Smart home is a modern name for a new way to control home appliances using computer or mobile phone applications. By using these applications, we can turn on or off lighting fixtures, air conditioners, water heaters, and many more.
Smart software application:
This application is installed on the mobile devices of the owner of the house, and then this application connects to the server, this server is either at home or outside the house in the Internet cloud, all devices of a house are also connected to this server to be a meeting point between application and hardware.
Smart home system:
The smart system is either in the home like HomeSeer or in the cloudas for example heatcold thermostat, and the most important decision that the homeowner makes is choosing a smart system suitable for his home, so what will the homeowner rely on to make the appropriate decision?
Information privacy:
There is a great controversy among the users of these smart systems in terms of information privacy. Some believe that the presence of the server in the cloud of the Internet outside the home will pose a threat to the information of his home, so he does not want the information to be transferred outside the home about the state of the devices associated with it, for example, locking the doors of the smart home and the possibility of controlling it if any system is hacked.
Others do not see any problem in transferring or storing this information in the cloud of the Internet, and will work to take all necessary precautions from system updates in general and devices in particular.
Both teams are correct, but the presence of the server inside the house remains better, not only for the sake of privacy, but for other reasons that we will now mention.
Internet service outage:
The Internet service may be interrupted for many reasons, including cutting wires outside the house during the city’s infrastructure maintenance operations. The service may be interrupted due to non-payment of the monthly bill by the service provider, and the interruption may be due to the failure of the Internet router inside the house. In this case, whoever chose the smart system to work at home and does not depend on the Internet and the only ones who will succeed.
System downtime in the cloud:
The smart system that works in the cloud of the Internet outside the home may be broken, it may be due to a complete server failure or other technical reasons, in this case there will be no control of the home devices through the mobile application, so how can we control the home devices in these cases?
Do devices work when the system crashes?
In general, when the smart system is interrupted, most devices have manual control to ensure the continuity of service at home. For example, the control of the air conditioner is done using the application, as well as through the smart thermostat. Direct control of the thermostat is manual control without relying on any system, this way we can use smart systems without any fear.
Is the smart system smart:
Unfortunately, until the writing of this article, smart systems are not smart. These systems depend on executing various commands through pre-programmed commands, for example, when the sun rises, the lighting is turned off. This process is called automation, but in this article I chose the word smart because it is in use in this field, and so to not cause any confusion in clarifying the concept of modern smart homes, it is expected that these systems will be affected by artificial intelligence research, to witness a qualitative shift in the self-reliance of these systems in making on and off decisions to be truly smart.
Conclusion:
The smart home relies on cloud smart systems or inside the home. These systems work to connect all home devices in one system. They are controlled through mobile phone applications or computer programs. It is also possible to control them manually when faults occur. These systems work on Automation of commands is not smart enough, and artificial intelligence is expected to change the work of these systems very soon.