When you leave your home have you been bothered by these little doubts like have I turned the water heater off? Did I set the security at home? Did I switch off the TV?
With the introduction of smart homes these will no longer be a bother to us anymore. Any electrical component, may it be a fan or your TV or even your coffee maker, every electrical appliance in our homes can be hooked up to the home network. This will basically allow us to control our entire house with our laptops or something as simple as our smart-phone. These smart homes are now very common and have now started to create a revolution.
So people generally ask themselves, what exactly makes these smart homes so smart?
Well, it's due to the ability to connect multiple devices to your net and then wirelessly use them. This allows us to easily give commands to the system and control them.
How is this possible you ask? It's all thanks to The Internet of Things. This basically allows a person to interconnect multiple things to the internet and then use them to exchange data with one another and execute appropriate commands according to the data. You may find yourself what these "things" are. These "things" (also known as smart devices) could be anything ranging from sensors to even our daily appliances.
What do you think happens when you send a command to one your appliances?
Let's visualize this with an example.
Now you want to turn one of your appliance, let's say your water heater. You will send a command through one of your transmitters ( phone, laptop or even one of your interfaces that is connected to the network) which will be later sent to the receivers with the help of the network. Two of the most used networks are Z-ware and ZigBee.
These transmitters will first issue a command to the system its giving the command. Then it will identify the corresponding device with its item number. Once confirmed it will send the main command, that is the OFF command which will alter the state of the appliance and thereby allowing you to control the working of the device.
Now let's look at how these homes work and how they help us.
With the help of this picture we can get a pretty good picture as to how a smart house works. So basically in a smart house all the appliances are connected to the net and with the help of controllers like laptop, mobile phones and other interfaces we can controls all the appliances wirelessly. It is not only about controlling them wirelessly. They can be automated as well so that we need not bother with all the minor details in our day to day life.
Having doubts? Let us take an example.
All of us find it hard and very troublesome to go and buy grocery for our kitchen when they get over. Now imagine a situation where you need not do any of this. You can now automate your refrigerator to sense when your supplies are getting over and then directly place an order for new stock of supplies. This would save so much time and effort.
This is just the beginning. You would be able to control all the LEDs in the house, adjust their color and brightness as you would like it. You can even deactivate all your appliances except your security systems when you are leaving.
Combined with a smooth interface this system is really user friendly and really reduces the amount of work that we do and not only saves our time but also saves our other resources as well. All these factors make these smart homes really smart and a great place to live in.
For further references about Smart home systems and the principles