The advent of Smart Home Technology
By: Angel Das
Tags: Case Study, Internet of Things, Smart Home, Technology, Technews

The advent of Smart Home Technology

How smart homes with voice activated security and lighting solutions are changing the life of disabled people

Photo by BENCE BOROS on Unsplash

Executive Summary

Smart homes are an advancement in the field of technology that allows older people and people with disabilities to commence an independent life. The versatility in functionality combined with usability has increased the demand for these smart devices. The market is swayed by multiple smart home devices across various brands that can be embedded in the home environment. The saturation of new products in the smart technology market has resulted in confusion, conflict, and apprehension among users and builders. This report analyses the key elements of a smart home along with the popular smart lighting and door lock solutions in the market, their features and vulnerabilities, their returns on investment, and a recommended solution of how these technologies can be integrated.

Introduction

Four and a half million people in Australia, which constitutes 18% of the population have a disability. The current disability prevalence index is 32% with one out of three people with disabilities have severed or profound symptoms. The advent of smart home technology is changing the way people with limited mobility, vision, and spatial awareness are leading their life. Smart houses include technologies, devices, and automatic functionalities that can be controlled and operated by the user using tablets, phones, voice commands, and even gestures (Stefanov, Bein, & Bang, 2004).

The market is currently saturated with new products resulting in a conflict of technology, confusion among brands, and apprehension among builders. The objective of this report is to deep dive into some of the current technological innovations in the field of smart homes, while looking at their adaptability, usage, affordability, and vulnerability to meet a variety of needs and lifestyles. The report aims at covering the four building blocks.

1. Key levers of a smart home

2. Comparison of smart home technologies

3. Cost-Benefit Analysis of the proposed solution

4. Recommendation

Key Levers of a Smart Home

The key to designing a smart home lies in its inherent capability to meet the needs of different disabilities. The requirement for individuals with limited mobility is distinctive from the ones with limited hearing or spatial awareness. It is essential to come up with a design that provides a 360-degree picture of some of the key levers that can cater to all possible disabilities (Stefanov et al., 2004) as illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Key levers of a smart home solution for people with disabilities. These devices are connected to a home network which in return can be monitored by the family, medical staff, and security guard of the individual. Developed by the author using PowerPoint.

Key Requirements of a Smart Technology

All smart devices should meet industry standards and cater to individual requirements to improve user experience and ease of use. Figure 2 below illustrates some of the key requirements of any smart technology (Meensika, Xuanxia, Ponchan & Mahasak, 2012).

Figure 2. Key specifications of a smart home device. These are some of the basic parameters across which the performance and adaptability of a smart home device can be assessed. Developed by the author using PowerPoint.

Comparison of smart home technologies

The advantage and vulnerabilities of diverse smart home products must be evaluated before deciding the class of devices that can be installed and integrated with the existing home network. Since different customers have distinctive financial limitations and luxury requirements, the cost, affordability, and benefits for the same must also be taken into consideration (Null, 2020). Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3 below examines some of the key parameters of the recommended solutions for smart security lock (Delaney, 2020) and smart lighting (Colon & Torres, 2020) across different needs and lifestyle categories.

Table 1. Recommended products for basic category lifestyle (August Home, 2020), (Null, 2020)

Table 2. Recommended products for mid-tier category lifestyle (u-tech, 2020), (Null, 2020), (Colon & Torres, 2020)

Table 3. Recommended products for Luxury Category (Null, 2020), (Delaney, 2020), (Colon & Torres, 2020), (Google, 2020), (LIFX, (n.d.))

Cost & Benefit Analysis

The Cost/Benefit Analysis is done for a year. For smart security, cost includes product cost and cost of accessories like the Wi-Fi bridge. Smart Lighting takes into consideration the cost of device, power consumption cost given the apparatus works for 12 hours a day. Most of the smart lights consume less than 0.5W on standby, the cost of which is not considered in Table 4 below. The cost of Wi-Fi and Smart Home Kit is similar for all three segments as all devices have similar compatibility hence is not considered for cost-benefit calculation below.

