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AutomatingYour
Home
BY NEIL C. HUGHES
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One obvious attraction of the
technology is that it allows you to light
your home at predefined times while
y o u a r e o n v a c a t i o n , p e r h a p s
occasionally turning lights on and off to
dissuade would-be burglars.
HEATING
Considering the amount of time we
spend in our homes, maybe we should
pay a little more attention to how our
surroundings affect our health and
wellbeing. Elgato’s Eve hardware utilizes
Apple’s HomeKit technology to allow you
to check the air quality, temperature,
humidity, air pressure, and energy
consumption in and around your home,
displaying the data on an iPhone, iPad, or
iPod touch.
Unlike Philips Hue, there is no
central control unit. Eve Room utilizes
Bluetooth technology to connect
directly to your iOS devices. The
system analyzes data captured from
your home and provides reports every
day with hints on how you can improve
comfort during your relaxation time.
The promise of saving money
makes smart thermostats incredibly
appealing. Tado°, Nest, Netatmo, and
Honeywell all manufacture products
that allow home owners to control
heating and cooling remotely. By
creating climate-controlled zones, a user
can heat or cool particular parts of a
house at certain times of the day.
Tado° stands out from the crowd by
using geolocation to track each member of
your household. This enables the system to
switch off the heating when everybody has
gone outdoors and switch it on again if a
family member is on their way home.
The system also monitors the local
weather so it knows exactly how warm
the heating will need to be.
U
pon arriving at an
airport, have you ever
had a nagging feeling
that you forgot to turn
off the heating or lock
your door? How about
if you could log in to the inflight Wi-Fi at
30,000ft, turn off the central heating,
check the status of your door lock, or
even talk to a delivery driver who has
j u s t knocked on t he doo r wi t h a
package? It sounds like a scene from the
Jetsons cartoons of the fifties, but the
reality is here today.
LIGHTING
Controlling home lighting wirelessly
from your smartphone is possibly the
best starting point in building a smart
home. The Philips Hue lighting starter
kit contains the Hue Bridge that
connects to your home network, along
with three Hue lightbulbs that can
change color and brightness to meet
your ambiance requirements.
Creating “scenes” is possibly the
coolest aspect of the Philips Hue system.
For each activity, such as listening to
music, watching TV, or eating dinner,
you c a n s e t a d i ff e r e n t l i gh t i ng
configuration and switch among them by
tapping your smartphone screen.
50
enVoyage
Tech
Roundup
