As recently as just a decade ago, the idea of a 21st century home, as depicted in countless space-age TV shows and films, seemed like a fading memory. But thanks to the magic of high-speed connectivity, smart technology, and the Internet of Things (read: devices capable of sending/receiving information over online networks), the dream of a connected house has suddenly become a reality.
What’s more, thanks to the skyrocketing demand for and growing prevalence of connected home solutions of every kind, not only is the power to automate and control one’s dwelling become increasingly available to today’s family. We’re also growingly seeing enterprising home tinkerers leverage these and other technologies to reimagine the shape of the modern household in ways even yesterday’s most forward-thinking visionaries could scarcely imagine.
Following, we present a sneak peek at just how radically new technologies such as 5G wireless connectivity, artificially-intelligent home security solutions, and further advancements are utterly transforming the shape of tomorrow’s house, and helping bring families closer together. Not to mention, for that matter, just how many innovative new possibilities they introduce, and how radically different tomorrow’s home may look from the one you currently occupy today.
Home Automation and Security
For starters, want to take greater control over home security and automation? You can get a sense of just how promising the future looks using new solutions from leading telecom and automation providers, which make it simple to monitor, control, and protect your dwelling, even from afar. Providing a fascinating glimpse at what the future holds, just a few features they allows you to introduce to your house already include:
- Remote Monitoring – Imagine, if you will, the option to equip home with door, motion, window, carbon monoxide, smoke, security, and water monitoring sensors that can detect if you’ve left something open, breakage has occurred, or an emergency situation is happening– and notify you right on your mobile device 24/7.
- Distance Controls – Forget to turn off a light before you left the house? Can’t recall if you remembered to lock the front door? It’s easy to remedy all with the tap of a finger right here, right now today.
- Video Streaming – Wondering what’s happening at home while you’re away? Already, several solutions allow you to access live cameras, recorded video, or even automated real-time text alerts to tell when the kids are back from school, or if the dog’s running rampant over your living room.
- Energy Management – Want to save on heating or cooling costs? Using a variety of energy-saving companion apps, it’s easy to control your thermostat, and switch lights or small appliances on or off remotely, as we speak.
But here’s the best part: These solutions are just the beginning when it comes to home automation and connectivity. And even more exciting than the growing number of solutions available for creating a connected home today are the countless applications that new technologies promise to offer the coming months and years ahead. Just a few advancements you’ll soon see that will define tomorrow’s connected household will include:
- Affordable solar-powered solutions for cutting your energy bill and powering your home. You’ll even see emergency and home batteries that, after soaking up the sun’s rays, can keep you up and running for hours at night, or even in the face of outages caused by unexpected events such as thunderstorms.
- Kitchens that come equipped with one-touch buttons that you can press to reorder products (e.g. paper towels or napkins) on-demand. Picture, if you will, smart appliances too, such as refrigerators that come with built-in tablet PCs (for sharing notes, playing music, or ordering groceries and intelligent ovens that you can monitor and control from a mobile device.
- High-tech bathrooms equipped with water-saving solutions and waste alarms and showers designed to spray you with a fine mist so you can get clean while using far fewer gallons of liquid. New innovations even include smart mirrors that can simulate how you look with different kinds of makeup on, and intelligent toilets (yes, really!) designed for hands-free operation.
- Mailboxes and landing pads where drones can deliver common household items on-demand from popular retailers, such as clothes, shoes, and kitchen supplies.
- Robot lawnmowers than can skim around your yard cutting the grass, avoiding obstacles as they go. These devices provide a natural complement to indoor alternatives such as robot vacuums, which are already in service cleaning thousands of houses today.
- Bedrooms equipped with sleep-tracking beds that can tell if you’re getting a good night’s rest, and auto adjust the firmness and position of mattresses in real-time using controllable air sensors to make sure you’re getting enough sleep.
- Computers with blazing fast Internet connections that let you access countless home automation, home monitoring, and home entertainment options on-demand, as well as an ever-growing variety of cloud-based online or downloadable applications.
- Super-thin wallpaper TVs, curved ultra-high-definition (UHD) 8KTV sets, and streaming music players that let you wirelessly stream down countless audio/video entertainment options on-command.
- Mobile devices and televisions equipped with digital viewing solutions that put thousands of streaming TV shows, films, and apps right at your fingertips, and allow you to use voice search capabilities to call up popular programs with a spoken command. Picture the ability to record up to six shows at a time, watch recorded shows on any TV, and even start watching shows from a personalized playlist in one room and resume watching them from another.
- Smart cars that can drive themselves, and allow you to connect via WiFi to your favorite home automation applications, e.g. Homelife.
As you can see, tomorrow’s house will look very different than today’s. Doubly so when you apply the power of technology to give it a 21st century upgrade: Technology that many solutions providers offer today.
