The Nonage of Home Automation

There are many gimmicky ideas that seem appealing at first blush, but fail to take hold – in some cases they remain a topic of conversation until some breakthrough technology makes them feasible, and in others they simply fade away without ever getting traction.  The idea of the automated home has been around for decades and bubbles up every so often, but hasn’t become a part of everyday life, in spite of the fact that the technological infrastructure has been in place for at least the last two decades.  Periodically, we pause to wonder why.

What follows are some loose notes from a few coffee-break conversations that identifies some plausible reasons that we do not presently live in “the home of the future” that has been anticipated since the middle of the twentieth century.

Lack of a Common Platform

Given that most of my conversation is with designers and developers, the kind of people who leap to figuring out how to solve a problem before considering whether the problem is worth solving, the most common excuse for the failure of home automation is lack of a common platform for home automation devises.

That is to say that there are gadgets that exist that enable you to control the thermostat from your mobile device, set the sprinklers to water the lawn,  turn lights on and off and control the stereo with voice commands, and all sorts of useful things – but each of them has an independent set of controls.   Many of the controls are still manual (you have to go to the garage and fiddle with a control panel to set the timer for the sprinklers), some are configurable, and others communicate with a mobile app – but there is no central “home directory” that controls them all.

So while it is possible to have an automated home, it requires the user to learn to use an array of controls in various channels and locations to manage each system separately.   Manufacturers stubbornly resist the notion of having a common platform into which each application can integrate to give the user a single method of controlling everything, so the “convenience” of automation is outweighed by the inconvenience of managing multiple systems.

This is an entirely plausible argument, with one counterpoint: it is possible to have a home built (or refitted) to have a central control panel with redundant controls through smart phone and voice commands.  I haven’t heard of many people doing this, and a few people I’ve spoken with who were having homes built remarked that it was a very expensive option.  So it isn’t a technical limitation so much as a financial one, which transitions neatly to the next topic …

Lack of Cost Benefit

While it is possible to build or refit a home with an automation system, it is very expensive to do so and customers do not consider it to be worth the expense.   This is a far more likely explanation than the lack of a technological infrastructure for the failure of home automation to take hold.

To my knowledge, there is only one automation device that has proven its worth: the “smart” thermostat that can be controlled via a smartphone application, and which also has some learning capabilities to recognize patterns and adjust itself accordingly.   While these devices are expensive relative to manual thermostats, those who purchase them say that it takes a few years to break even on the expense and start saving money.

This seems a reasonable claim, given that the heating and air conditioning units in existence today are power-hogs and that electricity remains one of the most significant utility bills.  In many areas, a 10% savings can mean $10 to $20 per month, a hundred or two dollars a year, so the claim that there is a two-year break-even seems valid.

However, the thermostat is likely the most expensive device in the home to operate: leaving a lamp or television set running 24/7 would not consume as much energy as the heating system (which can run round-the-clock during summer and winter months) and most appliances are used as-needed and switched off afterward as a matter of habit.   So it’s unlikely a device such as a lamp timer (which already exists) would have a financial benefit that would repay the cost of the device.

For this reason, the popularity of smart thermostats cannot be extended to other appliances – and given that appliances are being made more energy-efficient by means of engineering, the cost-benefit of an extrinsic means to managing their operation is becoming even less favorable as their intrinsic efficiency is improved.

It is also a mistake to take as premise that consumer behavior is motivated by cost-benefit analyses.   Where the cost is significant, people consider efficiency (a more fuel-efficient car, for example), but generally in a vague and general way, without a detailed analysis of the actual dollar amounts, and the result is a gut-feel reaction that something is thrifty or efficient. 

Even were someone to do the math, figuring out that a lamp timer would save them fifteen cents a month, an amount so paltry lacks the power to motivate them – few will consider that fifteen cents a month is about two dollars a year, and if they do this to eight lamps, the savings are $16 annually.  Even that seems to be a paltry amount for the cost of the timers, the effort of configuring them, and the inconvenience of overriding the controls and then resetting them when actual behavior does not match predicted behavior.

Lack of Consumer Demand

Of all explanations, a lack of consumer demand seems the most likely reason that home automation has not taken hold.   People are simply accustomed to the current technology and have developed habits (such as turning the lights on when entering a room and switching them off when leaving it) based on the current technology of independent devices that lack remote control or automation capabilities and therefore see no need for home automation at all.

Home automation seems to appeal to technophiles (who love gadgets so much that they will pay a high price and bear the inconvenience of using them) and narcissists (who believe that owning sophisticated things causes others to give them esteem, rather than be bored and offended by their constantly bragging about their possessions).  For most people, the idea of an automated home is an interesting concept, but not compelling enough to pursue or invest in having their home automated.  And this, ultimately, is the cause of the adoption or failure of any new technology: if people do not see it as worthwhile, most will not adopt it.