What is home automation?

Home automation is the automation of various electronic devices in your home by using specific hardware and software. Home automation is also known as domotics.

The term may be used for sand-alone programmable devices, like smart lights and cooling systems, but home automation more appropriately describes homes in which almost everything—smart switches, appliances, heating and cooling systems—connected to a remotely controllable network.

In an automated home, devices can trigger one another based on certain condition reducing the need for manual control.  For example, you can put your thermostat on specific temperature range so that it turn off when temperature is favorable, or you can schedule to turn the A/C on about half an hour before you return from work so that you don’t have to return to a heated room. Home automation makes life easier and can even save you on electricity bills. Another benefit of home automation is that the devices are used efficiently without wastage of their usable lifetime. One of the key aspect of home automation is that devices can be connected to the Internet, as a result these can be controlled remotely. Home automation can also lead to enhanced safety with use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices like security cameras and systems. The term Internet of Things may be familiar to some and not so familiar to many. For the later, let’s introduce IoT in the following section.

Home automation works on three levels:

Monitoring: Monitoring means that the devices can be remotely checked through a mobile app. For example, someone could check the status of lights, fans etc.

Control: Control means that the user can remotely control the IoT devices, like zooming a night vision security camera to see particular spot of a living space.

Automation: Finally, automation means setting up devices to trigger one another based on specified criteria, like having a smart siren go off whenever smoke sensor detects smoke in a room where the sensor is placed.

What is IoT?

Over the last couple of years, IoT has emerged as one of the most significant technologies of the 21st century. Now that we can connect everyday equipment—home appliances, automobiles, heaters, baby monitors—to the internet, smooth communication is possible between people, things, and processes.

The Internet of Things or IoT in short, is described as the network of physical objects (“things”) that are fitted with sensors, software, and other technologies for the objective of connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems via the internet. These devices may range from ordinary domestic objects to highly sophisticated engineering tools. With more than 10 billion IoT devices connected today, experts are seeing this number to 22 billion by 2025.

Now, physical things can share and collect data with negligible human involvement. In this super-connected world, digital systems can keep record, monitor, and modify each interaction between connected things. The physical world meets the digital world—and they cooperate to create a world ever more convenient and efficient to us all.

What is a Smart Home?

A smart home refers to a home setup where appliances and devices interconnected and online and can be automatically controlled remotely from anywhere with an internet connection using a mobile or other networked device. In a smart home a user can locally or remotely control functions such as access to the home, temperature, lighting, and other objects and functions. Smart homes are efficient in terms of energy saving, effective use of devices and easy management of necessary domestic tasks.

What is the relationship among Internet of Things, Home Automation and Smart Home?

The Internet of Things, AKA IoT, refers to any device that’s connected to the Internet that is not commonly connected; for example, a smart bulb that you can control via an app. In general cases, home automation devices are by default IoT devices, which are automated to trigger one another. While IoT refers to the devices, home automation is what you can do with the IoT devices to make your life just a tad bit easier. On the other hand, a smart home is a home that can do things independently. The underlying hardware and software of a smart home is usually IoT devices and platforms. In one sentence home automation is the process of automating a house by using IoT devices to make it a Smart Home.

Home automation components

Internet of Things Devices

In 2015, there were 3.6 billion IoT devices. By the end of 2020, that number had ballooned to 12.2 billion IoT devices and counting. While we can’t list all types of IoT devices available, as that list is ever-growing, here are some of the most popular:

Lights: Smart lights can make adjusting your lighting more convenient and customizable than ever before. Amost all smart bulbs can change their color, can be dimmed, be scheduled, or even blink to the beat of music.

Locks: Smart locks are one of the key devices which adds to the comfort of leaving or returning to home. They lock automatically as soon as people exits the home. What’s more,  when not at home it can be remotely unlocked to let someone in,. There are many unlocking options for smart locks, most common being passcode

Security cameras: Security cameras monitor what’s going on at home from a mobile application; they send notification of motion or people, again, depending on the camera’s AI.

Video doorbells:  Video doorbells are essentially outdoor cameras that may or may not be hardwired into the existing doorbell setup, if you have one. It notifies whenever the doorbell is  pressed or the camera detects motion or a person, depending on its artificial intelligence capabilities.

Thermostats: With Smart thermostats home’s temperature can be adjusted remotely as well as set it can scheduled, saving on energy cost.

and app which is certainly safer than leaving a key under the welcome mat.

Security systems: Smart security systems typically include motion, entry, and glass break sensors, alerting of motion, doors and windows opening and closing, and, glass breaking.

Speakers: Smart speakers are often the coordinator for a smart home ecosystem, enabling for voice commands through the voice assistants. These speakers can do a lot of things apart from operating the smart devices. For example, they can keep reminders, make a shopping list, call a friend and lot more.

Displays: Smart displays are basically speakers with screens therefore work precisely the same way as smart speakers do with voice assistants built-in; because they have screens and often cameras, these devices allow for more entertainment and video chatting options. Worth mentioning that smart displays are costlier than smart speakers.

Medical care: This is a niche category of devices and there are a number of medical alert systems available in the market, many of which can detect falls which are quite useful to monitor remotely and provide immediate care if there is a senior citizen at home.

