Inside the Smart Home


Book Description

Using clear and accessible language this book examines the growing field of ‘smart technology’ for the home. The author first introduces the field before exploring the various background issues, including how the home differs from other environments. He then shows how these background issues affect the design and usability of these technologies. A detailed case study looks at the use of handheld and wearable digital technology in sheltered housing. The last section examines what it is like to live in a smart home and why they have so far failed to reach the levels of success originally predicted. Invaluable reading for anybody interested in designing smart technologies for the home.




The Smart Home Manual


Book Description

Do you want to make your home smart, but aren't sure where to begin? Are you worried about hackers taking control of your smart devices? Do you want to make a smart home that keeps your family entertained, comfortable, and safe?When you are done reading the Smart Home Manual you'll know:What a smart home is and what it can do for youHow much smart homes costHow to get started building your smart home from scratchHow to pick the right smart home devicesHow to plan for the future of the smart homeHow to secure your smart homeAfter reading this book, you'll be equipped with all the tools and information you need to plan, design, and implement the smart home you've always wanted.




The Smart Smart Home Handbook


Book Description

Starting immediately with "The Stuff They Don't Tell You," the Smart Smart Home Handbook is a book designed to save its readers time and money, while still opening the possibilities of smart tech (from lighting to robot lawnmowers). It does this by explaining a little about the underlying technologies in human terms, before moving on to look them one by one. The book also shares some experiences of families who have installed tech you might be considering, helping you ask - and answer - questions that won't be in the glossy promotional videos (from "How good is Alexa with accents?" to "How will your spouse feel if she needs her phone to turn the lights on?"). On the other hand, it will also introduce you to exciting possibilities you may not have thought of, from lighting that matches the TV screen to create a movie effect, to methods to let the delivery guy in from your desk at the office. Find out how to create programs and sequences. Finally the book will address the digital security concerns which retailers never do, and show you the best ways to ensure that you get all the advantages of smart home tech, with none of the risks of hackers.




Smart Homes For Dummies


Book Description

Do you long to listen to your favorite CD from anywhere in your house? To set up a wireless network so you can access the Internet in any room? To install an iron-clad security system? To fire up the coffee pot while you’re still asleep and wake up with automated lighting? Smart home technology can help you do just that! Smart Homes For Dummies, Third Edition, shows you how easy it can be to create and live in a cutting-edge, fully connected home—without breaking your bank account. With this user-friendly guide, you’ll discover all the latest trends and gadgets in home networking, automation, and control that will help you make life more enjoyable and comfortable for your entire family. We help you plan for things such as flat-screen TVs, intercom systems, whole-home audio systems, gaming consoles, and satellite systems. We talk about your wiring (and wireless) options and introduce you to the latest technologies, such as VoIP and Bluetooth. You’ll see how to: Build your home network on a budget Turn your home into an entertainment center Access the Internet from any room Get VoIP on your phone network Boost in-home wireless and cell phone signals Connect your computer to your TV Secure your home and property Increase your home’s resale value Avoid common networking pitfalls And much, much more Complete with a resource list for more information and neat toys of the future, Smart Homes For Dummies is your plain-English, twenty-first century guide to a fully wired home!




My Smart Home for Seniors


Book Description

Winner, Bronze Award, APEX 2018 and 2018 INDIES Book of the Year Honorable Mention/Health This full-color introduction to the smart home has been written from the ground up with one audience in mind: seniors. No ordinary "beginner's book," My Smart Home for Seniors approaches every topic from a 50+ person's point of view, using meaningful, realistic examples. Full-color, step-by-step tasks–in legible print–walk you through making your home safer and easier to live in using smart technology. Learn how to: • Control your home’s lighting with smart bulbs and switches • Make your home more secure with smart doorbells, door locks, and security cameras • Automatically control your home’s temperature with a smart thermostat • Make cooking and cleaning easier with smart appliances • Use voice commands or your smart phone to control your smart devices • Use If This Then That (IFTTT) to make your smart devices interact with each other automatically • Get smart about the security and privacy concerns of smart devices • Set up your smart devices and get them to work with one another • Compare and select the best smart hub for your smart home needs • Learn to use Amazon AlexaTM, Google HomeTM and other voice-activated devices, as well as Apple’s HomeKitTM on the iPhone, to make your smart devices work together




