HomeTechHacker: 5 Ways Smart Homes will change over the next 10 years

Marlong Buchanan, HomeTechHacker.com

By Marlon Buchanan

Technology is constantly changing. Even more than that, every year it changes at an even faster rate than it did the year before. 

Because of how fast it changes, predicting the future of any technology can be difficult. 

However, after consulting my crystal ball, here are five changes I see happening to the smart home in 10 years:

1.  Our smart homes will be more automated. 

Today, smart homes are much better at remote control than automation. Smart home residents primarily interact with their smart devices by sending commands via apps on their mobile device or a voice assistant (e.g., “Alexa, turn on the lights.”). 

In 10 years, most of these commands will be unnecessary. Smart homes will automatically do things for you based on the time of day, whether or not you are home, and all the information it has. 

The beginnings of this exist today with devices like smart thermostats that can adjust the temperature for you based on your presence, habits, preferences, the current temperature, etc.

2.  Smart home devices will all be interconnected. 

One of the biggest frustrations with smart homes and smart devices is getting devices to talk to each other from different manufacturers, based on different standards, and built to work in different ecosystems. 

It can be frustrating to have a smart light switch and a lamp connected to a smart plug in the same room, where one smart device only works with Google Assistant, and the other only works with Alexa. It would be difficult to issue one command to either assistant that turns all the lights on in that room. 

With the rise of newer technologies like Matter, which is backed and being adopted by most major smart home device manufacturers, all smart home devices will be able to talk and integrate with each other in 10 years.

Future tech

3.  Most devices in your home will be smart. 

Most of the day-to-day devices in your home can already be smart. 

However, some of these smart devices don’t add much functionality to their non-smart alternatives, and/or they are cost-prohibitive. 

As our devices become more interconnected, smart devices of all kinds will become more useful and prevalent, and thus their relative prices and availability will also improve.

4.  Smart sensors will be everywhere in the smart home. 

Right now, motion, temperature, light, and humidity sensors are the most prevalent types of sensors in the smart home. 

In the future, advances in embedded technologies, communication protocols, and portable battery life will make all kinds of sensors easier to install. 

Imagine sensors reading the temperature and water quality out of your faucets, health sensors reading your temperature and heart rate, air quality sensors determining the healthiness of the air you’re breathing, and more. 

These sensors will power the smarts of your home. Speaking of which…

Artificial intelligence will combine all data

5.  Artificial intelligence will combine all the data coming from your smart home to make it truly smart. 

The smart home will use artificial intelligence to mine and interpret the data coming from your smart devices and smart sensors and combine them with your preferences to do things for you that you aren’t even thinking of. 

Running out of milk? Your smart home will know and order things for you. 

Getting ready to take a shower? Your smart home will already know what temperature you like the shower and set it perfectly. Are you getting sick or need medical attention? Your house can call a medical professional based on information from health sensors and what it knows about your health conditions. Your smart home will be smart enough to save your life!

Marlon Buchanan is a best-selling author, IT Director, and founder of HomeTechHacker.com, a website with free resources to help you make the most of your home technology.