Wired: Smart Home Automation

By Alex Brooks

There’ s lots of talk about smart homes and home automation, but what does it all mean?

Describing a smart home in words and pictures seems as inadequate as describing the taste of chocolate – it is far better to experience the silky, lush taste than to see a picture of the brown substance and read about its qualities.

Home automation is when the technology in a house – lighting, alarms, security systems, air-conditioning, audio-visual equipment, water features and garages – talks to each other, often operating at the touch of a button.

It’s about making life easy for the occupants of a house, as well as offering bonuses like saving power and extending the life of appliances.

There are several different systems – or brains – available to power the automation, as well as various components that can be added to the mix.

Most home owners automate a house when building from new or renovating, as it often involves cabling the house for the technology. They can install systems such as C-bus, Dynalite or HPM as the brains, and then add components such as automatic garage openers, security systems or water features.

Alternatively, householders can simply automate certain rooms or even just the home theatre. The idea of a “smart house” is one where you can easily program the technology to respond at your beck and call.

Imagine these scenarios:

• You can arrive home at night, open the garage and turn on the outside and kitchen lights, all as you hit the magic button that opens the garage door. You never have to stumble in the dark again.
• The lights and equipment in formal entertaining areas can be programmed by a lighting designer to suit the occasion. For example, the stereo could play softly, the wall lamps might be on at 20 per cent power, the floor lamps on at 40 per cent power when you hit “entertaining” button on a remote control.
• All of your lights and electricity can be turned off at night from a switch next to your bed – or, if that’s too hard, it can be programmed to switch off on its own at midnight.
• You can let a cleaner or gardener in to your property by sending a code to your home security system from your mobile phone.
• You can program an outdoor water feature to turn on only on Saturdays and Sundays when you are home to enjoy watching it.
• IF smoke alarms go off, an emergency lighting program automatically lights up to guide occupants out of the house safely.
• A dedicated home theatre room has one remote control with a “watch movie” button that can dim the lights, close the curtains, pull down a screen and play the movie.

This is only a small range of what home automation systems can do. The technology is improving all the time, as is the compatibility with new components to integrate it with.

For example, there may be a time in the future when you hit a “watch movie” button and the television turns on, connects to the internet and allows you to download new release movies from a subscription service you pay a monthly fee to access.

And the costs are considerable. Simple lighting systems start at $10,000 but to automate an entire house is similar to re-wiring and starts at around $60,000. Some households spend between $100,000 and $200,000 to fully automate a home.

Home automation critics will tell you it’s easy enough to switch a light on at the wall – why pay the extra? But once you’ve lived with a professionally installed and programmed home automation system – can you go back?

Apparently it’s like the difference between electric windows in a car and the old-fashioned wind-up windows. Who thought turning on a light switch would become hard?