SMART.TM Introduces New INSTEON® Powered Home Control Products

SmartLabs, Inc. has launched a new line of home control products under the brand name SMART. The products, which were introduced at the 2010 CEDIA Expo in Atlanta, GA, will be available to dealers and installers in November, and will feature SmartLabs’ award-winning INSTEON technology.

“We’re extremely excited to be offering a line of products available exclusively to dealers and installers,” commented Steve Lee, Business Development Manager for SMART. “The line was really well received at CEDIA, so I expect our product offering and distribution network to expand rapidly.” Lee added, “We have a full schedule of product trainings taking place across the country, and hope those trainings bring our first wave of dealers and installers.”

The initial launch features 13 home control products to control and automate lighting, appliances and temperature. All of the SMART products are compatible with other INSTEON products including Smarthome’s retail INSTEON line of products, ISY and other INSTEON-compatible products. The line is also compatible with popular front-end systems like Crestron, AMX and ELK systems, which allows installers maximum flexibility when presenting solutions to homeowners.

More information on SMART products and trainings can be found at www.smartproline.com.

Using technology to liberate not enslave our children

These are strange times for parents. We live in a world where a child is mysteriously snatched from a room whilst her holidaying parents eat dinner a few metres away whilst teenagers shoot each other in the inner cities. We know rationally that there isn't a child snatcher or gun-toting `hoodie` hiding round every corner. But we increasingly behave as if serious threats to our children are all around us, just waiting to catch us unawares.

The everyday stuff of our own youth such as walking to school alone, playing in the streets, crossing the town unaccompanied or just going off to play with friends now seems to pose huge dangers.

A recent report from the UK Children's Society warns that parents' fears about safety are stopping children from playing outdoors unsupervised. And, unsurprisingly it shows how today's parents are not giving their children the freedom to roam that they enjoyed in their own childhoods in the 1970s.

Why are we such paranoid parents? Why do we worry at the idea of our confident, outwardly worldy mobile using, Powerpoint presenting, technology-savvy kids even walking on their own to school - when we were making my own way at even younger ages?

Maybe it's because we live in a society where it’s difficult to gets things in proportion and where insecurity is pushed at us from all directions.

With a background of car alarms, police sirens and the continual media diet of bad news and sensationalism we are driven to form a particular view of reality – that seldom accords actually with our own experience. What we know rationally to be the exception feels more like the norm producing an unrealistic view of the potential threats that may surround us.

But because we care most about our children, we worry most about them. And in the UK the amount of time we spend worrying about them is increased by a vigorous nanny state foisting ever more intrusive health and safety legislation upon us, fear of litigation and a growing compensation culture.

This means that parents and teachers alike are less and less likely to take the responsibility for supervising sports days, school trips or even neighbourhood activities. It’s this that further isolates children from the sort of life experiences we enjoyed. Climb a tree? You can’t be serious - just think of the potential consequences!

Of course there are real worries - like danger inherent in the vast increase in traffic in the last 30 years. It’s true that scores of people are injured by hit and run drivers every single week in our major cities. But then of course our offspring aren’t being conscripted to be slaughtered in vast numbers in world wars or dying en masse of childhood diseases either.

What’s the root cause that makes our generation of parents seemingly too fearful to let our children play out of our sight? Maybe it's because we might know a lot about the security situation in Afganistan and the current vagaries of the financial markets but do we don’t know who lives in our street. We’re isolated and isolation breeds suspicion. And so much of our isolation has been made possible by the technology that we surround ourselves with – cars, radio, television, video games and so on – that put up barriers to real communication.

We see this effect even in our traditional attitude to the systems choose to monitor our own homes. Such systems certainly serve to isolate us further, so it’s a moot point as to how effective they are. Sirens so loud that they are designed to attract the attention of patrolling police vehicles heighten anxiety and systems link directly to remote control centres by passing those around us. That is until the latest false alarm causes the police to refuse to attend and further activations further increasing our fear.

The last thing we think of these days is involving our neighbours in the protection of our property and, by implication, our families. Yet by using the right technology we can start to reestablish the sense of trust and mutual dependency that underpins the strongest of communities. Indeed it can give us structure and information that will keep the worst of our anxieties at bay.

