Enlightened Control

Antumbra

 

“Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it work.” – Steve Jobs

Most home owners give considerable thought to what their new home will look like – the floor plan, bench top materials, shower head type, curtain fabrics etc., but perhaps don’t give as much thought into how things will really work.

As a key foundation for a smart home, an electronic lighting system is one of the first electronic systems that should be considered for any building. Electronic lighting systems have been around for the best part of a quarter of a century, but in many homes, systems have been poorly designed, incorrectly installed, inadequately delivered, and under-utilised.

Without proper design consideration, a lighting control system can be nothing more than an over complicated, expensive electronic dimming system, that promises the world. There are many installed lighting control systems where electronic light switches merely replicate traditional light switches, and underwhelms the purchaser.

From experience, confusing and over complex lighting control systems never provide ideal room control, and therefore never presents the intended lighting to its best potential. The supposedly simple act of switching and adjusting lights becomes a counter-intuitive, cumbersome task – hardly the feature of a smart home.

A well designed lighting control system will consider how a room or area will be used. Lights are logically grouped together, and presets are created using these groupings, to customise the room to your requirements. The lighting control panel elegantly consolidates multiple buttons to control your lights and other systems. Buttons can be custom labeled with multi-language text or icons to suit the application.

In an example of a residential kitchen, a button labeled Cookingcould switch on the kitchen downlights, pendant lights, overhead cupboard lights, pantry lights, the kitchen exhaust fan, and perhaps play your favourite music album – everything you may need to prepare the family dinner. Individual light levels are automatically set to your exact requirements. The user can quickly and easily control all required lights at the touch of a single button, rather than having to manually adjust each and every light.

Today, progressive lighting control manufacturers provide beautiful, elegant switch panels that can be custom labeled for the application and project, allowing the user to quickly and easily identify the functionality of the room. Functionality can also extend to the practical, with intelligent panels that magically illuminate when your hand waves over fascia, and temperature sensors that can integrate with a heating and cooling system.

Other home systems such as motorised blinds, security and audio visual, can be easily controlled from a single room control panel. When integrated with intelligent motion sensors, ambient light sensors, and timers, functionality can be further extended. Lights can automatically be controlled, seemingly knowing your routines and intentions, without you even having to touch a button – now, that’s a smart home!

 

Philips Dynalite Antumbra series of lighting control panels
Philips Dynalite Antumbra series of lighting control panels

 

Design for the Future, Now

electric-home-of-the-future

 

About 6-8 millions years ago, the common ancestors of humans and apes went their seperate evolutionary ways. The human brain became considerably larger by having the unique skills that helped develop it. Ever since these early days, humans have found solutions to problems, and found new methods and inventions to become more efficient. In our quest to populate Earth and the universe beyond, science and technology that will take us into the future.

As we progress further into the 21st century, we truly live in a technological world. Technology is a solution to being efficient, to overcome problems, to being connected. We have had a century of many technological advances and modern conveniences that provided us with time saving appliances and information hungry devices. We now live in a connected world, where appliances and devices are connected to each other by a huge network – the cloud. Welcome to the Internet of Things.

The early 20th century saw the introduction of domestic technology, or household machines. These were typically appliances that made life easier (e.g. sewing machines, washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc.). In 1939 Popular Mechanics Magazine predicted the future with a cover and article The Electric Home of the Future, that depicted many modern day appliances.

Early adopters created their own ‘smart homes’ (a loose term by todays standards) in the 1960s after the visions of the dreamers of the 1950s. The first home automation machines arrived in the late 1960s in the form of the home computers, that were very large, and very expensive. Such machines or computers, could be programmed to perform simple tasks – turn appliances on/off, adjust temperature etc.

In the 1970s, the grandfather of home automation, X10 became available – a simple, but unreliable system that could control appliances over power lines. The 1980s and 1990s saw the development of networked systems (e.g. lighting control and wireless data) and digital media (e.g. Compact Disc by Philips and Sony). The Apple iPod arrived in the early 2000s, followed my smart phones with revolutionary touch screen user interfaces. The rest is history, as devices become even more convenient and connected.

There are technological steps we need to take in order to advance into the future. For our personal living, we currently enjoy the convenience of smart appliances (e.g. lighting systems, digital music systems etc.) and smart devices (e.g. mobile phones, tablets, wearables etc.), that when integrated, provide the basics of a smart home.

In a smart home, multiple appliances and systems are connected to each other, and controlled by smart devices. With the progression of the Internet of Things, smart homes will evolve and become connected homes within smart cities.

Home owners, specifiers, and other influential stakeholders need to be aware of the latest smart home technologies, and implement at least the core systems – power, lighting and data, to best future proof the home.

If we design for today, we will only have homes for today, and not for the future. Design for the future, now.