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What is a smart home?

The words ‘Smart Home’ (sometimes known as home automation, intelligent home etc.), gets mentioned a lot, and can be confusing for many.

I avoid using ‘smart home’ (or variations of), as it often implies the addition of unnecessary, complicated, cumbersome electronic technology solutions, that might require a rocket science degree to operate, and an unlimited financial budget to implement.

All homes have the ability to be smart, on different levels. Keeping in mind that technology doesn’t neccessarily have to be electronic, houses have evolved to incorporate various technologies, and have become more electronic as our awareness to have them better connected to ourselves and the outside world is realised.

All homes have multiple services and utilities; electricity, gas, water, security, television, internet, etc. that can be integarted and connected to be provide better comfort, convenience, security, and energy efficiency.

Imagine your home being customised based on what you are doing at particular times of the day: Lighting automatically dims to provide a relaxing ambience at night, or becomes brighter for dedicated tasks. Heating and cooling automatically turns on and adjusts to the optimal temperature. Your home can automatically adapt to make your living environment more comfortable.

We are very predictable in our daily lives – from when we wake up, exercise, go to work, return home, eat, relax, and sleep. Many systems in and around the home can be automated, based on our daily routines: Blinds and curtains can open at sunrise, and close at night, or close when it’s too bright or too hot. Lights can turn on when you arrive home at night, or turn off when a room is vacant or nobody is home, providing new levels of convenience.

The security and safety of your home, family, and property can be greatly enhanced. Outdoor lighting can automatically illuminate your property to deter unwanted activity, and turn on at night when there is movement. Keyless entry frees you from fumbling for keys when you come home, with automated lighting illuminating your home. Video cameras can not only record, but provide personal alerts to notify you in real time when there is irregular activity, even when you are not at home.

A home can know exactly when it is day and night, summer and winter, or when it is occupied. Power and lights can automatically turn on and off, and adjust to the optimal brightness, only when needed. Heating and cooling self-adjusts to maintain ideal comfort levels. Your home’s energy usage can be optimised to incorporate alternate energy such as solar, battery storage, and electric vehicle charging. Controlling power improves energy efficiency – saving money, and reducing carbon footprints.

By definition, a home that is smart or intelligent, can change it’s state in response to various situations. With many homes already having various technology products and systems, the benefits of having the right technologies integrated can be easily realised, to seamlessly connect our homes and lifestyle.

With developments in artifical intelligence and machine learning, we are getting closer to having technologies learn and respond, based on our habits, routines, and past experiences. For our homes, this will be the next exciting step to improve our lifestyle.

In the same way that cars evolved to incorporate electronic technologies, similarly, houses will follow. Electric windows, automated heating and cooling, handsfree communication, and improved vehicle safety are examples that are so common that they are now standard in modern cars.

Features and benefits of home and lifestyle technologies are endless, as they can be customised for your lifestyle. With the right advice, technology can greatly benefit our lifestyle, with improvements in comfort, convenience, security, energy efficiency.

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Human centric lighting – A better light

Natural light changes colour throughout the day – from a morning sunrise glow, to a bright midday sun, to a rich warm sunset. We have the technology to change the colour of artificial light in our homes – Human centric lighting*.

Clockwise

The human biological clock is closely tied to the day/night cycle of the Earth – circadian rhythm, and is pivotable for our body’s release of various hormones including melatonin that regulates sleep, and cortisol for healing. We know that light has a significant influence on the human biological clock and our health.

As much as technology can benefit us, it can disrupt our natural biological clock. We have too little of the right type of light during the day, and too much of the wrong type of light at night. Exposure to televisions, LED lights, computer screens, and mobile devices that emit blue (cool) light at night can disrupt our biological clock, delaying the natural sleep pattern.

Colour changers

Currently, lights are specified to be a particular colour temperature – typically warm white, or cool white. As a general rule, warm light is more suitable for a home because it is best for the worst case scenario. Up until now we have had limited control of light – we switch on/off, and dim.

LED lights are now available that can reproduce a range of colour temperatures (tuneable white light), and even the whole colour spectrum. Together with a compatible lighting control system we can automatically regulate light to achieve specific objectives.

With a human centric lighting system, artificial light can automatically mimic natural light. As natural light changes throughout the day and night, so too can the colour and intensity of artificial light – re-aligning our circadian rhythm to our biological clock.

A human centric lighting system can also manipulate artificial light. When we require higher levels of concentration and alertness, we can adjust the colour temperature to provide a cool light. When we want to relax or provide a more calm environment, we can adjust the colour temperature to provide a more warm light.

A better light

Lighting and control technologies have evolved to provide better user experiences. With careful consideration and expert consultation, light can be more organic and integrate better in our smart homes to provide greater levels of comfort.

For the ultimate lighting experience, let me show you how.

*Human centric lighting is also known by other names such as circadian lighting, bio-rhythmic lighting, tuneable lighting etc.