We can’t return to past but we can take advantage of what’s available now to try and restore some balance in our lives. For instance, the same technology that often serves to divide us can be a platform to unite us. If an automated internet-based system can send you or your neighbour a simple text or drop you and email when a family member returns home and knowing this or you or your neighbour can call round or even have a quick check in a web cam to see what they are up to when they return, we might start worrying a whole lot less and begin to convince ourselves that we shouldn’t become prisoners of our own paranoia. Then we might be more ready to take the risks that will enable our children to be released from being enslaved by a sedentary existence that extends little beyond the confines of the car, computer and television.

Time for us to work together so our children to get out and about again. Just don’t get me started about the threat from virtual worlds…

The home management market – is the 'in search' for the killer application dead?

The market for integrated home systems and controls has always been seen as attractive but I’m coming to the opinion that it’s being held back by a fruitless search to find the holy grail of the sector, a ‘killer’ application that will finally define the market.

Less glamorous though it may seem, I’m increasingly convinced that route to realising the potential of the market is through simple, measured steps.

This view is supported by history. Remember those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it! Take the case of electricity. Modern life would be unthinkable without it, yet when electricity came along it was received initially with a muted response.

It was expensive, not least because the size of the infrastructure needed and the investment required to pipe electricity to properties made it difficult to roll out. Even where businesses were willing to make the investment, customers questioned the value. Consumers had gas and paraffin for light and generally went to bed when it got dark so they perceived it to be of little value.

So what made electricity an essential utility in every home wasn’t the fact that electricity could produce light? The market took off when companies like General Electric helped develop a mutually dependent ecosystem based on an increasingly pervasive network, reduced cost of service supply and produced comparatively inexpensive electrical appliances that added value and made an electricity supply desirable to the consumer. It was initially refrigerators, heaters, irons and cookers and later food mixers, air conditioners and entertainment devices that made electricity essential in any home.

The point is that there was no single killer application; it was the availability of a wide range of applications that spurred growth in the whole ecosystem. In this respect the parallels with the growth of broadband are striking as it moves from being an access point to a network of networks to become an essential utility in any property.

Broadband did not appeal to everyone initially when it was only providing faster access to web pages on a PC. It has been growth in the applications and their associated devices - the equivalent of the electricity market’s appliances - and the associated fall in cost of access and the ability to pipe broadband around the property - particularly through wireless LANs - that has driven broadband to reach more homes.

In particular, it has been the ability to use broadband for entertainment applications that has been the real driver to date. Now, home working and e-commerce applications are further building the ecosystem. There is, however, another phase of growth to come with pervasive low-cost broadband - the advent of inexpensive devices that will exploit broadband to deliver convenience, comfort and care in the home. This is the phase in which home management will finally realise its potential.

Internet platforms will provide the key building blocks in the ecosystem needed to enable this new phase of growth. Creating the platform to do this is the difficult bit but it’s what Intamac has devoted itself to, so I’m seeing the impact close at hand. Intamac’s work with partners such as BT, Bell Canada and Cisco Linksys to develop and bundle a new range of innovative and affordable products and services for home suggests that this approach can work and the market is ready.

Using the platform, for example, with BT we have developed a broadband home monitoring service that can be installed by the user with a complete system retailing for under £200. This provides the consumer with new levels of protection in the home and the ability to remotely manage their systems for low monthly fees. It is possible to integrate easily cameras and have pictures sent to mobiles with online video storage capabilities. Companies such as BT and Bell are able to scale up offerings with attractive support packages that generate recurring revenues from a mass market customer base.

Enabled by the platform approach, these products and services are a first step in a huge growth market. Intamac is working to network a wide portfolio of partner products and to help add features that will allow them to be deployed into new and attractive segments such as telecare, and utility and appliance management.

For an infrastructure point of view whilst its clear that web platforms like Intamac’s are being recognised as key node in the new ecosystem it is the advent of low cost wireless networking with technology such as Z-Wave and Zigbee, low-cost IP cameras at under £100 retail, and solutions for remote management of routers that will also drive the market. That’s’ what we’ll need to get to grips with when we all meet at Connections in December.