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What are the types and features of “smart homes”

Recently, a technology called “Smart Home”has become widely known. Many citizens, during the repair, or the developers of apartment buildings and ordinary cottages themselves began to install technological solutions of the “Smart Home”.

“Smart home” is a partial or complete automation of all home processes, devices, as well as sending information about the state of the house to the owner of the apartment, by providing remote access to the system.

The “Smart home” has both advantages and disadvantages. The article discusses the main pros and cons of the system.

Types of Smart Home connection

The system through which sensors are transmitted and installed is mainly of two types. This:

• Wired system;
• Wireless system.

Wired system

The wired system of the “Smart Home” consists of sensors, switches, control sensors of the climate system in the house connected by classic wire harnesses connected to a single wired information bus in the electrical equipment panel. Basically, special wires are used, calculated and included exactly for each “Smart home”, however, there are also cases when all the harnesses, all the sensors are connected by an ordinary Internet cable-a twisted pair.

The advantages of a wired “Smart home” are the following points:

• Reliability, since the wires are connected to each other in a physical way, there are no various interference in the form of walls, or unstable communication;
• The speed of information transfer will also be faster than the transmission over a wireless communication channel;
• The integrated control allows you to install additional subsystems, for example, such as climate control at home, if the wires are connected to this sensor;
• Increased service life of the wiring, since there is no need to change the power elements in various Smart Home devices;
• Fire and physical safety consists in the fact that low-current current passes through the wires, and also, basically, the wiring is hidden in the wall, where there is no impact of various threats on it;
• Compared to a wireless system, a wired “Smart Home” provides a wider selection of various functions and devices.

The disadvantages of a wired “Smart home” are:

• The high cost of developing the project and installing the system, since it is required to conduct the system cables to each device separately, and this can be hundreds or even kilometers of wires;
• Installation of the system must be trusted only to companies and specialists specializing in certain brands and models of the system;
• When repairing a house or apartment, it is necessary to take into account the place of installation of information and control panels;
• The large size of the installation panel, basically, the standard size is 60 cm wide, and the panel height is up to one and a half meters.

Wireless system

Unlike a wired “Smart Home”, here the system is controlled via wireless communication, for example via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi channels.

The advantages of the wireless system include the following points:

• This system is allowed to be installed both with ready-made repairs, and only planned ones;
• The control panel is installed anywhere in the room, since there is no binding to the system cables;
• There is no need to develop a system design, since the system itself is practically autonomous, the sensors communicate with each other via radio communication;
• The cost is low compared to a wired system, since there are no cables, there is no need for a project, it can be installed by the owner himself, without involving specialists.

The disadvantages of a wireless home are:

• Weak noise immunity of communication, for example, a microwave oven during operation, can block the transmission of communication between sensors;
• Replacement of the power elements on the sensors must be changed completely in all devices at one time, that is, if the battery is not replaced in one sensor, data transfer may be out of sync;
• Low functionality compared to the wired Smart Home system;
• It is possible to connect to the system by unauthorized persons by hacking the system;
• The system operates at the standard frequency in which wireless landlines operate, at some points, the frequencies of the system and phones may conflict with each other.

There are also the following types of Smart Home connection:

• Centralized system;
• A decentralized system;

Centralized system

With a centralized system, the programming of the “Smart Home” comes from the main, central logic module. The advantages of this system are that in one interface you can manage all the engineering systems of the house, create scenarios for the system, as well as the ability to connect any additional equipment.

The disadvantages of the system are that a specialist must participate in programming, since this system is difficult to handle. If one sensor fails, the system completely ceases to perform its functions until the cause of the problem is eliminated. Also, the high cost of installation and maintenance of the system.

A decentralized system

In this system, the devices work independently with the programmed operation of the program. If any sensor fails, the system continues to work independently of it. The advantages are that the sensors work independently, cheap and easy-to-maintain devices, a huge selection of control panels.

The disadvantages of the system are a large number of devices, a lot of counterfeit and unsafe products from various unknown manufacturers.

According to the method of communication transmission, there are two types of systems:

• Open Protocol;
• Open Protocol;

The system with an open protocol boasts that there are a huge number of devices from well-known manufacturers on the market of this product, and the low cost of devices. Also, with an open protocol, any specialist or the owner of the premises himself can install and program the system.

A system with a closed protocol is created by some manufacturers who want to reduce the cost of manufacturing equipment, as well as in order to directly contact the manufacturer for installation and programming of the system when installing Smart Home systems, since other companies cannot configure the system except for them.