Smart money

In-Depth

Siemens is investing heavily in integrated home technology with the goal of introducing it into mainstream houses. Andrew Lee talked to Hugh Whalley, who aims to make us all ‘smart’.

You don’t need to be all that old to remember when getting off the couch and walking across the living room to change TV channels was one of life’s small ways of forcing us to take more exercise.

Flicking the buttons on the front of the set now seems positively quaint. The fact is, however, that for most people the TV remote handset, along with its cousins controlling the DVD and the set-top box, remains the apex of ‘smart home’ technology.

Smart home systems, or integrated home automation, will generally provoke two reactions. One is that smart homes are very much for the future rather than the here and now, along the lines of ‘we’ll all be living like that in 30 years’ time’ — an opinion that, interestingly, has been around since the 1970s. The second sees smart home technology as the preserve of the rich, the lifestyle option of a Premier League footballer or City banker with the odd £25,000 to burn.

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