I think the “smart” home will become more common.
I don’t mean that we’ll see smart versions of new things, but more of the basic things, like Light fixtures, smoke alarms, doorbells etc. Consumers will buy less and less of the “dumb” things until EVERYTHING has WiFi built into it.
I’ve worked in the home automation industry for over twenty five years. I’ve been programming “smart lighting” for over ten.
The “smart home” you see today is largely thanks to how cheaply things are made in china and repackaged by mega-corporations. And the consumers’ desire to do everything from their phone (with 2 day shipping). Automated lighting control has existed for over forty years. It’s been expensive because the parts are built to last for forty plus years and most of the older system were manufactured in the US. Those manufacturers are still mostly making things in the US but a lot of little bits are imported.
An average 2,500 sq ft home could do a whole automated lighting system for about five grand. That’s a lot for someone to buy (and install) from Amazon but it’s nothing if it’s bundled into your mortgage.
Nothing beats a wire. For a small apartment with a few lighting circuits, sure, spend $500 on some wireless doodads. Now you’re stuck relying on software updates and firmware updates by your router, your wireless bridge, your smart buttons, your lighting fixtures, your mobile OS, the lighting app, and maybe another app to combine everything, not to mention your “smart speaker” if you want to yelp your commands into the air. On the other hand, if you get everything from one manufacturer, it’s built on an isolated network that grants access to your mobile device and the system is self contained and essentially bulletproof until the power goes out.
Lighting is a life safety segment. You won’t pass inspection unless you can turn the lights on and off from a physical switch or button that doesn’t rely on your home wifi.
It’s up to electricians and builders and AV experts (and CEDIA) to convince future home owners that it’s worth getting this stuff installed before the home is built rather than letting them decide to buy something prone to failure on their own.
I love smart lighting. I wish everyone would invest any amount of money into it. But, if I’m reading you right, a wifi lighting world is not something I would hope to see become more commonplace than the current path of wired automated lighting. I’m in agreement with you though. It’s really sad when I walk into brand new homes that have no lighting control (or distributed audio) at all.
Am electrician, 100% with you. Relying on apps and wifi for your home is NOT worth the money you save. It’s straightforward enough for us to do the job properly, and you will be MUCH happier with the results. It will also improve resale value, which your rinky-dink wifi devices won’t. Because they’ll be obsolete.
This isn’t me saying it to drum up work. We’ve got plenty of work. I ain’t selling nothing here. Invest in an electrician for a few days and it will pay off.
How easily can distributed sound be added if I’m gutrehabbing a house room-by-room?
This is a complicated answer just because there’s so many options and variables. We always tell people to run more wire than they think they’ll need.
Proper speaker wire is fire rated for in-wall use - don’t run lamp cord in your walls. 18 gauge, two pair or four pair is typical. While the walls are open; run at least one Cat6 to TVs, potential wifi access point locations, security camera locations, door bell, light switches, even speaker locations and someplace you think you might want a source component (turntable, etc). If you want controlled shades, they may take special wiring which you’d definitely want to run now. Worse case, 18/4 and Cat6. Everything should start from a central location not far from your electric panel.
You’ll need to balance how you want to control the system with how the system you want can be controlled. If you want in wall keypads or touch screens, that control system needs to be compatible or made compatible with your source gear. If you want to control everything with an iPhone or iPad, you’ll need to look into a control system that’s compatible with that.
Consider that a ubiquitous 110v commercial amplifier can likely power all the speakers in your home but it lacks volume control. Most whole home amplifiers lack a volume control you can operate from a mobile device. There are in-wall volume controls that can sit between the amplifier and the speakers. To use those, you could run 18/4 (and maybe Cat6) from the amp to the volume control then 18/2 from the volume control to the speaker. You could also consider a matrix switcher with preamp. This would distribute one or more sources to the amplifier channel (speaker zone) you choose and possibly give you remote volume control.
Those are just some thoughts. You might want to check out these sites for equipment ideas: monoprice, sweetwater, snapav, russound.
Thanks for sharing your experiences! Are there any brands, guides, platforms, etc that you would recommend?
I’m getting my feet wet with Home Assistant and would love to “Do it right”!
Lutron is the most common for lighting and shades. They work closely with electricians, architects, and designers. Lutron has some consumer facing products (Caseta) that may be applicable to most people wanting to take a step into real control systems. That’s not to say they have all the capabilities you’re looking for - they stay in their lane.
Crestron is far more robust as they offer everything from lights, shades, speakers, control systems, AV distribution, etc. They’re huge in commercial too. You would need to contact an AV pro to get Crestron installed and programmed.
There’s handful of other brands you may come across (Control4, Savant) as you research your local AV installers. I don’t have as much experience with them. Both had questionable beginnings but I would assume they’re much better now.
Just make sure whoever you deal with is authorized or certified dealers and programmers. It’ll cost a bit more than people working out of their trunks - but you get what you pay for. As with all things ‘internet’, do your own research. I can suggest starting here https://cedia.org/homeowners/
Nothing beats a wire. For a small apartment with a few lighting circuits, sure, spend $500 on some wireless doodads. Now you’re stuck relying on software updates and firmware updates by your router, your wireless bridge, your smart buttons, your lighting fixtures, your mobile OS, the lighting app, and maybe another app to combine everything, not to mention your “smart speaker” if you want to yelp your commands into the air. On the other hand, if you get everything from one manufacturer, it’s built on an isolated network that grants access to your mobile device and the system is self contained and essentially bulletproof until the power goes out.
