A grand tour of smart home automation

(Credit: Len Wallis Audio)

Welcome, come in

So, what is a smart home, anyway? Well, pretty darned close to Star Trek, if we're honest. It's a house that is fitted with advanced and automated electronics — everything from lights to window shades to heating — that can all be controlled through a single interface.

Previously, this was limited to resistive touchscreen panels, but the arrival of the iPad changed everything, and today's cutting-edge smart homes are both sleek and user friendly.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

A sense of security

"The security side of things is probably the one that gets used the most," said Bubeck, "so if someone's at work or overseas, they can log in, check out their CCTV and make sure that nothing's going on."

The CCTV streams to a web host, and the user can remotely access them in the same way they would a secure website: with a user log-in.

"This interface [pictured] can show us the status of 'Is that door open or shut?'" Bubeck told us. "On one project, we actually had all the motion sensors, and it's something we're seeing a bit more of now — change colour on the screen if there was movement, so they could track people moving around the house and see where staff may be, for example."

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Big Brother

If you're away from home, you can use your home-automation interface to view live feeds from your security cameras. "In a home environment, you can have multiple cameras around the place, and you can tap in or tap out as needed; if you have more cameras, you'll have more feeds," Bubeck said.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Progress

You can still get resistive Crestron panels installed to control your home system, but they're not as user friendly as the iPad integration — and, as you can see, even the newer models look rather dated.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Light it up

The degree of customisability when lighting your home through a home-automation system is jaw-dropping. One example is that you can time your lights to come on as the sun goes down, which strikes us as being particularly useful; another is that if you have a room with a window at one end, you can set the lights to shine brighter where the natural light is less strong. This, according to Bubeck, allows you to make power savings by not burning lights that you don't need.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Chain reaction

Another feature we love is the ability to link actions together. "We have a movie server on here, called Kaleidescape," Bubeck said, pressing a button, "and, when you want to watch a movie, the lights dim, the shades go down and the movie starts up. So one action can set other actions in motion, and, when you're finished with that, you close out, the lights come on, the shades go up and so on."

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Universal remote

This is much more than your run-of-the-mill Foxtel remote.

"When you enter Foxtel, the TV guide, et cetera, is all on there; you can set your favourite channels, and you can edit them quite easily as well, and different family members can add their favourites [under a separate profile]. It acts as a remote, and, while you're sitting there and browsing, you can control virtually anything; say I've left the lights on in the bathroom, I can just turn those off while watching TV."

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Hot, hot, hot

One of the great things about the Savant system is how it allows you to set custom schedules for everything. This interface allows you to set up schedules for the heating, and you can duplicate days or weeks if your personal schedule is going to be the same, whether you're working from home, going to the office or on holidays.

Interestingly, though, Bubeck said that people really don't seem interested in remote access to control such things — for example, if you're getting home late and want to switch things on before you get home. "It's one of those things that people quite like the sound of, but don't really use that much," he said.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Fine detail

The Savant system really lets you drill right down in terms of how your systems operate. Here, we see how the user can set both temperature and humidity controls.

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

House with a brain

The processor that powers your smart home commands is usually housed in a specially built cabinet. Here, we can see that the system set up to run the display system at Len Wallis Audio. At the bottom is a Savant processor and Ethernet switch, while the top is populated with A/V systems and a Foxtel box.

"Your iPad is talking to your network, which is a wired network," said Bubeck. "That's wired back to your switch, which in turn is wired back to your Savant, which in turn communicates via this switch to the heating system, the cooling system, the lighting system and so forth. Or if those things don't talk via Ethernet, then out of the back of these units, it communicates via infrared or whatever it might be."

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Important, but not vital

"The most important thing in an integrated home or home-automation system is the network," said Bubeck. "Everything's talking over the network. We work very hard to make sure your network runs smoothly; all these things have different IP addresses, and if it's not set up properly a friend could visit your house and plug a computer in to your system and it just wouldn't work properly."

But if the system goes down, all is not lost.

"We have a thing we call system integrity; so, if something should happen to the central Savant or Crestron system, that lighting-control system still has its own integrity, so it can still work. You might not be able to control them from the Savant or Crestron for a period of time, but it doesn't mean you can't leave your house. They're all separate systems, they all work in their own right — and then we bring them all together."

(Credit: Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

Offset

While a home-automation system can save you electricity in terms of what you use day to day, powering the system itself takes a lot of juice.

According to Bubeck, "Obviously, there's quite a lot of electronics here, so it takes a bit of power; but we can offset that with energy efficiencies, say, on the lighting control and heating and cooling, by not wasting energy that you're not using. A lot of our clients also install solar panels, so they can power all this stuff with a clean conscience."

(Credit: Len Wallis Audio)

Catching up

Well, why can't we have commands on our iPad to tell our coffee machine to make coffee before we're out of bed yet?

"The only limitation to what these systems can do is the devices themselves and what can be controlled," said Bubeck. "You can have a lighting-control system, such as Cebus or Lutron or something like that, without the need of a central system, but a core system can control the lights and you can schedule it to perform tasks. These systems are really about integrating those different subsystems into one control system to make that user control system much more friendly for the people at home.

"In the older days, we had a serial connection called RS-232, and that allowed two-way communication. With infrared, for example, we can turn a TV on, but the TV can't tell us it's on. We don't know whether it's on or off; we can send an on command or an off command, but it can't send us any information. That's one-way communication.

"Serial was very popular and very powerful, and now we're getting more into Ethernet communication, which is an even more powerful two-way communication, and very fast; and devices are now catching up with having that Ethernet capability. Crestron and Savant have been able to support Ethernet for a long time, so they're very much ahead of the game; now they're just waiting for the devices."

(Credit: Len Wallis Audio)

Future-proof

It's all very impressive, but, given the rate at which smart home technology has developed in the last few years, would getting it now mean that you have an outdated system in five years' time?

"A lot of these systems are designed to be modular," said Bubeck, "so it might be that you have, for example, a system that might have eight inputs and eight outputs; and if you've only used six of those inputs, you might want to add a seventh — say, a Blu-ray player — then that's not a problem. If, however, you've used all eight, then you might need to go to a larger system or add on more inputs. You might need to replace your network switch; your network switch might not have enough ports.

"But it's not something we come across a great deal; we tend to make sure that we include a bit of future-proofing, so that in the advent of the next thing [coming] up, that can easily be added to the controls."