Touching Home From Anywhere
from the does-anyone-really-care? dept
For years we’ve heard stories about home automation and “smart homes”, and there are plenty of products on the market – but the real question is does anyone really care? Right now, it definitely falls into the “nice to have” category, as opposed to the “need to have”, and that’s not likely to change for some time. With the current economic and political situation, many people are avoiding the “nice to haves” in life. Furthermore, I think the whole home automation space still seems too complicated and (admit it) “geeky” for your average consumer, who thinks that being able to set your thermostat via a webpage from halfway around the world isn’t particularly useful.
Comments on “Touching Home From Anywhere”
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CBSMarketwatch.com had a story last week about careers in the “trades” for displaced techies. One of their hot, fast growing fields was home automation technician. Apparently there is a certification for that field now. I’m all for this stuff, then again I’m a geek 🙂 My latest project was putting a FM transmitter on my PC so the streamed baseball games from MLB.com are available on any radio in my house.
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It’s a high-tech/high-touch sort of conflict. I work in hightech, and need a smart house like a hole in the head. When I leave the computer, I want the machines *gone*. But since Americans, when confronted between buying what they need and the “full feature set”, generally buy the full feature set, I imagine smart houses will be forced upon all of us in time.
It’s going to be a long, arduous, and expensive sell-in, though.
Not going to happen any time soon...
We could not even get our builder to augment the wiring in our townhouse to put cable/phone in all of the rooms let alone networking…
Re: Not going to happen any time soon...
The problem isn’t the technology in your situation, its the builders ignorance to change. We actually are starting to perform the service of structured cabling for the builders at a price they would be insane to try to perform on their own. With this in mind, the builders should actually all start using sub-contractors like myself in the very near future all over the states in order to stay competitive with each other. Whether or not you really want or need a Smart House right now, shouldn’t you be ready for it if the price is right?