IoT in the Connected Home

May 2016 – One of the challenges of the smart home and the incorporation of IoT into that home, is the mitigation of risk to benefit. In the past, adoption of these technologies, such as alarm systems, motion detectors, high security door locks, were brought to the mainstream in association with insurance subsidies. These subsidies help create a ROI time table for the product that brings more than just “I want a product to adopt technology”, they bring defined use and benefit models.

Some bigger companies have the ability to drive these subsidies by adding the IoT connectivity to full product lines and multiple devices which drives the feature set to being “better products”. This is a major issue in the changing lifestyle of the user. Twenty five years ago, the dominant lifestyle was the purchase of a “4 wall” single family detached home, a single fixed hour job, and a typically single occupant car. This lifestyle was dominated by automation and products to make this set of possessions and infrastructure “better”. Today however, the lifestyle, is more open, it is mobile and it relies on trusted 3rd party services. Babycare, laundry, cooking, cleaning, yard work, repair service and pets all are contracted out to bring more open time to the “homeowner”. As a result, the IoT devices have to enable this lifestyle, and more importantly be supportive of a multiple operator/user, single owner environment.

This multiple operator/user environment creates a need for a unified IoT management area for all devices. The automation, communication, configuration and data collection need to be unified to a single interface and single area. For the lifestyle to rely on this automation, it must be both consolidated and reliable. This will allow the “modern” household owner to engage in a trusted relationship not only with their service providers, but the devices that bring the environmental & situational awareness to the customer.