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Innovations In Smart Home Technology

With advancement in technology, scores of cool gadgets are finding their way into more and more homes and changing the way people live. These gadgets are not just fancy, they are providing quick solutions to everyday problems, making our lives so much easier. The simple designs and improved functions reduce human effort and conserve space. I am always interested in new gadgets and gizmos that are being developed, to make our home lives easier and I regularly surf the net looking for cool gadgets.

So, what can we look forward to in 2017?

Here are 5 of the best (in my opinion) that are going to make our homes a little smarter and our lives a little easier…….

1. Best Cookware

Now this is smart – WeMo wireless smart home platform, Belkin’s Crock-Pot is the first smartphone controllable slow cooker. Via the WeMo iOS or Android smartphone app, you can adjust the crock pot’s settings from anywhere, receive reminders, change the cook time, adjust the cooking temperature, use the timer to calculate cook times and process, or even check the status of your dish so you can come home to a perfectly cooked meal. How smart is that? And who wouldn’t like one? Me.. me.. me!

2. Best Refrigerator

Samsung (who else!) Family Hub. 4-door Flex Smart French Door Refrigerator – this connected refrigerator has everything but the kitchen sink. Its large touchscreen on the front door lets you view family member’s schedules, leave notes for each other, order groceries, play music and even watch TV! In addition, the fridge has three cameras inside which take a picture and email it to you every time you close the door. No more guessing or trying to remember if you need to buy more milk! Pricey of course, but this is the most innovative fridge. Ever!

3. Best Smart Garage Door Opener

Searching or reaching for that elusive garage door remote while trying to navigate a dark street at night or around children’s discarded toys or even sometimes your children often proves awkward and dangerous, to say the least. Chamberlain’s garage door opener lets you tap your device’s screen to open or close your garage door. The company is also planning to add geofencing capabilities so it can sense when you are approaching your driveway and automatically open the garage door and then once your car is safely parked inside, to close your garage door. This gadget has been designed to be utilised on most existing garage doors.

4. Smart Lighting

Smart lighting is not new with many designs already having an app component for remote control. Believe it or not, though, a new smart lights system can actually sense when you (and your phone!) are on your way home and will react accordingly by turning the lights on or off, This type of automation is achieved by tying your lighting system into your phone’s geofencing features. Geofencing taps into the phone’s GPS system, in order to alter your lighting system when you’re in the area. If you are always carrying your phone, you may never have to enter into a dark driveway or doorway again, and all happens without programming, scheduling or actually touching any buttons. So smart!

5. Smart Faucet (tap)

This environmentally friendly faucet (tap) saves up to 57 litres per unit, per year. That’s a big smart saving! This innovative technology helps conserve water sources and also conserves energy with its intelligent design. By conserving water and energy, you leave behind a reduced carbon footprint. It can be used easily by everyone, including children, the elderly and the disabled.

There is so much new, interesting, useful and smart technology out there, that I found it hard to keep it to just 5, I just had to add this last one as this is something I would really want…

and…… (drumroll)…….. Smart Robot Vacuum Cleaners

Floor cleaning and vacuuming are now easier with a range of Deebots from Ecovacs, a pioneer in the field of engineering robotic vacuum cleaners. The D77, the latest Deebot is a 3-dimensional cleaning solution that has smart technology to detect and navigate obstacles! It even has the capability to automatically empty its own dustbin (so smart!). It has different modes for cleaning different types of flooring. And the best … even when you are not at home, you can pre-set it to clean your floors with its intelligent time scheduling feature. Smart, so very, very smart.

While most of this smart technology is already available and installed in homes overseas in the USA and UK, we, unfortunately, will have to wait a while longer for it to reach our shores. I am waiting in anticipation…….

Information sourced from the following sites:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-smart-home-gadgets,review-2008.html

https://shisystems.com/blog?view=entry&id=45
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/20-smart-home-technology-gadgets-that-will-leave-you-spellbound.html

 

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Can Smart cities save the world?

Before we can determine how the world can be saved we need to understand what a smart city is. A smart city should be able to provide a technology framework that enables the citizens, businesses, government and non-government entities to be able to utilise received information and communication. This means a smart city would need a foundation of high-speed connectivity to ensure effective data collection and only once this is in place, would a city be in the position to address any and all challenges to become “smart”.

There are a large number of challenges and obstacles that stand in the way of smart cities becoming a reality in South Africa. Our infrastructure is underdeveloped and ageing and a major challenge would be the lack of skills in the workforce. The lack of this essential workforce is a hindrance to the progress of smart cities nationally. As well as training, tech-savvy people are a necessity, ones that understand and can use IT systems even when under pressure. Regretfully, the development of this required workforce does not happen overnight.

The implied benefits in living in a smart city are numerous but requires that the ‘smart’ is implemented correctly and of course well managed (SA still has a long way to go here) Governments and municipalities would be better managed and improved, for example, network sensors could be placed in the drainage system and any problems would be timeously detected, for example, where blockages are occurring, capability during flooding and also real time information on any trouble spots. More online services would cut down on process cost and time resulting in efficiency. A good example of heading towards “smart” is that you are now able to submit your tax return online (those queues were a nightmare!)….hurry up Home Affairs, you need to get smart too!

All over the world people are going about their daily lives, eating meals, shopping, working in offices, using their mobile phones and travelling, be it to school, work or play. More and more people are flocking to the cities from rural areas and this is why cities are responsible for 80% of global energy consumption, contributing to over half the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and this trend does not seem to be decreasing. If we want to tackle climate change, changing the way we consume energy in cities would be the way to start.

There are 5 key areas emerging for ‘smart’ services that enable a sustainable, low carbon city.
1. Monitoring and managing the “footprint” of the city for decision-makers
2. Connected mobility solutions to enable modal shift, and electric vehicles
3. Distributed and community energy solutions
4. Smarter buildings that are transparent about energy consumption, use and generation
5. Smart energy, water and waste management

It is a scary thought that by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in urban areas and even scarier is the fact that Africa’s urban populations are growing at twice the rate of the rest of the world but… it is not all gloom and doom, there is increasing evidence that emissions can decrease while economies continue to grow. The answer is….low-carbon trajectory, which is actually feasible and makes good sense. In the past, growth was the main measure of economic success, but this growth is presenting huge challenges for Governments. More people means increased consumption of valuable resources such as water and energy (we are certainly aware of our current water situation). More people in the cities means that more services are required e.g. firefighters, police, medical care and education and often the services are required before enough taxes are received to cover their costs.

So, instead of measuring physical growth, a city’s success should be measured by its utilisation of resources such as water, energy and others. To be measured further by its ability to maintain a high quality of life for its residents. In other words, cities HAVE to become smarter about how they use existing capacity and resources in order to save the world.

References:
http://www.dfafrica.co.za/press/2016/2016-02-23
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/smart-cities-energy-consumption
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/08/climate-smart-cities-could-save-the-world-22tn-say-economists
https://hbr.org/2012/10/tech-savvy-cities-are-saving-m

 

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