What are smart homes, why do cities need them, and what opportunities do they provide to residents? These and other questions were answered by the host of the Industry 4.0 YouTube channel Nikolai Dubinin
The first smart home is believed to have been built by engineer Emil Mathias of Jackson, Michigan in 1950. The press dubbed it Push-Button Manor – “House with buttons.”
Matthias spent 2 km of wires, made remote control of lighting, garage doors, curtains – everything was controlled by buttons. But 70 years have passed, push-button technology is very outdated – now people do not think it is either convenient or “smart”.
Today, smart buildings are Al Bahar towers with moving facades in Abu Dhabi, the Mercedes Factory 56 plant and the Sony office in Tokyo with solar panels, the eco-friendly Hearst Tower in New York with a rooftop rainwater tank and a skyscraper HSBC in Hong Kong.
Safety first
All these “smart” houses have one thing in common – the technologies they are equipped with provide safety for the people working and living in them. The safest “smart” building in our country is associated with the name of one of the country’s ex-presidents, Boris Yeltsin. This is the Yeltsin Center located in his homeland in Yekaterinburg.
The Center has a face recognition system. In 2021, you will not see anyone with this, but scale plays a role here: more than 900 cameras are installed in the building. Video from them is displayed on a large video wall. Naturally, it is impossible to display all the people on the screens at the same time. But even if employees do not see something, the system automatically recognizes the left objects or the strange behavior of visitors. By the way, if a person is included in the stop list, the camera will immediately recognize him too.
You can’t just enter the building. If you are not on the list, a guard will immediately approach you. The quick reaction of the security is explained by a system that allows you to automatically manage the lists of employees, tenants and guests. This solution is from Schneider Electric and RecFaces. Simply put, the guard automatically receives a text message on the working console, and he immediately approaches the unknown person.
If your name is not on the “black list”, but you decide to break something while in the Center, for example, leave a suspicious thing, it will be noticed anyway. The camera identifies the object in almost the same second. Immediately after the discovery of a strange object, the police are called.
The Yeltsin Center is considered the smartest building in our country, of course, not only because of the cameras. It has many sensors that allow you to monitor the lighting or temperature. If events are not currently taking place in some zones, energy will not be spent on heating.
“Smart” house without keys
Smart home technologies are also available in residential areas. For example, in the Moscow residential complex PrimePark on Leningradsky Prospekt, almost everything can be done through a mobile application. The smartphone replaces the keys to the house, and the elevator recognizes the occupant and immediately sends them to the desired floor. Even your guests will not need the keys – you can order a temporary or permanent pass for them.
When a resident of the house approaches the entrance door, the device immediately reads it. Concierges automatically have the person’s data: name, requests, how to help, or delivery information that needs to be given.
Two systems are integrated into the application, with which you can call a quick response team, cleaning and much more: BLE and NFC. In case a resident suddenly finds himself without a phone, everything is also thought out. The concierges have photos of all the people from the entrance – it’s easy to make sure that a person lives here.
Such a system is not cheap – about $ 4-5 million – and is included in the price of square meters. Offering it for houses under construction is one of the new market trends.
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