Smart Home integration

The year was 2004. Smart Home elements were in their infancy and some of the up-market homes I was working on would have a Home Management System (HMS) that had very basic functionality - opening curtains and blinds, running Air Conditioning, and lights and alarm systems were basically the limit of capability. Still though, it was a sign of the future and we had quite a few projects in Queensland who were taking the technology and running with it.

The "brain" of the unit would be a fairly sizable computer we would hide in a well ventilated storage space or linen cupboard. Most of these homes had fairly elaborate designs, with complex layouts and a big part of the issue with integrating these HMS in homes at the time was that everything ran by cables all the way around the house, so large houses had thousands of linear metres of cables. This cause big issues with other services. This restricted the practical function of these systems to high-end homes that had been designed, in part, around these HM systems and were set up to be future proofed. Wireless systems were developing well but was very expensive and many systems would be part wireless, with cables as the main form of internal system communication.

Fast forward to 2025. Wireless is "the norm". No need for cables anymore. Home management systems have been taken up by the big players. You can now log into your home from anywhere on the planet and check your security cameras, turn on and off your lights and heating and lots of other possibilities.

If I'm honest though, I'm a bit disappointed by "the future".

According to the Jetsons, we should have flying cars and be living in our sky-houses. We should be eating our food in pill form. We should be wearing full silver bodysuits and teleporting back to the mothership.......but I digress.

Technology has come in leaps and bounds. We are far more advanced than we thought prior to the year 2000 and computers have had a massive impact on that. Where to from here?

Well, I'd only be speculating, but it doesn't seem too far away that all our housework will be undertaken by robots (we already have vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers). It doesn't seem that far away that we will have restaurant quality food every night prepared by equipment within our houses (goodbye Uber). It doesn't seem that far away that we will be driven around by self-driving cars (goodbye Elon). This level of automation is well within my lifetime. So, it stands to reason that we design houses that can be future proofed to incorporate these advancements and consider all the needs of future cars, future equipment and future building materials that will enhance our lives. We are already taking steps to upskill ourselves as a business.

Signing off,

Revell