| ...The
vision of an electronic home, sometimes known as a “smart home,”
is being realized all over the world, in everything from a huge computerized
house under construction in the United States to standalone devices costing
less than a thousand dollars that will use the standard wiring in existing
homes to transmit video, audio, and data between rooms.
The
multimillion-dollar home that Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, has
been building outside of Seattle, Washington, will be one of the "smartest"
homes in the world -- a showcase for home-based computer electronics.
In his 1995 book, The Road Ahead, Gates wrote of his plans to
use computers to adjust the ambiance of the house to suit the personalities
of the people in it. Gates and his family will register their preferences
in a central computer, as will their guests. Computer-coded pins worn
by each person will alert sensors in the rooms as to what music or lighting
-- or even what style of art -- that person would enjoy, and the room
will automatically adjust to those preferences.
While
such specificity is certainly new, some of the enhancements Gates is
building into his house have been around for a while. In Gates' house,
the coded pins trigger lights to turn on as someone approaches and off
as they leave the area. In a California house built in 1991 (with $70,000
worth of electronic components), the owner can press a button to create
a lighted path to whichever room he is headed for -- if he wakes up
in the middle of the night and wants a snack, for instance, the lights
between the bedroom and kitchen will turn on. The doorbell is also specially
wired. If the bell rings during the day when no one is home, it sends
a signal to the owner's office phone, giving him a full audio and video
link to whoever is ringing the bell. And for climate control, the house
features automatic drapes, which open to let the sun in when the house
needs warming...
...One
system -- particularly well suited for office buildings -- uses artificial
intelligence to learn a building's occupancy schedule, so that it can
turn on the heat or air-conditioning before people arrive. Another company
sells a product that can control temperature and lighting as well as
interface with burglar and fire alarms, audio/video equipment, and telephone
equipment. People who have trouble waking up in the morning can even
program their showerhead to turn on automatically. (But they still have
to get there under their own power. So far, there are no electronic
systems to physically remove a sleepy person from bed.)
According
to Business Week, one appliance manufacturer “envisions
a home computer that could query the washing machine, find out whether
the spin cycle is complete, and notify whoever is watching TV in the
living room.” Because television is so central to most manufacturers'
visions of the "smart home," it is the first "converged"
appliance being marketed... |
