A day in the life of a well-connected home courtesy of Intel

A day in the life of a well-connected home courtesy of Intel

Headline after headline, home-smart objects appear regularly as promises of the connected home of tomorrow. Trouble is, we don't easily get the connection; we don't easily absorb the whole picture about these individual objects working together.

Intel wants to help us understand what this all means in the context of the Internet of Things as an everyday experience at home. Introducing the Intel Smart Tiny House. Intel has gone ahead to fashion a living space of 210 square feet as a glimpse into the Internet of Things future.

This is where viewers can get to see the varied possibilities to come in Internet of Things connected homes.

Alan Martin, science editor for Alphr, wrote about it, remarking that "at just 210 square feet, Intel's Tiny Connected Home is so small that there's no way a bed can take up valuable real estate all of the time. Instead, it was neatly tucked away from sight, underneath a platform that houses the main all-in-one computer that acts as just one of the possible hubs for the company's vision of the connected future."

The size of the living space may be tiny but some closet-sized studios these days do not look too far off from the showcased space; it was constructed to represent "the micro-spaces that millennials and city-dwellers are now calling home," in the words of CNET. This is not an entertainment spectacle as much as a look at how our living arrangements could transform the way we carry out tasks via technologies.

And that view will be continually evolving. This is not a one-off event. The home is what Intel has referred to as a living lab, which the technology company will develop over the next 12 to 18 months. CNET said that the house while currently located in San Francisco can travel around and will be used as a testing lab for new technologies over that next 12 to 18 months.

A news release said the company aims to address issues, from interoperability to security to data outputs, and provide the hardware, software and power of the cloud to take the home from "connected" to truly "smart."

Alphr's Martin wrote that "It will be fascinating to see what developers using the Intel Smarthome Development Acceleration Platform will be able to come up with given the time."

Martin provided an example of devices working with other devices: "if a water sensor detects a leak, but you're away on business, you might worry that your house will flood. But in the case scenario provided, the imaginary home owner gets a remote notification, and can then immediately hire a plumber via Yelp, and remotely let them in via the smartlocks and camera to fix the problem."

Martin also noted how the main computer can kick in, being trained to pick up sounds "like the crashing of a window (so you can switch on the cameras to see if you need a glazier, the police or both)." CNET carried a picture by picture description of the showcased , including "Who is at the Door?" Your home would have a smart lock, opening when the camera, hidden in a bird box, recognized a trusted face at the door.

Also, all the lightbulbs can be controlled through an app, either through voice control or via sliders to adjust color or intensity. A microphone in the house enables control, such as changing the colors of the lights, with voice commands.

A day in the life of a well-connected home courtesy of Intel

CNET also explained what Intel means by "scenes." CNET said a scene takes multiple devices and links them together to create a single action. "For example, say a command when you are leaving the house. The doors will lock automatically and the lights will turn off."

In general, people appear to be prepared for a time when device interoperability will be commonplace. A survey commissioned by Intel earlier this month said we are headed for a smart home "explosion" where almost 7 in 10 Americans (68 percent) were confident about smart homes being as commonplace as smartphones within 10 years.

A day in the life of a well-connected home courtesy of Intel

According to the findings, 64 percent would prefer to lease their smart home services from a trusted service provider than do it themselves. Many respondents agreed on the need to be able to access and manage all from one central portal (86 percent) and anxious about the number of passwords they will have to remember to manage smart devices (75 percent).

If consumers are ready, what about the industry providing connected devices? Intel believes there is work to do. "For the smart home of the future to become a reality, the industry will need to future-proof the infrastructure supporting the smart home ecosystem, make connectivity simple, move toward consensus on industry standards, and realize that the leap from a to a smart home requires data insights from multiple devices to deliver value to the homeowner."

More information: newsroom.intel.com/docs/DOC-5224

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Citation: A day in the life of a well-connected home courtesy of Intel (2015, November 12) retrieved 29 March 2024 from https://techxplore.com/news/2015-11-day-life-well-connected-home-courtesy.html
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