Definition of Smart Home

If someone tells you that their house is smart, it is not that they have personality think for herself - although in some cases, I am tempted to think that the house is more intelligent that the owner ...-, if not that he has the latest electronics to facilitate chores newspapers.

Home automation

A home is smart when a series of electronic systems, sensors, and devices have been installed, so that we can control it easily, even from a distance, and the house performs certain actions for its account.

An example of the latter would be the management of heating and air conditioning, so that our home always has a temperature comfortable, whatever the time of year.

This can be achieved by installing temperature sensors and connecting them to a computer or a dedicated device, which once we have programmed it, deciding which temperature is the best for us, sends commands to the heating or air conditioning control devices.

This automation is what is called home automation.

The Internet of Things

Home automation has been around for a long time, since we can link various automatisms using domestic wiring, sometimes with cable inside the walls. Technological advancement has brought us wireless connectivity and miniaturization, which have allowed the extension from the concept of home automation to many other aspects, even outside the home, giving rise to what in English has been called Internet of things (Internet of Things), abbreviated as IoT for its acronym.

Currently, and under the umbrella of the IoT, there are devices that allow to control almost everything imaginable, either automatically or facilitating human control.

The essence of the smart home: let it do things for itself

Recapitulating, we will say that the smart home is the result of the intersection between the architecture, the interior design and the most advanced technology, which allows the automation in unattended mode of certain tasks but also on the condition that there can be supervision or set goals by people residents.

Thus, the smart home seeks

• Energy saving. As the multiple sensors distributed throughout the home are more reliable than the sensation human, it uses exactly the Energy necessary to heat or cool the house.
• Provide us with more time. By automating certain tasks, we stop thinking about them. If we wake up every morning at a certain time, the same house (through its artificial intelligence) you can pull up the blinds and start heating our coffee, so we can save this time to get to work a little earlier... Or sleep five more minutes!
• Allow us remote control. Turning on the air conditioning ten minutes before we get home so that when we enter it, it is priceless


• Increase our safety. Cameras, sensors movement... they are elements that warn us of intrusions and suspicious movements even when we are absent

Photos: iStock - Onfokus / Greyfebruary