Bridges: A smart home bridge collects and translates various protocol communications from smart home devices. For example, if a mobile phone, which does not use Zigbee to communicate, wants to communicate with a smart bulb, which only uses Zigbee and not Bluetooth or the Wi-Fi native to the mobile phone, the smart home hub acts as a translator between the two. As the master home automation controller, a smart home bridges can also help divert traffic off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, easing load on the network.

Other IoT products: There are plenty of home appliances from Alexa-enabled microwaves to smart plugs, scales, smoke detectors, CO detectors and many other useful smart devices. This article focuses on smart devices necessary for starting a home automation and within a budget.

Smart Home Hubs

There are many hubs available in the market with varied degree of integration and effectiveness. Here are a few popular smart home hub products on the market are: Google Nest, Amazon Echo, Samsung SmartThings, Philips Hue Bridge, Apple Home Kit, Wink, and Logitech Harmony.

Considerations for choosing smart home hub

When purchasing a smart home hub, the following things should be considered:

• Voice control: Voice control is a very convenient and important feature to make most out of your smart home system, see if the device can integrate with your smart speaker (e.g., Amazon Alexa or Google Home).
• Integrations: Integration is the capacity to connect with smart devices or platforms of various manufacturers and cloud service providers. Some hubs offer higher integrations than others. Also, with some hubs there can be limitation of how many devices can be connected to a single hub.
• Operating system compatibility: In general almost all systems have apps for iOS- and Android-platform, it is worth checking before purchase.
• Connection: Some smart home hubs require a direct connection to your router, like the SmartThings Hub, while others connect over Wi-Fi.
• Compatibility: Know what communication protocol (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi) your smart home devices use and ensure the hub can accommodate them.
• Smart home app: Most smart home hubs are accessed through a smartphone app. Some hubs are also compatible with windows or Mac.

Issues with connectivity of smart home components

Developers have produced a wide variety of smart devices, many of which are full of novel features but few of which offer the right kind of integration needed to be part of a complete home automation system. Much of the problem has been that, because of absence of a standard protocol, each manufacturer has developed their own system of how these devices should be connected and controlled. So while you may have a smart TV, washing machine, refrigerator, thermostat, coffee maker or any of the other Internet-ready household devices on the market, you might end up using separate apps or platforms for each of them. However, this might not be a problem in near future, keep reading to know about that.

Smart home Hardware and software

Many smart home devices come with their own proprietary platforms, but these devices often cannot integrate with other smart home devices from another manufacturer, as a result it hinder devices (from different manufacturers) from communicating with one another to perform in sync — for example, if a light sensor senses a darkening room, it may not be able to tell the smart bulbs to turn on for an optimum room brightness. In this instance, a cross platform hub (like google home or amazon echo) can offer a single point of control by linking with various proprietary. An interlinked smart home hub can combine and simplify the use of smart home devices. Though a interlinked smart home hub provides a centralized command center, it doesn’t mean the proprietary hubs can be discarded; a interlinked smart home is not a complete replacement of the proprietary platform that come with the devices, but it connects them all into a centralized location. Getting rid of proprietary platform can reduce the device or system’s functionality.

Tips for choosing the right platform

While going for home automation, a bit of research will save a lot of hassle in the automation stage. This is because of the lack of standard communication protocol across smart devices of different manufacturers. Therefore, it is important to consider the following:

• Try to choose one or two manufacturers or platforms. This will increase the interconnectivity among the smart devices.
• Look for manufacturers or platforms those support wide range of products. This will help fulfill your requirement within a single or at max two platforms or manufacturers.
• Find out if there are manufacturers or brands those can work under a single interlinked hub (like google home or amazon echo).
• Consider performance of the devices. Some manufacturers produce low cost device but that results in lagged performance.
• Choose non-Wi-Fi communication methods for smart devices. While home automation starts small, over time, hundreds of device end up being in the system. If all these equipment use wifi for communication, your speed and latency will become bogged down. Also, Wi-Fi based devices are power hungry and drain battery run devices very quickly. So, you may go for low power consumption communication methods like z wave or zigbee or thread.

Matter, a big step forward

Matter is a standard under the umbrella of Connectivity Standard Alliance (https://csa-iot.org/) for smart home that simplifies how the smart home works. Matter makes home automation easier in basically three ways:

1.         Matter works locally without the need for a cloud. So, you don’t need to worry about cloud provider running out of business. And because of being local, it runs faster.

2.         Device set up is streamlined. Just scan the QR code on the product, connect via Bluetooth and the rest is taken care of automatically.

3.         Compatibility among various platforms and manufacturers. This is a very convenient aspect of Matter. If there is a matter logo it will run on your system, it’s that simple.

However, this doesn’t mean you will find all matter compliant device that you need in the market at the same time. Manufacturers and smart hub producers are coming with software and hardware updates gradually. The first wave of matter compliant products hit the market on November 2022.

The first wave of Matter 1.0, covers few popular categories of devices, including:

• Light bulbs and switches
• Smart plugs
• Smart locks
• Safety and security sensors
• Media devices including TVs
• Smart blinds and shades
• Garage door controllers
• Thermostats
• HVAC controllers

Also, there are products which are Matter ‘ready’ which means these will work with Matter with firmware update.

End Note

This article is an attempt to provide a overview of home automation to the would be smart home owners and automation enthusiasts. There might be inconsistencies of information due to updates by the manufacturers and change or arrival of new technologies. We would appreciate comments and suggestions form the reader at large. Please write to info@atyourservice360.com, we will get back to you.