart gadgets will grow more intelligent and competent in the not-too-distant future. Rather than human orders, they will rely on their own "assumptions" and guesses. So it’s time to move on from the medieval age appliances to what they call the “Future”.