After all there is no choice but to change the whole house !? A long and steep road to a smart home

The trap is that if you aim for a smart home by renting, you will become less and less smart. (Illustration: Sakiko Inoue)

やっぱり家ごと変えるしかないのか!? スマートホームへの長く険しい道のり

What kind of image do you think of when you hear the word "smart home"? This is what I imagine. Everything is connected, centering on home appliances, and all the troublesome housework is automated. In a room where clean air, comfortable temperature, and brightness are maintained, power is controlled without waste and the crime prevention system is perfect. Residents can live a clean, comfortable, secure and healthy life just by rumbling there. [Photo] The smart lock "Sesame" is fixed to the door with adhesive tape. I couldn't screw it because it was rented, so it looks like this. And the adhesive tape is peeled off and the tragedy is ... Of course, it's still halfway now, but in the future, I'm sure that my home will have a living environment like heaven for the troublesomeness like me. I believed that, but in reality, I'm about to be a little frustrated. This is the reason. It is a "smart lock". At the author's house, I use a smart lock called "Sesame" from CANDY HOUSE. Originally, the key was old and the shape of the thumb turn was special, so I gave up on not being able to use the smart lock, which is a mechanism for turning the thumb turn electrically. However, CANDY HOUSE provides a very detailed service that provides adapters one by one according to the shape of various keys. Thanks to that, I was able to introduce smart locks to my home as well. "Sesame" is a smart lock with simple and easy-to-use functions and high cost performance. In addition to locking / unlocking using dedicated apps for smartphones and smart watches and NFC tags, it also supports voice assistants. It is equipped with a wide range of functions required for smart locks, such as auto-locking after a certain period of time has passed since unlocking, empty-handed unlocking that combines Bluetooth and location information, and remote control via Wi-Fi connection. The movement is also light and stress-free. yes. There is nothing wrong with smart locks. However, the reason why it looks like this is because the author's house is a rental house. Since it is a rental house, it is necessary to be able to restore it to its original state when moving out. There may be cases where a little DIY is fine, but to the author it seems that screwing the door is beyond that category. So I used the attached double-sided tape to attach it, but because the door was made of wood, the adhesive strength did not last, and at one point it came off. The smart lock falls while taking out the trash! The worst time I couldn't unlock my house was when it fell. I left the front door wearing a T-shirt, shorts and sandals to get rid of garbage in the morning, and the moment the auto lock closed, I heard a loud noise from the other side of the door. I was almost awake, so my head was unkempt. In addition, I didn't even wear glasses. The Apple Watch on my arm was a key, but I had a hard time launching the app because I didn't have glasses. What's more, no matter how much you tap the screen of your Apple Watch, the sound of the motor just echoes from behind the door. Now that the smart lock has come off, no matter how hard the smart lock wins, the thumb turn will never turn again. Speaking of Doraemon, the shock as if the two letters of "despair" solidified with "koekata marine" had fallen from above the head. In an instant, it became pitch black in front of me. Fortunately, my Apple Watch is a GPS + cellular model that allows you to make calls even when your iPhone isn't nearby. I was able to wake up a friend who had a master key and have him unlock it, so I was able to avoid the worst situation of being locked out forever, but it was a traumatic level of horror experience. Needless to say. In the Q & A of "Sesame", advice is also given to change to double-sided tape according to the application if the mounting position is uneven or if it is made of wood like the author's house. However, on the Amazon sales page of the super strong double-sided tape that was introduced as a reference, there is an explanation that "Please refrain from using it for purposes that are supposed to be peeled off", which seems to be more irreversible than screwing. Yes, I can't take it. As a result, it became the current style of reattaching with spare double-sided tape and reinforcing with tape from above. Since the door of my house opens outside, I'm sometimes scared by the delivery staff of courier and Uber Eats, but I think that this is the only way to go for the time being until a good reinforcement measure is found. A friend who unlocked me told me "I'm not smart at all", but I remembered that word. Smart appliances that have become convenient. It was more than 15 years ago that I could operate multiple devices with one remote control. It was still called "Internet home appliances" instead of IoT, but from that time on, there were already home appliances that could connect to the Internet. However, the mechanism is different for each manufacturer, and in order to enjoy all the convenience, it was necessary to replace the entire home appliances with those of the same manufacturer. At the presentation of a certain online home appliance series, I calculated the editor and the total amount, and said, "It's certainly convenient, but it's a huge expense to buy a new one. I was talking. It's been a long time since then, and now with devices like "smart remote controls," you can connect what you have at home to a common platform like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant without having to buy a new home appliance. Furthermore, it is no longer difficult to link home appliances from different manufacturers through a mechanism such as "IFTTT" that links different Web services. Thanks to this, even at my home, everything from bedside light bulbs to air conditioners, TVs, fans, air purifiers, and living room lighting can be made smarter without making a large initial investment. By the way, a "smart remote control" is a device with a learning remote control function that can be operated via the cloud. At the author's house, a product called "Nature Remo" is used to enable the operation of multiple home appliances such as air conditioners, TVs, and electric fans at once. The point is to place the infrared rays in a position where they can reach each home appliance, but this is also unavoidably placed on the sun of the window because it cannot be screwed. The road to a true smart home is long and steep ... I used to think that the number of connected home appliances was increasing little by little, and I was "approaching the smart home I longed for". Looking around, the smart lock looks like this, the location of the smart remote control is unstable, and even the smart speaker has bare wiring ... it wasn't smart at all! In order to realize a truly smart "smart home", it may be necessary to start by building a "my home" that can adopt smart locks for doors and incorporate remote controls and wiring on the walls from the beginning. After all, if I think that I have to work hard and earn money for a convenient and comfortable life, it seems that the two letters "despair" will come down again ... but there is no choice but to look smart for the time being. With my eyes closed, I would like to continue on the path of smart homes that can be used in rental housing. Author: Yuriko Ota Yuriko Ota Tech writer and editor. Since the dawn of the Internet, she has been involved in the launch of Web direction, Internet-related free papers, and information magazines. Since then, she has continued to cover and write about familiar digital gadgets, from personal computers, mobile phones and smartphones to wearable devices and IoT devices, as well as various services, applications, and related businesses that can be used through them. ..

Yuriko Ota