Paint The Nights - Micro Blog

The Promise

Smart Homes have been promised to us for a long time. I've always been entranced by the optimistic view of technology in homes of the future - popularized by shows like The Jetsons and Walt Disney's original vision of EPCOT.

Yet with the rise of smart home tech in the last decade why hasn't it felt like we're getting close to that promise? In the last 10 years we've made tiny baby steps forward - the pace of innovation and adoption for what is relatively simple tech is a little embarrassing.

Pushing aside topics such as smart home standards, wireless protocols and other technical discussion I believe it comes down something more simple.

The first modern smart home products were lights, and they're still the biggest category in the market. They're relatively cheap and can make a house feel magical and futuristic. Better yet most people can install them themselves.

The Problem

But there is a major flaw that is stopping them from being in every single home, and that's the traditional light switch.

When you install a smart light it's attached to a traditional light switch.

When it's in the on position, you get all the benefits of having the magic of a smart light

• Dimmable Lights
• Color / Temperature
• Automation
• Scene Control

But as soon as you need to turn that light off you're faced with a dilemma. Do you turn off the power and loose your ability to use the smart features? Or do you figure out how to soft turn it off so the power remains active but the light is no longer shining.

This problem is too hard for most people, and unless determined to figure out how to make this work you're left with a more frustrating experience then just having a traditional light bulb.

There are workarounds to this including:

• Using traditional lights with a smart switches
• Placing a battery powered smart switch near a traditional switch and teaching people how to operate it
• Using a smart relay device behind the traditional switch
• Relying entirely on phones / sensors / automation's to control the light

Each of these have their have their advantages and disadvantages but they're all compromises on the smart home promise and require people to engineer their own solution. Which most people will not.

The real solution is having both a smart light and smart switch. No compromise in function, always available and nobody has to learn anything new.

Yet for some reason smart home companies are not bundling or advertising these products together. Mains powered smart switches do exist but they're not sold as a solution to this problem. Most people don't even realize the problem exists until they've had to experience it themselves.

The Solution

If we want to get serious about smart homes being ubiquitous then we need to get this very simple problem aligned. Here are 3 possible scenarios in which this might be solved:

Scenario 1

Companies that sell smart lights start having smart switches bundled together. This would become the default buying option for smart lights. Consumers would be forced into this and learn it as a requirement.

Scenario 2

As costs lower and the technology gets better 3rd Party install services rise and more people opt to get whole houses fitted with smart lights - this would include the installation of smart switches.

Scenario 3

The rise of natural language AI and smart sensors remove the need to manually control lights. Almost all lights would just remain turned on at the wall - and the cultural norms around controlling home lighting would shift to automation and voice commands for fine control in the limited situations the predicted AI doesn't get it right.

The most satisfying solution to me feels like Scenario 1 but with the rate of innovation in AI right in this moment in time feels like Scenario 3 will come first.