The Smart Wife


Book Description

The life and times of the Smart Wife--feminized digital assistants who are friendly and sometimes flirty, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. Meet the Smart Wife--at your service, an eclectic collection of feminized AI, robotic, and smart devices. This digital assistant is friendly and sometimes flirty, docile and efficient, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. She might go by Siri, or Alexa, or inhabit Google Home. She can keep us company, order groceries, vacuum the floor, turn out the lights. A Japanese digital voice assistant--a virtual anime hologram named Hikari Azuma--sends her "master" helpful messages during the day; an American sexbot named Roxxxy takes on other kinds of household chores. In The Smart Wife, Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy examine the emergence of digital devices that carry out "wifework"--domestic responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to (human) wives. They show that the principal prototype for these virtual helpers--designed in male-dominated industries--is the 1950s housewife: white, middle class, heteronormative, and nurturing, with a spick-and-span home. It's time, they say, to give the Smart Wife a reboot. What's wrong with preferring domestic assistants with feminine personalities? We like our assistants to conform to gender stereotypes--so what? For one thing, Strengers and Kennedy remind us, the design of gendered devices re-inscribes those outdated and unfounded stereotypes. Advanced technology is taking us backwards on gender equity. Strengers and Kennedy offer a Smart Wife "manifesta," proposing a rebooted Smart Wife that would promote a revaluing of femininity in society in all her glorious diversity.




A DIY Smart Home Guide: Tools for Automating Your Home Monitoring and Security Using Arduino, ESP8266, and Android


Book Description

Publisher's Note: Products purchased from Third Party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. Design and build custom devices that work through your phone to control your home remotely Setting up a “smart home” can be costly, intimidating, and invasive. This hands-on guide presents you with an accessible and cheap way to do it yourself using free software that will enable your home and your mobile devices to communicate. A DIY ‘Smart Home’ Guide: Tools for Automating Your Home Monitoring and Security Using Arduino, ESP8266, and Android contains step-by-step plans for easy-to-build projects that work through your phone to control your home environment remotely. All the projects in the book are geared towards helping you create a “smart home,” with fun and useful examples such as wireless temperature and humidity monitors, automated lights, sensors that can trigger alarms in the event of broken glass, fire, window entry, or water heater leakage, and much more! All projects can be accomplished with no previous knowledge; for those with some background in C/C++ or JAVA, the projects can be customized. • All projects use easy, free, flexible, open-source platforms such as Arduino • Focuses projects on real-world remote control activations for protecting the home • Written by a “smart home” expert and experienced author




Smart Smart Home Handbook


Book Description

Until just a few years ago, turning a light on and off with a clap was about as clever as technology got. Today, almost anything can be connected to the internet, and with this connection comes the ability to turn your bedroom lights off from another country, tell your thermostat to create a weather-appropriate lighting scheme, and answer the door without ever leaving your armchair. This book introduces you to Alexa, Siri, and every major technology competing to smarten your home and improve your life. You'll learn how to choose between them, how to optimize their function, and how to avoid the pitfalls that cause new adopters to wish they'd never let a computer into their home.




Smart Home Automation with Linux and Raspberry Pi


Book Description

Smart Home Automation with Linux and Raspberry Pi shows you how to automate your lights, curtains, music, and more, and control everything via a laptop or mobile phone. You'll learn how to use Linux, including Linux on Raspberry Pi, to control appliances and everything from kettles to curtains, including how to hack game consoles and even incorporate LEGO Mindstorms into your smart home schemes. You’ll discover the practicalities on wiring a house in terms of both and power and networking, along with the selection and placement of servers. There are also explanations on handling communication to (and from) your computer with speech, SMS, email, and web. Finally, you’ll see how your automated appliances can collaborate to become a smart home. Smart Home Automation with Linux was already an excellent resource for home automation, and in this second edition, Steven Goodwin will show you how a house can be fully controlled by its occupants, all using open source software and even open source hardware like Raspberry Pi and Arduino.




Smart Homes and Their Users


Book Description

Smart home technologies promise to transform domestic comfort, convenience, security and leisure while also reducing energy use. But delivering on these potentially conflicting promises depends on how they are adopted and used in homes. This book starts by developing a new analytical framework for understanding smart homes and their users. Drawing on a range of new empirical research combining both qualitative and quantitative data, the book then explores how smart home technologies are perceived by potential users, how they can be used to link domestic energy use to common daily activities, how they may (or may not) be integrated into everyday life by actual users, and how they serve to change the nature of control within households and the home. The book concludes by synthesising a range of evidence-based insights, and posing a series of challenges for industry, policy, and research that need addressing if a smart home future is to be realised. Researchers will find this book provides useful insights into this fast-growing field