Smart home tech has a ways to go, at least for me, as I learned on a one-week vacation on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. We stayed with friends at a beautiful two-story home built in 1910 and rented through Airbnb.
The renovated home had been upgraded with a smart TV and a series of Alexa plugins to control lights, more than I’ve seen before. I counted 10 Alexa devices used for lighting but probably missed a few. There was also a Nest thermostat, which was irrelevant because there was no central air conditioning and we used various room and window units for a rare New England heat wave.
One smart feature I loved was hallway ceiling lights that tracked my motion late at night, casting a dim beam on stairway landings and near bathrooms which meant I didn’t wake anybody with the noise of a wall switch or fumbling to find the switch. One downside was how one hallway ceiling fixture turned on every time I rolled over in bed. It was located outside the bedroom, of course, but we needed the door left open to allow air flow.
My experience on arrival was an example of how the tech worked very well but was not set up for visitors inexperienced with voice activated tech or who don’t have insight into the homeowner’s mindset when programming responses. The owner explicitly asked us not to turn off the Alexa devices, so I was willing to try using them, especially after using them successfully in the past.
In the second largest bedroom on the second floor, I attempted to turn on bedside table lights since there was no overhead light and it was already dark. “Alexa, turn on bedroom lights,” I said.
“Which bedroom do you want?” Alexa said in response in her cool voice, very suited for a vacation rental and all the mysteries therein. “There is master A and master B.”
“Alexa turn on lights in Master B,” I responded, thinking it was the second largest bedroom and therefore a B.“The network is not connected,” Alexa then said matter-of factly, or words to that effect.
I tried again using “Master A,” which also failed, and then tried several other times before unplugging the Wi-Fi wall adapters used to connect the lamps to an Alexa Echo on the nearest bedside table.
In the TV room, equipped with an enormous display, there were also two table lamps connected to Alexa. Nobody could get them to respond, not even a peep, even when tried by the under-30 adults. Those were also disconnected and re-connected when we left.
We would have asked for guidance from the owner on using Alexa, but I think we were all too embarrassed to ask. We did ask for help on the outdoor grill which wouldn’t fully light. (We did try asking Alexa to grill the steaks, in jest.) Thinking the owner might have some grill trouble shooting suggestions via phone, he instead took it upon himself to drive 90 minutes to bring us a backup grill and then fiddled with the faulty grill to get it working. I wasn’t about to ask for help with Alexa, thinking he’d drive off to the nearest electronics store for replacement units then take the rest of the night installing them and the remainder of the vacation explaining to us how to use them.
We chatted. He was gracious and asked how we liked Alexa. After a pause, my wife and friends all chimed in, “Oh, great!”
“That’s good,” he said. “My wife told me to disconnect Alexa because the prior renters couldn’t make it work and it was driving them crazy.” We smiled.
Encouraged by his winsome nature, I asked his line of work.
Marketing exec for a large tech company, he said. Of course.
Luckily, someone changed the subject to various cabinet and counter design features and updated appliances in the new kitchen, all of them high tech but not connected, apparently, to any voice-activated features.
As he drove away, I wondered if he might have instead set up Alexa for Dummies, at least for visitors unfamiliar with a vacation rental more focused on grilling steaks and finding the shortest pathway to the beach.
My high school bio teacher’s warning also came to mind. Mr. Hibler had said something about entropy and complex systems that are susceptible to breakdowns, or at least susceptible to people with other things on their minds than keeping a smart home up to snuff. My mind wandered to how well voice-activated, fully self-driving cars might function among average users -- should that come about in my lifetime.
Of note: I admire the smart home, smart building movement and use plenty of smart tech personally. In fact, the vacation home’s electronic front door lock functioned well on an eight-digit code with a keypad. I recently covered the progress made with the Ripple standard at Sensors Converge and have covered Matter, a smart home interoperability standard. But I’m not likely to impose smart home tech on others—at least while they are on a beach holiday or haven’t demonstrated experience using smart home gear.
Thankfully my family was not driven crazy by the smart home tech, this time. Traffic on the Cape was crazy enough, the busiest in many years, according to the natives, making me wonder when smart traffic tech and abundant self-driving vehicles will reach this beautiful hooked sandy peninsula crammed with tourists in the summer months.
But that’s another story.
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