Trends in Smart Homes in 2021

ON Electrics anticipates a growing electrical trend towards smart homes solutions in 2021.

The recent COVID-19 lockdown has meant Victorians are spending more time at home than ever, which has increased demand for making homes more comfortable, economical, entertaining, and safe. With so much uncertainty around travel and external decisions, Australians are taking control of their home environments and this includes the connection of devices in our homes to the internet.

Smart home appliances and applications are becoming part of the new COVID Normal as technology continues to improve and in many ways our lives continue to get faster as part of the technological revolution.

Increased demand for smart homes is largely due to the following trends:

Standards continue to improve

Remember when we had to go to the local video store to watch a movie at home. Slowly, people have adopted Apple TV, Netflix, Stan, Amazon, and a series of other providers.

Manufacturers of smart home devices have ensured their products and services will work on myriad platforms to capture the broadest market share.

Don’t want to be "tied in" to a particular network provider? Technology now caters for a host of providers including Amazon, Google, Samsung, and Apple.

Relying on multiple streaming solutions once caused security vulnerabilities but companies created a set of standards designed to make smart homes simpler and, importantly, more secure.

What is a smart home?

The definition of a smart home can vary. It generally means a more connected home but can also mean:

• Lights, window blinds and video doorbells programmed and automated from a phone are designed to make homes more comfortable and safer;
• Devices begin to make use of machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing, and other technologies that actually are capable of thinking, making decisions, and learning;
• Smart devices continue to get smarter. Honeywell and Nest use machine learning to adapt their behaviour to the inhabitants of a house. This is based on observing and then replicating their habits;
• Increasing amounts of Artificial Intelligence technology such as facial recognition becoming a common feature of home security; and
• Adoption of robotic vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers. It is predicted that domestic robots will manage our chores and routine maintenance which will enable us to spend time on things we value more. Robotic butlers will disrupt the current aged care and home healthcare model with a reassuring pair of robotic eyes will be able to call for help if someone has fallen or will assist with mobility around the home.

A smart home isn’t simply plugged into the internet - a better term for much of the technology we've seen so far is "connected home."

Will technology get faster?

Continuous improvement to technology combined with the global rollout of 5G means smart home devices will be linked by faster, more powerful networks. This will mean better access to data and processing resources in the cloud.

The benefit of 5G is it allows devices to work wirelessly while also consuming less power. 5G also ensures multiple devices can be connected simultaneously.

This is particularly important for businesses as faster networks mean a faster transfer of data between devices, or between devices and the cloud. This ensures sophisticated applications that can utilise bigger and faster data streams. For example, a smart thermostat or automated security systems will have access to upgrades and more varied information for customer efficiency.

For further enquiries, please don’t hesitate to contact the ON Electrics team at info@onelectics.com.au or ‭1300 370 670. ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

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