What is a Smart Home?

This is another of those highly used terms that seems to mean different things to different people. I thought it would be useful to look at the history of the Smart Home and where it might be headed.

The common elements of a Smart Home today are:

• Home Automation, especially entertainment and lighting
• Security and Monitoring
• Climate Control
• Kitchen Management

A lot of these take advantage of Mobile Communications and the Internet of Things to provide end to end connectivity and control with Mobile Phones and Tablets being a convenient user interface. Ubiquitous home WiFi is also a big enabler as is Voice Activation. So let’s take a look at how this is progressing.

I find it interesting that Scandinavian countries are again well represented as early adopters.

Thanks again to Karthik Reddy and the team at Safe At Last for bringing this to my attention.