The smart
home is a wonderful vision for controlling every aspect of one’s living
environment via remote control, apps and sensors. But, because it is both
complex and expensive, there has been little appetite for it in South Africa.
The two
main routes for smart home installation are both fraught with peril – financial
and technical.
The first
is to call on a specialist installation company. Surprisingly, there are many
in South Africa. Google “smart home” +”South Africa”, and
thousands of results appear. The problem is that, because the industry is so
new, few have built up solid track records and reputations. Costs vary wildly,
few standards exist, and the cost of after-sales service will turn out to be
more important than the upfront price.
The second route
is to assemble the components of a smart home, and attempt self-installation.
For the non-technical, this is often a non-starter. Not only does one need a
fairly good knowledge of Wi-Fi configuration, but also a broad understanding of
the Internet of Things (IoT) – the ability for devices to sense their
environment, connect to each other, and share information.
The good
news, though, is that it is getting easier and more cost effective all the
time.
My first
efforts in this direction started a few years ago with finding smart plugs on
Amazon.com. These are power adaptors that turn regular sockets into “smart
sockets” by adding Wi-Fi and an on-off switch, among other. A smart lightbulb
was sourced from Gearbest in China. At the time, these were the cheapest and
most basic elements for a starter smart home environment.
Via a
smartphone app, the light could be switched on from the other side of the
world. It sounds trivial and silly, but on such basic functions the future is
slowly built.
Fast
forward a year or two, and these components are available from hundreds of outlets,
they have plummeted in cost, and the range of options is bewildering. That, of
course, makes the quest even more bewildering. Who can be trusted for quality,
fulfilment and after-sales support? Which products will be obsolete in the next
year or two as technology advances even more rapidly?
These are
some of the challenges that a leading South African technology distributor,
Syntech, decided to address in adding smart home products to its portfolio. It
selected LifeSmart, a global brand with proven expertise in both IoT and smart
home products.
Equally significantly, LifeSmart combines IoT with artificial intelligence and machine learning, meaning that the devices “learn” the best ways of connecting, sharing and integrating new elements. Because they all fall under the same brand, they are designed to integrate with the LifeSmart app, which is available for Android and iOS phones, as well as Android TV.
Click here to read about how LifeSmart makes installing smart home devices easier.
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