Tool Kit: Wi-Fi and Smartphones Make Homes a Little Smarter

I can understand the urge to skip this subject. Smart homes, also known as connected homes, networked homes and home automation, are the cold fusion of domestic technology: always promised, never delivered.

Well, some have tried to deliver, just not very well or very cheaply. My earliest memories of home automation probably go back to episodes of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” and “Silver Spoons”; I watched different systems in a house come alive thanks to a wall-mounted control panel.

It was the stuff of fantasy, and it has remained that way for most people because traditional home automation relied on yards of wiring and insanely expensive installation costs.

But little by little, home automation has crept into our houses and apartments thanks to two things many homeowners already have — Wi-Fi networks and smartphones.

A home’s Wi-Fi network is the perfect low-cost, low-impact infrastructure for machines and devices to communicate with each other. And with a smartphone, you have the perfect wireless control panel that can work in your house or when you’re halfway around the world.

One of the best examples of this new approach is Nest Labs. This is a Silicon Valley start-up that has shaken up the otherwise sleepy thermostat industry by introducing a $250 device that not only uses motion detection to figure out when you’re in a room and predict when you’ll be out, but also gets on your home’s wireless network so you can use your smartphone as a remote control.

This is helpful when you don’t want to get up from the couch to turn the air-conditioning down, but even more so when you’re leaving work and want to adjust the temperature before you get home so things are appropriately cool or toasty when you walk through the front door.

For people who don’t have central HVAC systems, the air-conditioner manufacturer Friedrich has a line of window units called Kühl that, later this summer, will offer Wi-Fi capabilities. With a smartphone app, you’ll be able to control the units (which come in either AC-only or AC-and-heat combined versions) from wherever your phone has a data signal.

You know those timers that you plug into a wall outlet and then plug things like lamps into? Belkin is giving those devices an upgrade with its WeMo line of power accessories. The name is annoying, but the units themselves are pretty cool and simple to use.

You plug a WeMo unit into a wall outlet and then plug an electrical device (lamp, TV, stereo) into it. WeMo units are Wi-Fi enabled, and a smartphone app allows you to control when power is delivered to the device that’s plugged in.

In addition to manually turning on and off lamps and such, you can put WeMos on a schedule, just like the older timer units.

A $50 WeMo unit works with the smartphone app; a $100 version adds a motion detector so your television can turn off, for example, if everyone leaves the room.

Wireless data is making itself useful outside the home as well.

In olden times, lawn sprinkler systems were run on a schedule. The first big evolution was adding rain sensors, which could delay a scheduled watering if enough rain had just fallen. But that system remains only reactive, not predictive. Sprinkler controllers from HydroPoint, sold under the WeatherTrak brand (the WeatherTrak ET Plus starts at around $300), pull in local weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to adjust watering schedules. So if a thunderstorm is headed your way, the system can automatically reschedule the sprinklers to prevent wasting water. A smartphone app allows manual override of the system.

Not all Wi-Fi-enabled machines make sense. Earlier this year, Samsung showed off its WF457 ($1,700) and DV457 ($1,700) washer and dryer, which can be controlled and monitored via a mobile app.