Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Home Automation – Functional gadgets for comfort living and peace of mind


A little brief on what is home automation?

“Home automation is the residential extension of "building automation". It is automation of the home, housework or household activity. Home automation may include centralized control of lighting,HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security. Home automation for the elderly and disabledcan provide increased quality of life for persons who might otherwise require caregivers or institutional care.” Defined in Wikipedia [Link]

A good example of HCL’s AEGIS Home Automation:

Why Home Automation and is it really for me or it is meant for super duper rich dude’s

Home Automation started way back in 1966 with the emergence of first home computer in late 1966. But we often get a little deviated with some of future concept viral videos like one from “Corning Glass”  see below


The cost would be a fortune and functionally as most of the technology, available bandwidth, environment etc. makes it really hard to be practically accepted by even super duper rich due’s.
So, now the question is if the home automation has a history of almost 40 years and yes recently it is becoming a new buzz in our home styling. Is it really meant for the rich dude’s or it can be applied on the affordable housing societies as well?
Breaking out the jinx what exactly functional / acceptable / extendable and most importantly affordable Home Automation is for me (Mango Man : a guy tied to stringent budgets)
Sample of home automation suite by Control4:


So with the above video we have added one more cost of a tablet!!! Hey come back we were discussing Home Automation only, again we are talking fiction. Stop before judging, if we look at the recent developments with emergence of mobility and available home automation products now this all is possible even on iOS (iPod, iPhone & iPad), Blackberry OS (mobiles and playbook) and the cheapest yet effective is Andriod (where tablets starts even as low in $120 (INR 5000) even).
Ok, being smartie pants we have discussed what we know so far and is it still a dream for a Mango Man, because even a simple integration of Control4/AEGIS cost somewhere about 3-4 lakhs (including equipment, installation and service). In this package you can control basic features like :

  • Lighting – Managing moods, controlling lights by using remote/tablet
  • Curtains – Open close curtains with the help of a remote/tablet or could be integrated with your mood scene
  • Security – Two aspects front door security and gas leak alarm
  • Media – Play music/video; in a nutshell manage your digital gallery

Conclusion: with such a budget being a mango man would like to drop the idea for maybe another 3-4 years.

No, you can still have a similar experience with little help of an electrician and a network engineer, as now the technology is quite available as an out of box piece. Similar kind of experience in fewer than 1.5 lakhs including all equipment, installation and service is possible as sites like www.smarthome.com offers pre packaged bundles to start with. If you are little tech savvy and could understand little technical jargon you can afford home automation.

 “Budget Home Automation Suite for your home” will be following soon, which will answer all the commercial and practical queries from this post. Stay connected till then….

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