Both wireless and proprietary/single-supplier are deal-breakers for me. As such, stuff like what you install (presumably Crestron or similar) is just as worthless to me as the shit from Amazon. Basically, between surveillance capitalism and vendor lock-in, nobody in the industry wants to meet my needs. So I’m either going to have to resign myself to having a “dumb” house forever, or build the whole damn system from scratch myself with blackjack and hookers Arduinos and Home Assistant!
There’s nothing wrong with building it yourself other than you need to acquire all the skills to do so and source all the components yourself and figure it out on your own when it doesn’t work. If that works for you, that’s great.
Crestron and Lutron stay out of the consumer market, in part, because you need to be a licensed electrician to install components of their systems. I can tell you from experience, even with the right training and certification, it’s very easy to blow something out. And when something doesn’t work, you have them for tech support and you get a great warranty. The stuff is rock solid and works for decades. I rather buy a home with a single supplier system than one that was hobbled together. Because when I then have a problem with something or want to upgrade the system, I know who to call and what the options are.
Oh, there are some distributers with some in-the-middle gear that might be sort of accessible to “consumers”. You might have to lie and say you’re a professional. Off the top of my head, I’ve worked with almo.com and adiglobaldistribution.us and snapav.com. Still, the skills to install and program this stuff is something to acquire.
No WiFi please. There are much better technologies for home automation.
Matter/Thread has the potential to make this happen. Finally a common network across both wired and local low powered mesh-based networks that’s easy to use and can do pretty much whatever anyone would need.
Lots of hype, but very slow rollout means we’re just not seeing that potential develop. You really need to use older tech as well, which keeps it from being available to non-techies
Actually efficient hardware and better batteries. I’m really interested in owning a laptop or mobile some day that can comfortably work for 20+ hours without being charged.
I forget where I read this, but someone posited that the goal has always been “all day” battery. Ever since the first smartphones ,we’ve had, largely, the same battery life. It lasts most of the day and that’s good enough for most people. The secret, though, is that actually the batteries have gotten way bigger and more energy dense, it’s just that the processors and mobile radios are also more power intensive.
I suspect if you put a modern battery in a 5 yr old smartphone it would last 2+ days. But you’d have to deal with 3G radios, bad GPS, and slow performance.
I’m sure if I put a high density battery in my old eee PC, it could probably run for days.
I really hate that we’ve gotten such energy intensive applications. And honestly, I don’t think for a lot of them they have gotten much faster. They are bloated and programmers have been allowed to do that since every machine has so much extra resources now.
Server side services. Think of things like office online, Google cloud, etc and just expand on it. We already see some with server side gaming. I think it’ll be more commonplace in our day to day.
Internet enabled roads, highways. Likely won’t be commonly adopted within 10 years but I could see service providers/car companies rolling it out.
I think we’re also going to be seeing a lot of robots with new applications. Definitely military. But social and work ones as well.
Actual autonomous vehicles. It certainly won’t be Tesla, and it won’t have a steering wheel.
I think road signs will have embedded codes for self driving cars. Whether it’s a local broadcast signal, a QR code, or just extra blocky letters for the computer to read easier, road signage and signals will be directed to the computer in the car, not to inform the human in the car.
Maybe much farther out in the future when autonomous vehicles are the default. That’s a lot of signage to rejigger for very little gain, while mapping and CV already handle that small part of driving quite well.
Hmm. Maybe the kind of signage I’m thinking of would only be useful for construction zones and emergency vehicles.
Maybe, but cars are already pretty good about reading signs.
It’s the lack of signs that’s the problem. Self-driving cars are pretty good on a well marked and signed road: if that’s all it took, we’re there. It’s the ubiquity of exceptions and edge cases that’s the problem.
My car recently did a one month trial of self-driving and it was a lot of fun. Also eye-opening. It did work really well on well-marked roads. However it also made me notice just how poorly marked most are. For example, it was great about staying centered between lane lines. However most local roads don’t paint the edge lines, or even the center line is worn off on many roads. Then the car is confused. I can’t even imagine what the car would do if everything were covered with snow, which does happen a lot around here
One of the most amazing things about this would be to remove signs altogether. Just embed the sensor in the pavement and give the space the signs took up back to people, nature, or literally anything else.
Huge overhead highway gantries and traffic lights would be wonderful to remove, too. City sidewalks are narrow enough as is and they would be way better without 20+ft tall metal poles jutting out of the ground. Hopefully we can put trees in their place, but maybe I’m dreaming.
Ooo like higher powered rfid tags! The info could even then be relayed to the driver via the on screen display since theyre now all required.
I’ve thought about this idea for a long time.
Having sensors in the road (along the side and middle line) and receivers on cars would do a lot of good.
The sensors could tell the car how close it is to the side/middle. They could tell the car how close other cars are around them. They could tell the car the condition of the road surface (ex wet or icy). They could be programmed to the speed limit of the road and keep the cars moving at that speed. Probably many others uses.
The downside is building a sensor that can withstand weather, traffic, crumbling infrastructure. Also they would have to have a way to stay powered up for years. And if you made them re-programmable there is another level of security that needs to be added to them. And then there is the cost to retro-fit all the roads with these sensors and building a common receiver that could be installed on new cars.
I don’t think my idea is practical at all but it’s a cool idea
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