Jason

1
Jasons Rant on Smart Homes

(and not so smart)

• Jason I. Hong
• jasonh at cs cmu edu

2
When Smart Homes Go Bad

• Remove a quart of milk. Theres a Chernobyl-like
  chain reaction. The fridge scans the bar code as
  the carton leaves. It e-mails the grocery dot-com
  and a delivery service. The broken coffee maker,
  misinterpreting a burst of e-mail, jumps into
  action with a vague burning stench.
• - Bruce Sterling

3
My Position on Smart Homes

• Research community should focus less on gizmos,
  more on existing activities
• Child care getting kids to school, caring for
  babies
• Home maintenance lights, termites, bills
• Family coordination kids, grandparents, friends
• Research community should also remember that
  houses are part of a bigger picture
• Part of the local environment
• Part of the local community
• Part of larger activities (work, play, health,
  family)
• Smart homes arent just about the house!

4
Rant Overview

• What are smart homes good for?
• (Other than making Bill Gates richer)
• Useful scenarios and ideas
• How to make it happen?
• What are the research issues?
• What about the economics?
• And social resistance?

5
What are Smart Homes Good For?

• Green Houses
• Connection with friends, family, and neighbors
• Personal Health
• Entertainment
• Home Security
• The Truly Boring that Should Stay Boring

6
What are Smart Homes Good For?Green Houses

• Value proposition save energy and money
• Are my windows leaking warm air in winter?
• Did you know you can save water if
• Opening up the windows could increase sunlight.

7
What are Smart Homes Good For?Connection with
friends, family, and neighbors

• Value proposition stay in touch, know your
  neighbors
• Carpooling
• Always on connection with close friends
• How much is our community recycling?
• WiFi NeighborNode

Im leaving now
8
What are Smart Homes Good For?Personal Health

• Value proposition stay in better health
• Great weather outside, how about walking today?
• Pickup ultimate game going on in Schenley, how
  about it?
• Smart toilets

9
What are Smart Homes Good For?Entertainment

• Value proposition cool gadgets and great fun
• Smart toys
• Home theaters
• Video games
• How about make it easier to find neighbors and
  compete?
• Games where you learn something useful?

10
What are Smart Homes Good For?Home Security

• Value proposition safety for you and your family
• Is the gas leaking?
• Whats in the water?
• Is the oven off?

11
What are Smart Homes Good For?The Truly Boring
that Should Stay Boring

• Value proposition Well warn you before its too
  late
• Are (ants / termites / roaches) invading?
• Are my sewer pipes okay? (Yuk!)
• Your plants need water

12
What are Smart Homes Good For?And some not so
good ideas

• Everything from opening curtains to turning on
  lights or the air conditioner can be controlled
  from the plasma-display television in the living
  room using a single remote control.
• The house never runs out of beer. When there are
  only three cans of beer left in the refrigerator,
  an e-mail order for more will be sent to a
  store.
• Get off the lawn, youre drunk again!

13
Research Issues with Smart Homes

• Unified Interaction Experience
• Sensing errors
• Personalization
• Deployability

14
Research Issues with Smart HomesUnified
Interaction Experience

• Problem
• Doesnt seem to be a winner-take-all market
• Interoperability? Emergent properties? Mental
  models?
• Why did my house do that?
• Some ideas
• Design patterns for the home (ex., power cycle)
• What kinds of mental models work better?
• Are certain aspects winner-take-all?
• Home photos, home videos, etc?
• Prognostication
• De facto standards (a la Microsoft or Sony or
  Krupps)
• Will remain very messy for a long time

15
Research Issues with Smart HomesSensing Errors

• Problem
• If one family member often goes to the bathroom
  in the middle of the night, the system is able to
  adapt to this habit. When the person gets up from
  bed, the house automatically warms up the toilet
  seat and lights up the way to the bathroom. The
  house will also turn the toilet-seat heater and
  lights off as the person is going back to the
  bedroom.
• Women stuck in smart toilet stall
• Some ideas
• Better error handling techniques
• Decision theory / Economics, ie very low cost or
  high benefit
• Keep sensing but defer action to people
• Prognostication
• More horror stories to come, stay tuned

16
Research Issues with Smart HomesPersonalization

• Problem
• How to get personalized services?
• Ex. HVAC, mobile phones, music
• Some ideas
• Programming must seem like its not programming
• Thermostat
• Tivo thumbs-up and thumbs-down
• Research emphasizes flexibility, need to focus on
  simplicity
• Prognostication
• Going to hear lots of horror stories within 10
  years
• Going to hear lots of cool innovation here too

17
Research Issues with Smart HomesDeployability

• Problem
• How to move from research concept to real homes?
• Some ideas
• Incremental deployment, Home Depot approach
• Managing power, cant replace hundreds of
  batteries a day
• Maintenance, needs to just work
• Marketing
• People dont want to be green, they want to save
  money
• Prognostication
• Insurance companies will advocate (like The Club)
• Bundled with entertainment (XBox) and media
  (Apple)
• Will start in office buildings, slowly move to
  homes

18
Other Half-baked Thoughts

• The interior of your own walls is less known to
  you than the far side of the moon because you
  could summon up a detailed picture of the Jules
  Verne Crater on a Web site, pronto.
• -- Bruce Sterling
• Every appliance will have WiFi in it in 10 years
• Implications? Network security? New interactions?
• All data will come in via IP
• Implications of Voice over IP? TV over IP?
• New services? Programmability? End-user
  innovation?

19
Closing Thoughts

• Smart homes shouldnt (just) be about the gadgets
• Smart homes shouldnt (just) be about the house
• Smart homes will be very messy for a long time
• But lots of opportunities
• Think about merging liberal democratic goals with
  good marketing and good tech
• Environmentally green houses
• Strong vibrant communities
• Stronger family interactions