Smart Homes – The Enigma and the Promise

#News(Startup) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

The Challenges:

1) Not everyone is aware or understands the complete value proposition of Smart Home. It is still not in a “top of the mind” list when making house purchase or renovation decisions.

2) Smart home still falls in to the Esteem needs of the Maslows hierarchy and is not a basic necessity in the order. Hence not considered a “must have” for the homes.

3) Traditional conventional switches pose no significant pain point to the users and considered extremely easy to use. This inertia, in addition to gadgetry touch panels or mobile apps, has led to Smart homes being perceived as more complex and not so user friendly for non-tech savvy or at times even tech savvy members of the house.

4) The installations of the wired solutions are complex and require civil modifications for running cables across the house which in most of the cases is not feasible practically and commercially. On the other hand wireless solutions are still plagued with the issues of coverage and reliable connectivity.

5) The high end Smart Home solutions are still prohibitively expensive, afforded by a few privileged and the cheaper ones are highly unreliable. Moreover cost of ownership when compared to baseline of conventional switches is almost 50X making Smart Home a non-viable proposition for the masses.Though this is an apple to oranges comparison but then user education on this matter is still lacking.

6) The value proposition of convenience is perceived as an indulgence that makes one lazier by reducing the physical activities of moving around the house,hence a health hazard.

7) The value proposition of energy efficiency is not very much appealing in home environments since it varies with usage pattern and does not translate to significant savings on monthly household energy bills. The return on investments at times extending up to 5 years or more. On the contrary incorrect implementation leads to more energy wastage due to false triggers.

8) The value proposition of security is majorly restricted to surveillance and is perceived as a solution not integral to automation. Usually these are purchased as a separate solution more from a peace of mind perspective then any compelling need.The videos captured are checked only in case of eventualities and in many a cases it is found that the system has not been functioning for a long time without the owners knowing or checking it.Even the cameras deployed are very low end resolution that hardly serve the purpose of capturing clearly in the case of eventuality.Hence the implementation is more reactive then preventive.

9) Most of the solutions are still not entirely plug & play and have high dependency on a system integrator. Availability of trained system integrators experienced on end-to-end integration is a challenge leading to sub-optimal implementations or implementations failures.

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