The inconspicuously smart home can be very clever. Read on

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL January 14, 2015
The Edyn garden sensor monitored the moisture and sunshine in the planter and sent all the data to a smartphone application

The Edyn garden sensor monitored the moisture and sunshine in the planter and sent all the data to a smartphone application

Is the smart home a dumb thing to have? Not the sort that Selena Larson saw at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Ms Larson, a self-confessed non-believer in  smart homes and the internet of things, is now firmly convinced that some really smart homes work very well. So long as the fridge doesn’t have a camera on it and the oven doesn’t talk to you. 

The model that persuaded her she might one day want a smart home, writes Ms Larson, was Refinery29’s ‘The Loft’. It was meant to be “a connected apartment for the ‘millennial woman’…basically the ideal apartment for… me, and the rest of my demographic,” she says. 

She found it “bright and airy, with small and simple touches that made it ‘smart’” rather than a “stereotypical stainless steel futuristic abode”.

These included the app-controlled smart lock at the entrance, “mother” in the living room to keep track of objects like keys, the smart kitchen scales that measured down to the gram, the “stylish” device by the bed that measured and improved sleep quality and moisture and sunshine monitor for the plants on the balcony.

This was a smart home that was inconspicuously smart, she says. Clever.