How Smart Is Your Home?

Unit 6, Lesson 6, Ex.4a

1. When you're not home, nagging little doubts can start to crowd your mind. Did I turn the coffee maker off? Did I set the security alarm? Are the kids doing their homework or watching television?

With a smart home, you could quiet all of these worries with a quick trip online. When you're home, the house takes care of you by playing your favorite song whenever you walk in or instantaneously dimming the lights for a movie. Is it magic? No, it's home automation. Smart homes connect all the devices and appliances in your home so they can communicate with each other and with you.

Anything in your home that uses electricity can be put on the home network and at your command. Whether you give that command by voice, remote control or computer, the home reacts.

2. Ok. Here are a few more examples of cool smart home tricks: Light a path for nighttime bathroom trips. Start warming the bedroom before you get out of bed so that it's nice and toasty when you get up. Turn on the coffee maker from bed.  And some examples of smart home devices and their functions. There are cameras that will track your home's exterior even if it's pitch-black outside. A video door phone provides more than a doorbell -- you get a picture of who's at the door. Motion sensors will send an alert when there's movement around your house, and they can even tell the difference between pets and people. Door handles can open with scanned fingerprints or a four-digit code, no need to look for house keys. While most home automation technology is focused on lighting, security and entertainment, smart appliances may be on their way as well. Ideas include: Trash cans that monitor what you throw away and generate online orders for replacement. Refrigerators that create dinner recipes based on the ingredients stored inside.

3. Smart homes obviously make life easier and more convenient. Who wouldn't love being able to control lighting, entertainment and temperature from their couch? Whether you're at work or on vacation, the smart home will alert you to what's going on, and security systems can be built to provide help in an emergency. For example, not only would a resident be woken with a fire alarm, the smart home would also unlock doors, dial the fire department and light the way to safety.

Smart homes also provide some energy savings. The devices can go to "sleep" and wake up when commands are given. Electric bills go down when lights are automatically turned off when a person leaves the room, and rooms can be heated or cooled based on who's there at any given moment. Smart home technology promises great advantages for an elderly person living alone. Smart homes could notify the resident when it was time to take medicine, contact the hospital if the resident fell and track how much the resident was eating. If the elderly person was a little forgetful, the smart home would perform tasks such as shutting off the water or turning off the oven if the cook had wandered away.

­4. A smart home probably sounds like a nightmare to those people not comfortable with computers as sometimes you may find them difficult to operate. It’s like if you try to turn on the television in your smart home, lights will start flashing, and this does happen occasionally.

Smart homes also come with some security problems. Hackers who access the network will have the ability to turn off alarm systems and lights, leaving the home open to a break-in.

Of course, there's also the question of whether an individual needs all this technology. Is our society really so lazy that we can't turn flip a light switch? It's an interesting argument, but smart homes are coming.