Direct Cost = Cost of Smart Lock + (Cost of Bulb x 3), Philips Hue White comes in a pack of 3, hence normalizing cost in the basic and luxury segment by 3

Indirect Cost involves the cost of bridge or dimmer

Retail cost (RC) of electricity in Victoria, Australia — 27.56 c/kWh

Power Consumption/Bulb = (Power Consumed/1000) x 12 Hrs/Day x 365 days

Standard CFL Bulb consumes 61.32kWh (taking 14W as standard) for a year (say STdP)

Savings = (STdP — Power Consumption/Bulb) * RC * 3 bulbs + minimum (Indirect cost savings)

Table 4. Cost and Benefit analysis of the recommended products (all dollar values in AUD)

The cost advantage of redevelopment lies up to 70% (industry standards) when compared to wired solutions with new constructions incurring an added savings of 15%. Utility savings are higher as one moves up the segment.

Recommendation

Wi-Fi & Network setup

Smart home technologies recommended in Table 1, Table 2, and Table 3 requires a local Wi-Fi network and a strong signal strength to stay interconnected with other smart devices. Weakened signals and Wi-Fi dead spots are major issues of a router due to physical obstructions like floors, doors and walls, length of the building, and interference from other devices. Range extenders are effective in increasing the coverage but impacts the performance of the network. Mesh Wi-Fi consisting of a modem, main router, and a series of nodes or satellite modules that share the same SSID and password is recommended for ensuring full Wi-Fi coverage. An NBN FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) that can offer speed of traffic class 2 or 4 (TC2 100/100 or TC4 1000/400) and can include battery back up on the NBN edge device is recommended. The design to integrate the smart home system is illustrated in Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. Conceptual diagram of how different smart devices can be integrated. The use of a bridge or dimmer is optional and depends on the product preferred by the user. Developed by the author using Power Point.

User Adoption

The voice-activated system combined with geofenced features reduces manual labor from end-users providing enough bandwidth for adoption. Most users today are passives or promoters of technology and application-based interface coupled with smart geofencing, schedule creations and ability of the technology to adapt to user’s needs improves its efficiency.

Conclusion

Smart home technologies are a significant goal of development with strong socio-economic motivations. This report specifies the key features of smart devices, their characteristics, and their requirements. An attempt is made to formulate and design the best possible technology and network to integrate multiple devices while keeping usability and affordability in mind. The content analysis of smart home technologies indicates the underlying benefits of their adoption and how it is strongly aligned to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.

Reference

1. Colon, A., & Torres, T. (2020). The Best Smart Light Bulbs for 2020. Retrieved from

https://au.pcmag.com/lighting/30286/the-best-smart-light-bulbs

2. Delaney, J. R. (2020). The Best Smart Locks for 2020. Retrieved from http://au.pcmag.com/smart-locks/44061/the-best-smart-locks

3. Null, C. (2020). Best smart bulbs for your connected home. Retrieved from https://www.techhive.com/article/3129887/best-smart-bulbs.html

4. Null, C. (2020). The best smart lock for a keyless home. Retrieved from https://www.techhive.com/article/3212828/best-smart-lock.html

5. Stefanov, D. H., Bein, Z., & Bang, W.-C. (2004). The Smart House for Older Persons and Persons With Physical Disabilities: Structure, Technology Arrangements, and Perspectives. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NEURAL SYSTEMS AND REHABILITATION ENGINEERING, 12(2), 228–250.

6. Meensika, S., Xuanxia, L., Ponchan, P., & Mahasak, K. (2012). Research and Thinking of Smart Home Technology. International Conference on Systems and Electronic Engineering (ICSEE’2012), 61–63

7. Google. (2020). Learn about the Nest × Yale Lock before you buy. Retrieved from https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9251009?hl=en

8. u-tech. (2020). U-Bolt Pro: The Ultimate 6 in 1 Smart DeadBolt. Retrieved from https://store.u-tec.com/pages/ultraloq-u-bolt-pro-bluetooth-enabled-fingerprint-and-keypad-smart-deadbolt

9. LIFX. (n.d.). LIFX A19+. Retrieved from https://www.lifx.com/collections/lamps-and-pendants/products/lifx-plus

10. August Home. (2020). Smart Lock + Connect. Retrieved from https://august.com/products/august-smart-lock-connect