Home of the Future Still Years Away

image: epa.gov

BERLIN — Sabine Starling, a Berlin architect, tapped her iPad and selected a cartoon video for her two daughters. The Apple tablet beamed the choice onto the screen of her white, Internet-ready flat panel television a few feet away.

In the wireless household, using a tablet as a television remote is supposed to be just one conversation in a din of synchronized chatter between electronic devices like TVs, phones, audio equipment and computers — and also involving dishwashers, refrigerators, heaters, motion sensors, lights and windows.

But in Ms. Starling’s apartment near Kollwitz Platz in the Prenzlauer Berg district in Berlin, the iPad remote, which works with Apple’s own TV service, is an all-too-rare sign of the wave of wireless home automation that was supposed to arrive a decade ago.

Experts say there are several reasons why the uncabled home, which became possible with the advent of Wi-Fi networks, has been slow in coming, with consumer indifference, the cost of consuming wireless data, the global recession and competing technical standards among them. “Theoretically, the technology is already there,” said Peter Cooney, an analyst at ABI Research in London. “But there needs to be something to motivate consumers to get it into the home. And there’s no one system to pull it all together. It’s early days.”

Wireless connectivity in the home was a major theme of the Internationale Funkaustellung, the largest European consumer electronics trade fair, which was expected to draw a quarter million visitors and nearly 1,500 exhibitors through Wednesday in Berlin.

 Wi-Fi networks and residential gateways, which are home networking devices that combine broadband modems, routers, firewalls and network switches, began appearing in 1999.

So far, they have enabled a range of services including home security and lighting, multidevice audio and video streaming and “smart” meter energy management.

But in Pacific Palisades, California, a new 4,539 square-foot, or 422 square-meter, contemporary Mission style home on the market for $3.5 million illustrates the technology’s full potential.

 Smart thermostats and sensors use electricity and natural gas at maximum efficiency. Air-conditioning, security and irrigation systems are managed by iPads and other smart devices. Video, audio and Internet stream over the Elan G, a multimedia system made by Elan Home Systems of Carlsbad, California. The washer, dryer and bathroom fans are connected wirelessly, letting the local utility reduce power consumption during peak demand. Lighting is controlled by motion sensors. The front, back and garage doors can be activated remotely with an e-mail.

“Improving the efficiency of homes with wireless Internet connectivity is where the industry is headed,” said Robert Kleiman, the co-founder of Structure Home, a custom builder in Los Angeles that built Vision House Los Angeles with Green Builder Media. Mr. Kleiman said home buyers are increasingly demanding wireless technology to save on energy costs and add convenience. “The technology is readily available and will become standard in the near future,” Mr. Kleiman said.

As the number of home networks rises, new automation services are beginning to appear. According to IHS, a research firm in Wellingborough, England, the number of homes worldwide with ethernet connections, which is necessary for Wi-Fi, will double to 800 million by 2016 from 400 million this year. The number of low-power, low-bandwidth networks essential for monitors and always-on sensors is to surge to 28.8 million by 2016 from 3.3 million, IHS expects.

In June, France Télécom introduced MyPlug, a wireless monitor that adjusts household energy consumption and can notify working parents when their children arrive home. MyPlug inserts into an electric socket and uses a remote sensor to detect the arrival of individuals carrying custom electronic IDs, and sends notifications by text message.

“The connectivity is already a reality,” said Thibault de la Fresnaye, a France Télécom vice president at the Orange Technocentre, a marketing research center in Paris. “There are now more enablers for home automation, security, presence detection, energy management. What is slowing the speed of this development is the protocol diversity.”

Protocols are the arbitrary digital languages or codes that devices use to communicate with each other. Apple and specialists like Sigma Designs of Milpitas, California, which owns the Z-Wave interoperable device protocol, are promoting proprietary solutions.

But there are many other standards too, like new, low-power versions of Bluetooth and DECT, the digital cordless phone standard, Wireless USB and ZigBee, a standard used by Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Samsung and other chip and component makers.

Fear of copyright piracy has also slowed the distribution of audio and video over multiple devices. Music and film studios require broadcasters to secure their multi-device streaming technology to prevent theft, said Adam Nightingale, a sales director at Irdeto, a company in Amsterdam that makes security software for broadcasters. “The process can be onerous and tedious,” Mr. Nightingale said.

The cost of mobile data that wireless devices generate to communicate in the home can also be an obstacle, said Lisa Arrowsmith, an analyst at IHS. France Télécom’s MyPlug, for example, communicates the arrival of individuals in a home with a short text message. The texts are billed at the standard rate. “The lack of flexibility in tariff pricing is an issue,” Ms. Arrowsmith said.

Some appliance makers said they were wary of committing to wireless devices in a down economy. “In this type of economic environment, the costs of any type of new wireless device must be weighed carefully against consumer demand,” said Alberto Prado, a vice president at Philips, Europe’s largest home appliance maker, in Amsterdam.

Philips is selling wireless home patient monitors. The work on connected appliances is in development, Mr. Prado said. But others are moving quickly into what they see as the future of their industries.

Harman International, the maker of Harman Kardon, Infinity and JBL audio equipment, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut, introduced 56 new products at the IFA technology fair, all of them with wireless capability.

Most of Harman’s wireless speakers, headphones and home entertainment systems can use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or Airplay, the transmission technology owned by Apple. “We are technology agnostic,” said Dinesh Paliwal, the chief executive of Harman International, during an interview at IFA. “Our philosophy is to follow the content, and consumers want that content to be mobile.”

Minoru Usui, the president of Seiko Epson, the maker of Epson wireless printers, and new devices like the Moverio BT 100, a set of see-through multimedia glasses that can stream movies and Internet data via Wi-Fi, said the building blocks were in place for the wireless home of the future. Eighty percent of Epson’s ink jet printers, and 50 percent of its projectors, can be operated over wireless networks, Mr. Usui said. “The connectivity and the consumer applications are all there,” Mr. Usui said during an interview at the Japanese Embassy in Berlin during IFA. “There is some consumer reluctance to going wireless, but I think this will be overcome over the next five years.”

One sign that consumers are embracing the future is The Nest, a wireless thermostat that adjusts home energy use for maximum efficiency. Sales of the Nest, which costs $249, have been skyrocketed since it went on sale in October. In the first three days, the company, Nest Labs of Palo Alto, California, sold what it thought it would sell in three months, said Matt Rogers, the company founder and a former head of iPod software development at Apple.

“We are at the brink of a new era in the home,” Mr. Rogers said. “It is a function of how many companies understand the big picture and are willing to put the features in place.”

Source: nytimes