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.
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