Centralizing is not home automation, there are those who believe that hiding the original controls and leaving everything in an application located on a tablet or cell phone is home automation.
Juan Tamayo, CTS-D*
During the last few years I have received communications from friends who want to automate their home, but it is just in the last year in which these calls or messages increased, because the home has become for many their place of work and where they are most of the time. Even, with so many changes, inside my company we opened a line of work in consulting and auditing in home automation projects.
At the initial meeting of each project the owner of the space usually expresses that he wants the best. The integrator and / or installer quotes the best he has in his portfolio, a constructive installation process is carried out that usually has many problems and in the end the customers are not satisfied. Why this happens has led me to write this opinion, and I clarify, emphasize and emphasize, it is an opinion based on 15 years of experience in the development of audio and video integration projects.
The most complex thing is to define home automation, it is a term that says a lot but does not explain anything, there is no consensus in the industry that can adequately explain the term, which makes it somewhat subjective. It will depend on the performances of each actor in the process of space which makes it very difficult to satisfy. So the first point when requesting your home automation quote is to define the basic needs you want to satisfy. A list as complete as possible of what you want to automate, and is an industrial term that is defined as "Application of machines or automatic procedures in the realization of a process or in an industry" (taken from Oxford Language – Google).
Know the user
I believe that home automation is not turning on a light circuit from the cell phone, that is just an action. Automating the lighting of the lights when entering the house to define the route that is normally taken, yes it is home automation. This makes the second point clear, you have to know the activities of those who inhabit the place to be able to carry out a correct automation process. In the design process it is mandatory that whoever selects the control elements knows and knows the customs of the people who will manipulate the elements. This indirectly indicates that programming will depend on the technological degree of the people who will live in the space.
The second point leaves the discussion open to the third point: designer, programmer and installer, they must leave operating plans for the cleaning or maintenance staff of the home, although the system must be designed for the users who inhabit the house, who are the owners, in some cases they have forgotten about the cleaning people and a simple action of turning off a television becomes a complex task.
Centralizing is not home automation, there are those who believe that hiding the original controls and leaving everything in an application located on a tablet or cell phone is home automation and I consider it one of the biggest mistakes, because the original controls will always be the main elements of action, everything can be left available in case the tablet or cell phone fails the original systems are the backup. Remember, they are machines susceptible to different types of damage. As a fourth point it can be concluded that home automation systems are help systems that do not replace the original control systems.
Taking care of the performance of the network
And as a last point, but no less important is that home automation will always require a correct data network inside and outside (in some cases) the home. It is complex to understand, but it is not the same type of network they have in the office or in public spaces, although their theory is exactly the same. The streaming component is what makes it so different from what is normally done in multicast, so the network is more complex to predict in its correct operation. My recommendation is to avoid very inexpensive home equipment if you want home automation, because a poor selection of a single device can affect the performance of the entire network.
The data network includes the internet, although this is usually delivered by a third party service company, it must be taken into account that home automation may or may not consume a high amount of data. What I have always recommended is to have an updated list of devices that will consume the internet and how much bandwidth they require for the correct operation, this can include video streaming devices, management devices, even, up to the fridge, (remember points one and two of knowing the client?). Do not neglect the issue of data network security, it is not a topic for this article, but I leave you in the inkwell.
There will possibly be many sub-topics of this topic, and of many other topics. As you could see, do not talk about technologies, brands, devices, because I believe that home automation is to make a house to measure, and to the measure of the client who will inhabit it, not to the measure of equipment that they will install.
Summary of the four points:
- Create the customer needs analysis.
- Know the activities and customs of the client.
- Consider the cleaning and maintenance of the smart home.
- The backbone of the smart home will be the data network.
Remember that if you have doubts or comments you can leave them as a post of this article, it is a very broad topic to develop, and I will gladly be willing to collaborate with you.
*Juan Tamayo, CTS-D, is an electronic engineer and currently serves as Manager of T-Árbol Audiovisuales SAS, product application engineer for Latin America for International Sales and Support Engineer for Synthax Inc.