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Ditch the switch

“While every person is unique, human behaviour is predictable” ~ Anon

Our daily lives are mostly predictable, or at least very regular; from the moment we wake, to when we sleep.

A well designed smart home can take advantage of regularity, to automate everyday tasks and routines, and mostly eliminate the need for manual control, and ditching the switch.

Connected power and lighting

“Power and lighting control are the foundation of any smart home or smart building” – Simon Lakey

A smart home must have a connected power and lighting system, that will include at least: intelligent sensors, a scheduler, and a task engine.

Intelligent sensors detect motion and light levels in a room or area, to automatically control power and lighting. Sensors allow lights to operate only when required, monitoring  motion, presence and absence, and the level of natural light.

A scheduler assists in the automation of regular routines and tasks. Systems know the geographic location of the house; knowing time, day, month and year, sunrise and sunset, seasons, daylight savings, and holidays. In-built timers automatically control power and lighting at predetermined times, and lengths of time.

Powerful microprocessor task engines are distributed within the system to bring everything together, to work automatically. Using conditional logic, information from sensors and other inputs are compared and evaluated with the scheduler to make the magic of the smart home happen.

Old habits, new ways

For almost 140 years, since the invention of the electric light, we have been conditioned to manually switch power and lights, to initiate a cause and effect.

A new building utilises more lighting options than ever before, to provide architectural, feature and task lighting. Lights should be grouped into logical channels, areas and presets, to create usable scenes.

A well designed smart home needs to consider the use of each room or area, and provide adequate presets and scenes to enable required functionality.

Presets and scenes can be triggered by a combination of sensor activity, schedules and conditional logic.

Ditch the switch?

For a smart home to be truly ‘smart’, there needs to be a focus on intuitiveness, simplicity and usability.

The modern smart home already uses less switches than a traditional home, as there is less need to use switches as we traditionally have. We no longer need switches in every room, when sensors can detect presence and absense, and task engines can automate regular routines and tasks.

With careful consideration of the home owner and resident’s lifestyle, we may not need an abundance of manual switches. If there is a specific need, there are intuitive control panels, mobile applications and other solutions, such as voice control, that can compliment an intelligent connected power and lighting system.

If you’re still unsure about cutting ties to switches, you can easily allow for networked switches by pre-wiring an appropriate data cable, that can be readily accessed if required.

The time has come to ditch the switch.

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Simple Can Be Harder Than Complex

The evolution of LED lighting together with modern lighting design philosophies, and local design and building regulations, sees more complex lighting designs today than those of the past.

With more lights and different types of lights in a building, effective control cannot be achieved with traditional switching and dimming inputs. Multiple switching and dimming interfaces becomes overly complex, and counter-intuitive.

Compounded complexity

Even with the progression electronic lighting control systems, most systems merely replicate traditional switching and dimming control, albeit electronically. The pitch and promise of simplicity and intelligent control is rarely delivered to the project and end-user.

Ironically, by way of the ‘technology functionality paradox’, typical electronic lighting control systems can become even more complex, more counter-intuitive, and more confusing for the end-user.

I see many projects, and hear our many more, where the lighting control system has been ‘designed’ to control lights in a space with the user experience only considered as a means to switch or dim, resulting in an inadequate system that has little value.

A simple solution may not be the easiest

A paradigm shift is needed to think about how a building, room or space is actually going to be used – smart building systems should be designed for the user.

A smart building needs to be controlled by a quality networked lighting control and automation system that considers what the application is, who the user is, and how the spaces are to be used.

For close to thirty years the Australian designed and manufactured Dynalite lighting control system by Philips has been built on concepts of areas and presets, in a similar way that professional lighting engineers have efficiently controlled complex lighting consoles for decades.

A single button preset adjusts all lights to predetermined levels. The complexity of the lighting control system is expertly handled in the background, while the end-user enjoys a simple user interface.

The lighting control system becomes even more simple for the user by introducing intelligent sensors, timers and scheduling, and integration of other electronic systems.

Why are systems not simple?

So, why are many (perhaps most) electronic lighting control systems not simple and intuitive? Well, it’s because making things simple can be actually harder than just leaving then as being complex. The project needs to invest professional and expert time and thought to make a system simple, however, the return on investment may not be immediate.

Unfortunately some project stakeholders and other project influencers who don’t understand the vision of smart buildings, may have a greater focus on reducing costs and/or increasing profit margins. The ‘simpleness’ of a system becomes ‘valued engineered’ out of the project, perhaps for a lesser system.

The client is often left (sometimes unknowingly) with an inept and underwhelming control system for the next thirty to forty years that will never achieve the functionality requirements of a smart building of the future.

As a consequence, many electronic lighting control systems receive a bad rap for being overpriced, cumbersome and dysfunctional, and are never considered for the next project.

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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 Cooking, could 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