When it comes to my home automation set up there are a few reactions I get. Most people enthusiastically engage and ask questions, showing genuine interest. Others politely—and rather awkwardly—ignore the fact that my table lamp turned itself on for no apparent reason. Once the initial hurdle of introducing people to home automation is overcome though, I always get the same reaction.
So… you can control your lamps with your phone? That’s cool.
General reaction to home automation
While that is true, it is not the motivation behind home automation. It is easy to show off a smart home by turning on a table lamp using a phone, though that is by no means the reason for adding smart devices into the household in the first place.
Some Guidelines
This is where I would like to introduce the “golden rules of home automation”–some guidelines really– because they are important to keep in mind when integrating technology into the home environment.
- It has to be at least as useful as the existing alternative
- It must enhance your experience in some way. Whether that is through time saved, the replacement of a poor interface or the ability to completely automate the existing interaction (elimination of an interface, later discussed in more depth).
The objective is not to involve software for the sake of it, but to improve the human experience in the system in some way.
Example: Checkout Machines
Companies often use software to automate robotic processes or replace human staff in an effort to reduce cost. One notorious example of this is the introduction of self-checkout machines.
Unexpected item in bagging area.
This is a great example where the introduction of new technology and automation has not sufficiently improved the experience of those using the technology. This can’t be helped in a public environment, however we should be very careful when introducing such technologies in the home.
We observe this same phenomenon happening in fast food chains, where large touch screens are being installed to serve as self-checkout. The purpose of these machines was not to improve the customer experience or save customer time (they could just employ more counter staff…), but to reduce staffing costs and cut costs in general for the company.1
To get back to the topic of discussion, we have to question whether the home automation technology we wish to introduce has a positive effect on our lives, or whether it is simply adding another human-computer interface without much benefit.
Using a new technology to make another technology disappear
So after all this, why is it worthwhile to control lamps with a phone? The answer is automation. If a button on your phone can control your lamps, then software can too! This is essentially the simplest form of automation, where the trigger is a button push on a web page. Once you can control lights using a web interface, you can control them using more sophisticated logic defined in automations. which have the power to eliminate the concept of and need to turn lights on and off.
The real power of home automation is in its ability to make the underlying technology disappear.
Imagine a brave new world where you walk into a room and the light is already on, as you have naturally come to expect after years of living with such a technology. When you leave the room the light is turned off and nobody even takes note of it because it is completely taken for granted. This leaves you more mental capactiy to worry about other things.
Once the need to control light has been eliminated, you become more and more ignorant of “light switches” until they are nothing more than a strange fragment of the past that just used to “come with the building”. Never would it occur to you to link those flicky things on the wall to the light bulb (or future equivalent) above your head. The light is on when you need it and off when you don’t. Just like the sun rises and sets every day, without any action required on your part, we will forget that there was ever a need for pushy flicky switchy things on walls.
On the next page, we get a bit philosophical…
MY MISSION
This blog started nearly 10 years ago to help me document my technical adventures in home automation and various side projects. Since then, my audience has grown significantly thanks to readers like you.
While blog content can be incredibly valuable to visitors, it’s difficult for bloggers to capture any of that value – and we still have to work for a living too. There are many ways to support my efforts should you choose to do so:
Consider joining my newsletter or shouting a coffee to help with research, drafting, crafting and publishing of new content or the costs of web hosting.
It would mean the world if gave my Android App a go or left a 5-star review on Google Play. You may also participate in feature voting to shape the apps future.
Alternatively, leave the gift of feedback, visit my Etsy Store or share a post you liked with someone who may be interested. All helps spread the word.
BTC network: 32jWFfkMQQ6o4dJMpiWVdZzSwjRsSUMCk6
The technology that makes the sun rise and set
What if, in the distant past, people manually triggered the sunrise and sunset every day? Sounds ridiculous but let me tell you t his analogy.
Advertisement Begins
Advertisement End
They organised shifts, paid people a salary, and there was an elaborate organisation responsible for the sun schedule, charging taxes for their service. Through the invention of some “magic” sun-setting/rising technology, however, the need for humans to trigger the sun has been eliminated. Today we live our lives completely oblivious to this technology that is still working away somewhere unbeknownst to us, fully automated, reliably triggering sunset and rise. Meanwhile mankind has moved on to invent new technologies and worry about other things such as the charge left in our phones or the likes on particular Instagram photos.
Home automation is about reducing non-essential interactions with our home environment. Intelligently designed automations can make life much easier.
Think about that for a moment. We talked about interfaces before, why they are bad and why it is important to avoid introducing new interfaces for the sake of it. Now we are talking about eliminating existing interfaces in an effort to make the technology go away. This is in the sense that the technology does its job without requiring supervision or action from a human being.
Featured Content Start
Products for sale on my Etsy Store
Additional card sets are available on my store already. I am planning to create new flashcards in the future to expand into other areas of music theory and piano practice. Check my store for all available learning materials
- Rhythm training (200 flashcards!) – Etsy Product Link
- Major scales – Etsy Product Link
- Minor scales – Etsy Product Link
- Arpeggio drills – Coming Soon
- Cadences – Coming Soon
- Chord progression & improvisation – Coming Soon
- Jazz & Blues Scales – Coming Soon
Get 10% off your order by using the following link: Use code BLOGVISITOR10
Featured Content End
A light switch, for example, is a human interface designed to bridge the gap between a person and an electronic circuit. If we can completely eliminate the need to control lights (through automation), we eliminate the need for light switches! This is powerful stuff, because it applies not only to trivial examples like light switches but others as well like air conditioning, security, and maintenance.
This is why self-serve checkouts or controlling lights manually using your phone is so counterintuitive. They replace one reliable, trusted and known interface with a new, unfriendly and less-than-proven digital interface.
Conclusion
We have covered a lot of interesting aspects of home automation in this post and where I think the focus really lies. The motivation of getting your home to do things for you is not the novelty of “ultimate phone control” but rather eliminating existing interfaces through smart automation, or at the very least, replacing poor interfaces with more effective ones.