The most influential technology event in Europe, IFA 2015, ends. In its name in English, the Internet of Things, IoT, focused on the home that aims to provide intelligence to our homes. Even though most of the essential launches this year have been made in separate events for each brand, we have been able to find a clear trend across the sector.
Before explaining, we say it is exceptionally a typical day inside of the first smart home we could live in it.. I would like to briefly explain that IoT refers only to an everyday object having an Internet connection. That can serve as a link between us and the network. In particular, the elements connected to the Internet within our homes will form part of a standard called a smart home. Which, in turn, will be integrated into a larger ecosystem: the connected city or smart city.
We should not confuse if we live inside of a smart home with home automation. The latter can perform a series of actions given by the person automatically, without the person having to interact directly. A smart home is one that, through sensors and devices connected to the Internet. That is capable of executing more complex actions automatically and without interaction by the person, learning about our habits, recommending us, and creating a network of connected services around the entire house, regardless of its function.
In the kitchen field, the vision of the future that I liked the most was Panasonic. The company proposes an induction center concept that reacts intelligently to the placement of pots and pans and locates and tracks our kitchen tool’s entire hob. With this, we do not have to worry about the limitations of its placement. We manage to save a good part of the energy consumption by using only the necessary surface. This induction hob incorporates a sensor. It indicates the weight in grams of the elements introduced when cooking, a great idea when preparing recipes.
In addition, it shows us elaborations based on our state of health through a screen located to the right of the inductive plate. Many will think that a screen that incorporates recipes is not an innovation, and no, it is not. The essential thing about this screen is that it is linked to our fridge to locate and classify the foods inside it. Besides, as I have mentioned, it proposes recipes based on our state of health, but wait, how does a screen know our state of health? Well, very easy, being connected through the Internet to a mirror located in our room that I will talk about later.
We finish our recipe, have the food ready, and go to the dining room table. Panasonic proposes an intelligent lighting system connected to the mirror in our room, which can generate different kinds of environments to our mood. A glass screen that can function as television to which we can send directly with our hands any multimedia content.
We go to the living room, get ready to watch a movie, and have a fully immersive experience. Our speaker system does not flood the entire room with sound. What do we do? Someone from Panasonic must have asked, as including speakers in the carpet answered another. And the truth is that without being able to test the sound quality for all the noise in the stand, at least it is an idea to consider. To complete a cinematic experience, we opted for the evolution of Ambilight technology. Incorporate TVs Philips AmbiLux 4k Ultra HD of 65 “inches with Android TV, connecting with new strips up to 10 meters Hue LightStrips Plus illuminate any room in our home in an avant-garde way. We can control lighting, change color, or turn it off from our smartphone with iOS or Android.
We move into our room, where everything revolves around a smart lighting and sound system, Panasonic’s magic mirror, and Samsung’s Sleepsense. We start with the interactive mirror, to which we return connected after the kitchen area from the beginning. The glass surface shows us all the information about our body: weight, height, fat percentage, number of calories that we must consume (here comes the connection with the kitchen screen and its recommended recipes for each day), heart rate, body temperature, hours of sleep and quality of it. Girls try on different types of makeup, well, girls and boys also if they want.
Sleepsense, Samsung’s new smart device, comes to work precisely in terms of sleep quality. If we keep This small tool under the pillow analyzes in real-time our heart and respiratory rates, as well as our movements. At the same time, we sleep, to give us up to 97% accuracy a report every morning with simple to understand medical advice to improve our sleep.
For a correct rest, both waking up and how we fall asleep is essential. Therefore the intelligent lighting system of Panasonic, together with its audio system, will bring us gently from our sleep with a light of gradual intensity and a relaxed atmosphere as well as a reduction in sound and luminosity at bedtime.
We have to leave the house, go to work, go to the park, or go out to party at night. That does not mean that we stop; we connect ourselves with our home. In this sense, the bet that I liked the most is Samsung SmartThings, which uses our smartphones to link the home hub and us.
If you live inside a smart home with The Samsung SmartThings platform has more than 200 compatible devices and sensors that will allow us, among dozens of other things. To activate the lights when they learn that we usually wake up and start the coffee machine directly to serve our freshly made cappuccino. When our child arrives from school, detect smoke in the kitchen, turn off the lights and the door automatically when we leave the house. Or turn them on whenever we want so that thieves can feel our presence.
