What makes a smart home tick?

Smartphones aren’t cool anymore. Very soon we’ll be talking about the smart home and its automation systems — smart hubs

As technology advances and becomes more affordable, the ideal smart home inches closer to becoming a reality. But from voice-activated light switches to fingerprint-activated digital locks, what makes an actual smart home tick?

The answer: A smart hub.

The hub, which can be controlled via an app on your smartphone or even your voice, accepts triggers from sensors and sends out pre­arranged commands to devices.

Here are noteworthy hubs and automation devices to look out for:

Samsung SmartThings Hub

The Korean tech giant makes almost everything from vacuum cleaners to televisions, so imagine having a hub that can activate all these gadgets at the touch of a button. Imagine coming home to food that’s already cooked, thanks to your smart hub kicking off the process by finding out that you’re on your way home.

As of now, the Samsung SmartThings Hub (US$99 ($141)) — one of Samsung’s biggest announcements this year — supports nearly 200 smart home products, like the Amazon Echo and Philips Hue. It’s not officially available for Singapore users, so you currently have to buy it from the United States or United Kingdom and use a freight forwarder like vPost or Comgateway.

Available at smartthings.com.

IFTTT

Short for ‘If this, then that’, this free app is possibly one of the cleverest around. It was designed to automate repeatable app processes, like saving your picture to Dropbox every time you post it on Instagram.

But more importantly, it can be used to automate some processes that you can’t do with your hub alone. For example, you can use ‘recipes’ to turn on your coffee machine when the sun rises, or when your smart band detects that you have woken up.

Available at the App Store and Google Play

Cubic

Cubic’s (US$195) focus is on artificial intelligence (AI). It’s an AI with a personality, that will respond to you with humour, says its Russian makers who actually credited JARVIS (the AI virtual butler in the Iron Man movie) as their inspiration.

Apparently Cubic ‘gets’ references so, for example, if you spout Seinfeld lingo, it will respond in kind with jokes from the hit television show.

Due for a November launch, we’ll soon see if it’s as clever as it’s made out to be. With a fairly impressive list of supported products and services like Evernote and SmartThings, there’s always a silver lining even if the jokes fall flat.

Available at indiegogo.com.

Amazon Echo

The Echo (US$179.99) looks just like any other unassuming wireless speaker, but it has a Siri-­like digital assistant called Alexa ‘living’ inside. Furthermore Echo has some interesting tech to enable it hear your commands even from across the room.

Imagine: you can use Alexa to control compatible lights and switches, and ask it about the weather and traffic as you are changing your clothes.

It will be a watershed moment in your life — your poor man’s JARVIS, if you will — because it kind of feels like living in the future, today. And there’ll be more features to come.

Available at Amazon.

Klug

While this made-in-Singapore smart device isn’t integrated into home automation systems yet, we think it’s only a matter of time before it finds its way into a smart hub.

Klug ($239 for one hub and one sensor) saves you money by automatically adjusting your air conditioner to an ideal temperature, saving up to possibly 15 per cent of your electrical bill.

Klug’s system uses infrared signals to communicate with air conditioners, so it works with all units that have a remote control. Smart thermostats (Klug Air) will measure and relay the temperature back to the central hub (Klug Hub), which will then apply the necessary adjustments.

Available at klug.intraix.com.

By Justin Choo

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