Products such as switches, dimmers and thermostats have incorporated microchips already for a longer time. In the current smart home technology a large number of sensors and actuators is connected to each other, which makes the home look like being intelligent. This intelligence could be of great assistance to people with a disability or to older people. But also younger people without disability could enjoy the comfort and benefit the energy saving of a smart home. Given all these advantages and potential benefits the question arises why not smart houses are being built on a large scale.
Several factors contribute to the fact that they are still a rare phenomenon.
High costs have been mentioned as one of the key factors in the past, but also lack of standardisation and lack of information to the end user were of big influence so far. However, costs have been reduced enormously in recent years and some degree of standardisation is under way. Now, it's time to carry out bigger information campaigns to inform the end users, the architects and the installers. One of the major tools to do this is a smart model house. In this paper the basic functions of a smart home are summed up.