By 2020 there will be an estimated 212 billion IoT objects connected to the internet. An IoT object is any device with an on/off switch connected to the internet. We are currently in a series of blog posts to help you navigate what IoT means for your home, business and city.
One of the first IoT devices was created in the early 1980s when programmers at Carnegie Mellon connected their refrigerator to the internet to ensure a cold Coca Cola was in the fridge before they made the trip to get one. Today refrigerators are still on the cutting edge of the IoT wave, but now they are more sophisticated than checking to see if a Coke is cold.
For instance, the Samsung Family Hub has a camera inside the refrigerator, so you can see the contents from your phone while shopping at the grocery store. Moreover, the Samsung Family Hub has an interactive connected touchscreen where you can buy groceries from your fridge, manage the schedules of your family with a synchronized calendar, play music around the house, and even watch TV. The Family Hub’s functionality is extensive and demonstrates the range of possibilities for the IoT and smart home technologies to coordinate our busy lives.
In addition to the internet, everything is getting smarter, harkening back to the quote I began this series with: “Anything that can be connected, will be connected.”[1] With that ethos in mind, it makes sense that now we have door locks, door bells, light bulbs, fans, blinds, smoke alarms, garage doors, mowers, washers, dryers, TVs, etc., connected to the internet and capable of being managed from anywhere with your cell phone.
As our homes become more connected, we constantly deal with new generations of devices incompatible with older generations of devices, and home environments with hodge-podge sets of appliances and gadgets that do not synchronize effectively together. To make sure IoT is reaching its full potential in your Highland Lakes home, we recommend that you schedule a consultation with HCTS. We will take the time to understand your current situation and share with you the most effective and convenient way to fully synchronize the technology in your home.
Working with HCTS means your home will have an enterprise grade network professionally installed by network experts with multiple decades of global networking experience. An enterprise grade network allows you to get the most out of your devices as well as support the bandwidth demands of devices of today and new technologies yet to be released. Additionally, HCTS is an authorized Control 4 dealer. Control 4 gives you the ability to personalize the controls of the IoT devices in your home to make them more comfortable, convenient, and secure.
If you live in the Highland Lakes area, and you would like to learn the most effective ways to implement home automation, call us at (512) 466-2974 or email info@thehcts.com.
[1] A Simple Explanation of “The Internet of Things” by Jacob Morgan
