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Essay On Smart Homes Smart

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o you know what makes smart homes smart? Processing. Smart cameras can only recognize your face after they’ve processed an image; voice-controlled devices can only understand you after they’ve processed a sound, and your smart home hub can only tell what’s going on in your house after it’s processed the input from your sensors.

As simple as it may sound, processing is critical, and the “process” takes memory, power, and software. And when it comes to the smart home, the question is – should devices process locally or in the cloud?
Local vs. Cloud for the Smart Home

There are undeniably more manufacturers looking to cloud-based services to provide the processing power their devices need. Why?

First, it’s more convenient for them. They …show more content…

Another downside of devices relying on the cloud is that they also rely on the internet. So when the internet goes down, your smart home goes down. Leaving you unable to control your lights, locks, thermostat, and other smart home devices. The case for devices that process locally is that they are more secure and can work even when your internet is down.
Smart Home Devices That Work Locally

While smart devices that work with the cloud are a dime-a-dozen, devices that have some sort of local processing ability are still rather rare. Here is our list of smart home devices that can perform locally. The newest trend seems to point to a hybrid solution, devices that use the cloud but aren’t completely dependent upon the cloud.
SmartThings Hub v2

Samsung’s SmartThings hub uses a combination of cloud and local processing. The hub relies on the cloud while connected to the Internet, but if your internet connection goes down, certain core functionalities are still usable locally. What can it do offline? According to SmartThings, certain automation features like SmartApps and other automation functions driven by Zigbee, Z-Wave, and LAN-connected devices.
Zoe

Our next entry is also a hub, and like Sense, it is still in the making.

Zoe, a hexagonally shaped hub from Protonet, is a voice-controlled hub that works with Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cloud-connected devices. The specs are TBD, so we don’t know what

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