From Dog Days to Smart Days: Embracing Home Tech

Ah, August. The “dog days” of summer. Did you know — I didn’t until I looked it up — that the term dog days refers to astrology, specifically the time period during which a bright star rises and sets with the sun? By today’s rough estimation, the period of the dog days runs from July 3 to around August 11, and happens to correspond to the hottest time of year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.

I can certainly relate to this as I write this from my home office in Maryland in July, having just experienced a good week and a half of an air conditioner on the fritz in high 90+ degree temperatures. After multiple failed attempts to fix it, it turned out it was a bad breaker and now we are back to blissful cool.

As noted in the article, AI in particular is driving more intelligent smart home devices, and features such as facial recognition, security cameras and self-learning thermostats are making smart homes not only convenient but intuitive and easy to use.

Unlike I imagine many of you, I do not have a smart home, nor any technology that could have alerted me to an issue with my air conditioner or my breaker — or much of anything else.

But after this experience, and after reading the latest installment of our annual State of the Market Series, ‘How Smart Home Integration Fuels the Security Market,’ by Senior Editor Rodney Bosch, I’m rethinking this approach.

As the well known industry analyst, Elizabeth Parks, says in the article, “Growth in the market is coming from the device, not the system side. Security systems can provide and need to leverage the many ‘peace of mind’ and ‘comfort and convenience’ devices into the security platform and service offerings. There is demand for various monitored security services that extend beyond the access control points in the home. For example, cyber services or air quality monitoring or energy monitoring services all provide great value and context for the consumer.”

Of course, while climate control and monitoring is one aspect of a smart home, by far the hottest (pun intended) technology in both residential and commercial applications is video, and that is a large part of what is driving smart home adoption as well.

There are still hurdles to overcome, most notably the tendency of homeowners to acquire these systems from sources other than security companies. But providers are continuing to innovate solutions for that, from do-it-with-me style solutions, to thinking about technologies that can move with the homeowner to service multi-family apartments and condominiums.

While I’m sure we are all familiar with the technologies fueling the smart home technology revolution, after reading this article, if you haven’t already jumped on the bandwagon, you might consider doing so as well, both personally and professionally. And if you already do some smart home installations, you might pick up a few new ideas.

For my part, maybe it is time to join the “cool kids” and look into at least some smart home tech. If I decide to do that, I bet I know a few companies that would be happy to help!

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As the Editor-in-Chief of SDM, Karyn Hodgson is responsible for the overall editorial direction of the magazine, its supplements, e-newsletters and website. She works with the SDM editorial staff to develop content that helps security dealers and systems integrators operate successful businesses. Karyn represents SDM at trade shows and conferences, and directs exclusive research studies such as the SDM Industry Forecast. She also manages SDM’s Dealer of the Year and Systems Integrator of the Year Award programs. Karyn has an MSJ in Journalism (magazine publishing) degree from Northwestern University, and more than 25 years’ experience writing for and about the security industry. Contact Karyn with article ideas.