An Introduction to Smart Homes and IoT
Homes have undergone rapid transformations since the Industrial revolution. Over the last hundred and fifty years, various technologies from ovens to ranges, washing machines to refrigerators, lawn mowers to sprinklers along with televisions and automobiles have become an integral part of home. Each wave of technology has remade what the home is, what it means to live in a home and what each member of the family does in it. Over the past few years, a new set of technologies which were hitherto envisioned only in academia and fiction and experimented with by a few technologists are making their way into the homes of a larger consumer base, starting mostly with the more affluent classes. Like most technologies which are first adopted by the more privileged in the society, these too will eventually reach the masses and come to redefine what home is for society on the whole.
These new technologies I am referring to are smart home devices. At first glance they seem to be reiterations of common electrical and electronic home appliances such as televisions, thermostats, coffee makers and light bulbs with added Wi-Fi capability and microchips. However, on deeper inspection one finds that they are capable of actions and consequences which their shells might not convey. Homes can now be monitored from afar. Thermostats can automatically hibernate when there are no inhabitants, televisions and music systems can play content from other devices seamlessly, lights can be synchronized to the content the televisions play and sprinklers can work efficiently in coordination with weather forecast. Content and control can now flow not only from a human to a device regardless of location, it can also flow from one device to another while simultaneously tapping into external sources.
Most home appliances like microwaves, refrigerators and washing machines already contain a small chipset to assist in timing and control functions but they have been autonomous and are rarely re-configured unless they were repaired or serviced. Over the last few years, several new models of traditional home appliances are being introduced with the qualifier ‘smart’. They seldom vary in the basic form and function compared to the non-smart version but they boast the capability of being network enabled. This allows the device being connected to the network to access required information for it to perform more efficiently while also allowing the buyer to be able to remotely control it.
The advent of broadband connections and ubiquity of Wi-Fi at home along with a bevy of personal computing devices has accelerated the introduction of smart home devices. The variety of smart devices now available for the home include light bulbs, thermostats, coffee makers, smoke alarms, garden sprinklers, garage doors, window shades, air conditioners, washing machines dishwashers and of course, refrigerators. Even media devices like television, speakers and printers have become ‘smart’ by being able to connect to the internet without being connected to a computer. Along with the ‘smart’ versions of home appliances, smart homes can have a range of sensors which tracking changes in the environment by detecting motion, air pressure, air quality, humidity, temperature, moisture, light and sound. By detecting or measuring and transmitting the data via the network, they keep the various appliance systems and the smart home users informed.
IOT
These smart home devices belong to a larger phenomenon called the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT devices can be any object; mechanical, electrical, electronic or operated any other way with an embedded processor and radio protocol, a power source, and inputs and outputs in the form of sensors and displays. They have the capability to capture data from the physical world and transmit it virtually and similarly gather instructions virtually and perform physical actions, thus becoming agents in the physical world. They combine the properties of computer networks where one can interact with terminals (here IoT devices) without a physical presence and the properties of real world objects that can sense and affect physical change. By doing this, Internet of Things becomes a uniquely new phenomenon with new salient properties, uses and consequences. Various industries use the word ‘smart’ to qualify devices and spaces equipped with IoT systems. Smart devices are slowly becoming pervasive within homes and cities at various places in the world creating smart homes and smart cities. By the appearance of IoT devices in these spaces, our understanding and experiences of these spaces will change, just as electrical appliances and televisions changed the dynamics of the home and electricity and automobiles changed the nature of cities.
The phrase “Internet of Things” (IoT) was first used in 1999 by Kevin Ashton from Auto-ID labs (once part of MIT) which then did work on RFID technologies. He used it to describe a way to connect the Internet to the physical world. Most of the data on the Internet right now is human generated. With the help of sensors, we can “enable computers to observe, identify and understand the world without the limitations of human-entered data”. The work of this lab focuses on businesses and Kevin Ashton’s presentation, which was given at P&G for their supply chain, was clearly in an industrial context. Tagging goods and embedding sensors into the industrial environments has a vast amount of potential applications from logistics and supply chain management to capturing metrics. This could not only save millions of dollars in labor costs and reduced losses but also open up new avenues of commerce. By coupling physical objects (and the information they generate) with the information from various networks, the physical worlds and virtual worlds can be made continuous.
To see how pervasive IoT is right now and to get a visual look, I would suggesting browsing and exploring this Information is Beautiful page. Internet of Things is sometimes referred to as Internet of Everything too. If you would like to know more, the wiki page, unsurprisingly is a great place to start. Also look out for more articles on this blog.
*This post contains excerpts from my thesis which can be read in its entirety here.
