3 Smart Home Trends for 2024
Our residences and workplaces are becoming more intelligent with each passing day. Chances are, when you purchase a refrigerator or dishwasher, the setup process now has the option to connect the appliance to your home Wi-Fi network to download an app on your smartphone. This process was not a norm ten years ago, demonstrating ongoing technology changes. With the rapid growth in technology, here is a glimpse into our three smart home trends and predictions for 2024:
1. Focus on Energy Efficiency
Since the evolution of smart homes, sustainability and energy efficiency have been key trends, and we are seeing a consistent increase year over year. In 2023, the province of Ontario saw an increase in energy expenses, frequent natural disasters, and more severe weather conditions. This has motivated consumers to explore ways to maximize their energy efficiency and for homes to be designed to manage energy consumption based on habits and preferences, like optimizing usage to reduce costs and energy waste across the house.
This can look like:
- Automated window shades dim when the room gets too warm from the sun.
- Smart lights turn off if there is no movement in a designated room.
- Programming the thermostat with adaptable timers and room-specific settings based on app insights and recommendations.
2. Rising Integration and Interoperability Expectations with Matter
When you use smart devices from different brands to build a smart home, it can be challenging because they often do not easily connect with each other. For instance, if you buy a Google doorbell but have an Alexa hub, they might not talk to each other as smoothly. You end up needing two separate apps to control them, causing many functional issues.
But at Quinte Smart Homes, we have access to Control4. We’re the exclusive programmers for Control4 along the 401 from Toronto to Kingston. This gives us unique access to a closed system that can link all your smart devices, regardless of brand, making them communicate seamlessly. This ensures your smart home works 24/7 without hiccups.
Now, there’s something new on the horizon called Matter. The company formed The Connectivity Standards Alliance. Its goal is to create a connectivity standard that’s open source. The idea is to make smart home devices work better together. Big players like Amazon, Apple, Google, Lutron, Zigbee and Control4 are all behind Matter’s mission, aiming to create a standard “language” for different devices to understand and work with each other.
We will be closely examining how Matter transforms smart home technology and what it means and looks like for creating a fully connected smart home.
3. AI Continues Mainstream
Artificial intelligence (AI) made a wave in 2023, and this year, we are likely to see widespread integration in the next generation of smart home products. This may include additional predictive analytics as a new standard of features in your apps and devices that can adapt to habits, optimizing more living spaces based on lifestyles and daily routines. For example, with AI, your home can learn what you like and adjust items like lights and the temperature to your preferences. Devices powered by AI, such as virtual assistants that understand and follow your voice commands, may have new, easier, innovative ways to control various devices in your home.
In addition, AI could enable devices to make quicker and more intelligent decisions without connecting to the cloud or remote data centers. This can reduce latency and improve users’ data privacy.
Conclusion
Despite our predictions, it’s clear that technology and smart home trends are in constant motion, and everything can transform in months. Nevertheless, we believe that technology is poised to evolve into a more user-friendly and adaptive form. Observing how this transformation unfolds will be exciting!
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