Sunday Times 2
The home of the future is here
In the home of the future, the front door will ‘talk’ to your smoke alarm, lights will flash when the fridge door is left open and a teddy will put your child to bed.
That’s the vision presented by Qualcomm at this year’s Mobile World Congress in its Connected Home, which shows how almost anything in your house can either be controlled by a mobile, or be linked together electronically.
Other features include the August smart lock that unlocks the front door when the home owner is near, smart TVs that show notifications and can warn when a child is using the web when they should be asleep and a system that lets you change all the clocks in your home at the touch of a button.
All the products in Qualcomm’s concept three-roomed house are sold by individual companies, or have been developed by the California-based firm, but they all run the AllJoyn software.
AllJoyn is an open source project set up by chipmaker Qualcomm in 2011.
It is a programme that can be added to smart devices to make them ‘talk’ to other devices running AllJoyn.
The company has since partnered with a number of companies that have developed smart household devices to help develop the software further.
It works by letting users set triggers for events. For example, if someone opens the fridge door this triggers an event, such as making smart lights flash, or an alarm to sound.
At the front of Qualcomm’s house was the August smart lock. Fitted to the existing door lock, the battery-powered device is controlled by registered phones or tablets using the August app.
To open the lock, anyone with a code can approach the door, enable their phone’s Bluetooth and press the relevant address from the app. The lock takes a few seconds to scan for a paired Bluetooth device. It then confirms the visitor’s identity.
A circle of red dots on the front of the device will turn green and the August lock will twist to release the lock and open the door.
To grant key-less access to friends the homeowner must send them an invite using Facebook contacts or their phone’s address book.
When someone enters or leaves the house a notification is sent to the owner and the lock automatically closes after 10 seconds to secure the door. The August device will be available from Spring for £119 ($199).
Using AllJoyn, this lock can then be connected to a smart smoke or security alarm, such as Nest. When the alarm detects smoke, it triggers an event that is picked up by the lock. The lock then automatically opens to let people leave the house in a fire quickly.
Elsewhere, a smart security alarm, such as Canary, can be connected to smart lights from LiFx. The lights could then flash in the bedroom, for example, to silently alert homeowners to the fact there is an intruder downstairs. Canary will be available from July and costs £119 ($199). The system can also be used for people with poor hearing.
Canary has a built-in HD video camera with night vision, microphone speakers to track changes in sound, temperature, air and humidity sensors, passive infrared motion detectors and a siren.
The privacy settings can also be customised. For example, Canary can be ‘armed’ at certain times of the day or week.
In the Connected Home demonstration, when the door was left open for more than five seconds, the LiFx lights changed colour, and flashed – and these different triggers and events can be customised to make the wait shorter, or change the sequence of flashes.
This Elertus sensor can also be fitted to a fridge or freezer door, or a cookie jar for dieters.
An example of this was demonstrated in the child’s bedroom of the mock-up house.
If a parent puts a child to bed, but the child starts watching YouTube on a phone, or starts playing a games console, a smart router alerts the parents, via a TV notification in another room that their child is still awake.
The parents can then remotely shut off internet access to that room only.
Elsewhere in the child’s bedroom, a network of devices, lights, clocks and even a smart teddy bear were connected to help a child wake up, or go to sleep.
Qualcomm demonstrated that at the touch of a button, an alarm clock can start ringing, the smart lights can slowly brighten and a teddy can say ‘good morning’ to the child.
This can be reversed when it’s time to put the child to bed, and the teddy will instead say ‘goodnight.
© Daily Mail, London