Thoughts from CES delivered at IBS

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show was dominated by new smart home technologies, including everything from video wall paper to robots to the now insanely popular home voice control.

As interesting as these technologies are to consumers, they are just as complex to builders. How can they be integrated into housing? And, maybe more importantly, how can they be integrated in a way that lasts?

This was the discussion at the recent International Builders’ Show, during a session by Ric Johnson, founder of Right @Home Technologies; Melissa Morman, client experience officer at BDX; Avi Rosenthal, founder and owner of IoT consulting, LLC; Julie Jacobson, founding editor of CE Pro, EH publishing; and Delia Hansen, VP of sales and marketing at Clare Controls.

The evolution of home technology has gone from being owned by small companies to the Apples, the Amazons, and the Googles. This means that the technology is much more accessible to consumers, which also means that they have an expectation of seeing these technologies in their homes.

Morman points out that there is a shift at CES; where it formally was all about electronics, it’s evolving to be more about consumers. Consumers are demanding features and benefits that then need to be incorporated in the next version of a product. Morman believes that it’s not only about the tangible products, but it’s also about how the product, service, and benefits are marketed to consumers. As builders and suppliers, it’s necessary to speak to the consumers’ expectations.

For instance, Rosenthal spoke about an app that Samsung has developed that allows the user to check their refrigerator on demand—a homeowner can check whether they have milk in the fridge while they are standing in the dairy aisle at the grocery store. This speaks to consumers’ needs for instant information, convenience, and efficiency.

With all of these technologies at hand, how can builders evolve and incorporate it in a way that isn’t outdated in six months? The panel offered these tips:

1. Stay on top of privacy issues. After this administration, there will be new rules and regulations dealing with the privacy of data in home networks.
2. Let your buyers choose the voice control system. They will have their personal preference of Amazon, Google Home, or Siri, and giving them the choice allows you to stick with the products that you are already sourcing.
3. Make sure that the products that you are sourcing have an open API. This will help you future-proof and easily swap out when and if necessary.
4. Meet the right bandwidth needs—the new standard is three times what it was just a few years ago.
5. Run conduit as a simple and inexpensive solution to future proof.
6. Find and hire a technologist who understands your buyer and who understands how the building process works. They will be key to identifying access points in the house.
7. Go wireless if you can. If the technology isn’t constantly sending loads of information, it’s a good opportunity to go wireless.
8. Seek out mesh networking, which will amplify across all devices with that technology, like Bluetooth.
9. Pay attention to strong cell signals.
10. Run coax to an antenna because we are going back to antennas.

This advice should help eliminate outdated technology risks and put builders in a comfortable position to upgrade when needed. Rosenthal suggests that builders look at the cars that their average home buyers are buying to understand the level of technology to add to your homes. If your average buyer buys a Tesla, then you need to have a high level of technology.