The high-tech home is no mere gimmick
Latest devices aren’t just practical, they’re often surprisingly affordable
Race car driver Alex Tagliani has made a name for himself on the IndyCar and NASCAR circuits. Now, he’s returned to his native Quebec, settling down in an impressive $1.4(ish)-million home with his wife Bronte and their daughter Eva-Rose.
The house north of Montreal was custom built according to Tagliani’s vision of a modern smart home — a connected ecosystem that learns from and syncs to his family’s behaviours.
The 42-year-old hired home-automation installer HomeSync. The company’s technicians installed motorized window shades that recede into the ceiling, programmable lighting, heating and airconditioning, and Tagliani’s entire audiovisual setup. It’s removed the electronics clutter that punctuates so many of our homes.
Tagliani points to a series of switches and a screen at the front door that allows him to turn everything in his home on or off. One setting can turn off all the lights and TVs, adjust the house temperature and lower the blinds, all with the push of a single button. And if something unexpected happens while he’s out — like a sudden drop in outdoor temperature — he can use a smartphone app to remotely control the thermostat.
The Internet of things — embedding wireless connectivity, sensors and electronics into traditionally non-smart items — is the driving force behind the connected home. Regular, seemingly mundane household items are getting a tech upgrade, such as light switches, thermostats, light bulbs, power outlets and door locks. Samsung even makes a fridge that can order groceries. These devices learn users’ habits and can be trained to recognize their owners. All this can be harnessed to greet you with your own music playlist as you walk through your front door or ping your phone if someone who isn’t you walks through your front door.
Studies project connected devices will be the next multibilliondollar market. But only 12 per cent of Canadians own a smart-home device, despite more than a third of us being interested, according to an Ipsos poll. Cost is listed as the primary barrier.
It certainly isn’t cheap to set up a smart home, though it may lead to savings down the road. Tagliani and HomeSync both remain tightlipped on the exact price tag of this home’s automation, although Rolland Dean Winters, a HomeSync integrator, estimates it’s upwards of $100,000.
Winters said the company has automated homes worth more than $30 million, and those contracts routinely get into the sixfigure range. “If you’re spending $1 million (or more) on a house, what’s another $100,000?” he says.
Of course, most people in Canada don’t own homes worth nearly that much, if they own homes at all. But automation isn’t just for milliondollar mansions. Canadians earning an average salary — whether owners or tenants — can affordably introduce elements of automation to their homes.
Winters says HomeSync routinely sets up one-bedroom or studiosized condos with fairly comprehensive systems for about $5,000.
Automating a single-family house worth $300,000 or so could run $20,000 to $30,000, including lighting, video and audio, shades and temperature control.
Home-automation companies also partner up with developers to offer turnkey smart condos, where the new units come with a base network and owners can upgrade as they wish.
Putting in a smart system from the outset of construction can po- tentially make them more appealing to future owners.
And making a home smart isn’t just about nerding out over cool AV equipment.
Ubios has designed a smart water valve that turns the water off when nobody’s home. Pierre Gourde, marketing director for Ubios, says most home insurance claims are due to water damage. The smart valve is designed to connect to existing pipes and be controlled by a smart wall console. The console can also be used to control heating — including old-fashioned baseboard heaters — cooling, lighting and home security.
Julien Gobi, a web designer, renter and smart-home hobbyist, bought his first connected home device to condense his audiovisual remotes into a single $150 universal remote (the Logitech Harmony Smart Control). The remote comes with a smartphone app and can be programmed with different scenarios.
“That’s where the power of this toy is,” Gobi says.
He presses his remote’s Netflixand-chill mode, launching a set of actions with a single push.
“It turns on the amplifier. It turns on the TV. Then it puts the amplifier on the right HDMI input, wakes up the Apple TV and then all the buttons on the remote are dedicated to the action you’re doing right now,” he says.
It also automatically dims the lights.
Gobi later spent about $250 on Samsung’s SmartThings kit, which comes with motion and presence sensors, smart electrical outlets and a hub. The system can act as a home security device, logging its owners’ ins and outs and detecting if doors are open when they shouldn’t be.
Earlier this year, design flaws in Samsung’s SmartThings allowed people to remotely hack a frontdoor lock. There’s very little to stop a determined and tech-savvy criminal to glean what your devices have learned. Gobi says he’s concerned about the SmartThings hack and is considering switching to Apple’s recently launched HomeKit because it offers highsecurity encryption.
“The encryption they’re asking for is really, really high. If we think more about Big Brother issues with the Internet of things and the smart home, I would be more comfortable to use high-security devices, and I’m happy that Apple is now fighting a battle for privacy,” Gobi says.
Still, training connected devices to recognize your habits also means opting in to having an unprecedented amount of your deeply personal data compiled. For people like Gobi and Tagliani, the potential privacy trade-offs are a small price to pay. It’s not only about convenience and vanity — it’s about the pride of being an early adopter and the act of embracing the future, rather than fearing it.