The High Tech Home: A Look at the Present and Future

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Everyone has their own personal style when it comes to decorating and organizing their home. Some like the eclectic look, while others prefer a more traditional look and feel. However, some people really care about more the high tech gadgetry inside and integrated into the house. Here are 3 cutting edge gadgets that you can get today as well as some future-looking designs that may make its way one day into your own home.

Lockitron

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could walk up to your door and have it automatically unlock for you, or be able to unlock it for friends and family without having to drop what you’re doing? The developers of Lockitron have made this a reality. The Lockitron device is easily installed onto your door’s existing dead bolt which can then be controlled using an app on your phone or tablet.

The app is available for several different types of smartphones and uses Bluetooth or WiFi to connect with your Lockitron device. When it senses you walking up to it, it automatically unlocks. If you don’t have a smartphone, the device can still be activated using a text message (SMS). The device itself comes with Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. In the app, you can also add friends and family members to the list of people allowed in your home, and Lockitron will recognize them when they walk up.

Lockitron can also alert your when someone has knocked on the door, or who has unlocked the door. As for safety, one measure of its safety is that it uses similar technology to that used by banks. Of course, you can still use a regular key on the lock should you lose your phone or deactivate your account.

Belkin WeMo Home Automation Switch for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

WeMo

Using WeMo plugs, you can control anything that is plugged into them directly from your iPhone. Using WiFi, your phone can connect to a WeMo plug to turn on or off whatever is plugged into them.

You can also configure your home router to allow connections to your WeMo switches from the Internet. Think about the possibilities. If you forgot or are not sure whether you turned off the iron or the TV, you could do that remotely, or perhaps turn on a light.

The makers of WeMo, Belkin, also have a corresponding motion sensor that will turn things on when something moves near the sensor. If you have a WeMo Switch and a WeMo Motion sensor, you will be able to turn on lights, fans, or anything else when you walk by and still manage them from your iPhone.

TopBrewer

Here’s how you can make your morning coffee even more high-tech. Scanomat has created a simple and elegant coffee maker that will beat out your favorite coffee shop any day. The TopBrewer is controlled by a built-in tabletop touch keyboard, or by your iPhone or iPad. It has been designed to grind and brew coffee beans to give you the perfect cup of coffee possible.

It also has one of the smallest milk foamers to give you the best latte. Of course, not everyone likes coffee, which is why the makers also made sure that you can easily get chilled water, milk, or juice, and or hot water for tea. TopBrewer gives every techie the option to have a high-tech cup of coffee at home. High tech coffee does come at a cost though, TopBrewer starts at £5,000.

“A Day Made of Glass”

Corning Inc. has come up with a concept of how our future lives might be, in particular how we will interact with our high-tech homes and devices. They created this video that shows the possibilities we may have as electronics and gadgets keep evolving.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Just imagine phones, devices, and TV screens that are extremely sleek and thin that still do more than what our current crop of smartphones can do. We are getting closer to these types of innovations by the day.

Even among today’s tablets, we can see the promise of the tomorrow. Take the Lenovo Horizon for example. It is a thin device but yet still a powerful computer. Other innovations like Samsung’s flexible, foldable smartphone prototype that was shown at the 2013 CES in Las Vegas show that we aren’t too far off from Corning’s concept.

Electrolux Design Lab

Electrolux already brings us some great technology and appliances that we can use in our homes, but they are also striving to help innovators create even better high tech solutions that we could use in everyday life. Every year they sponsor the Electrolux Design Lab where design students can enter their design concepts.

For example, Last year’s winner, Jan Ankiersztajn, came up with the Aeroball. The Aeroball is a gadget that would hover and float around our homes to clean and filter the air.

If you’ve not seen Electrolux’ design labs before, it’s well worth checking out not only this year’s finalists, but prior years as well.

While some things are still merely concepts and may never see the light of day as conceived, there are many things that you can put in your home today to turn it into your very own high-tech oasis. Just look around, the future is closer than you realize.

Nicky Elkins writes about technology and gadgets. You can find her other articles around the Web at sites like MobileMoo.com and TechBreach.net.

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