My first IoT Smart Home experience (Internet of Things)

IoT is one of the buzzwords that is buzzing around and many are eager to know more about it and experience it. Well, I am one among the curious lot who wants to understand and learn more about it too. I have been reading documents and articles about IoT.

On 27th Feb, 2020 evening, I got a chance to experience a small bit of it as I walked in to the Bengaluru's iconic "Opera House" situated on the Brigade Road. This was once, a famed good old Opera Theater during the British times. This theater was closed for a very long time and sometime recently, Samsung company took it into their hands and they have beautifully revamped the entire theater and it is now called ' The Samsung Opera House'. 

Today, it is a 'one of a kind experience-center' which holds most of Samsung's products and services. The theater houses their entire range of mobile devices (includes sales, accessories & service), a large stage video screen display for launches and presentations, a complete home audio-video demo zone (includes Harman Kardon, JBL, AKG products), a AR/VR experience zone which is awesome, couple of gaming computers, a connected IoT Smart home experience-center, and a fantastic in-house coffee shop for coffee lovers. 

Here in the Opera House, I got a chance to feel and experience the so called future-home which is all connected - My first experience of an IoT enabled Smart Home.

Samsung has created a model smart-home for customer experience; this is a WiFi enabled Smart-home model and most of the smart devices inside are inter-connected to WiFi for a seamless operational experience. (this could be a norm of living in the future)

It all starts as you enter the house, with a smart door lock and finger-print scanner on the home door. You enter a code and step inside into your smart home.

The smart door has a inbuilt camera which is further connected to the home living-room TV which displays who is at the door (when the door bell rings). Sitting on the couch, you can unlock the smart door from the living room, with a remote or smart phone. 

As soon as you open the smart door and enter into the house, the smart lights inside will turn ON by itself for your warm welcome and bright ambience. 

As you walk in, now, most of the smart devices inside your home are awake and alive.

You feel tired, you can sit on the couch and switch ON the Smart TV with a voice-command and relax watching it.

After a while and when you are bored, with a voice-command you can turn ON the connected Bose audio player for a soothing music experience. And while the music starts to play, the smart room lights dims down by itself and turns into dull shimmering lights for a musical aura and environment to suit your mood. 
(I must say, most of the devices in the house are voice-enabled).

Next, to keep you cool, there is this Samsung's smart air-conditioning tower in a corner which can be controlled using voice commands.

When you are hungry and to find what's in the fridge, sitting on the couch, you can glance into the inside compartments of the connected smart refrigerator. The inside of the fridge is displayed on the smart TV screen for you to see what vegetables, fruits and how much milk you need to order from the grocer. And you can also program the fridge to place orders.

The Samsung smart fridge also houses a decent vertical screen display which enables you to watch YouTube, video or sync your mobile device while cooking. It has an awful AKG smart speaker on the screen display and is pretty loud for audio.

Then, you will spot smart dry vacuum cleaning robot which keeps moving around the house sucking all the dirt on the ground, cleaning the house.

As you step in to the kitchen, there is a there is a smart dish washer to wash all your vessels and utensils. The dish washer does the job and there is connected water heater for a flow of hot water. 

The water heater works using a smart adapter plug kind of device for electricity and heating.

Around the kitchen corner, you will also find a smart oven. (I was told, the cooking hob / induction is not meant to be smart due safety reasons)

As you move on, there is this huge, smart washing machine which washes all your clothes and this machine is loaded with plenty of features to take care of your cloth and fabric. 

And for your suits, blazers and long costumes, as they must not to be crumpled in the washing machine, Samsung has invented a smart suit / blazer cupboard which works like steam ironing. All you have to do is place your suits and turn it ON. This is really nice. Now you can dry clean all your suits at home. 
Pretty smart !! isn't it ??

Finally, to sum it up, I must say, I saw at least 8 to 10 connected smart devices / appliances at the Samsung Opera House experience studio.

This gave me a whole new experience as to how a 'Connected Smart Home' could look and feel like. One true IoT enabled experience.

Well, this was my experience of a connected (IoT) Smart Home of the future. All these devices work on a patented Samsung's own customisable IoT software set (as informed).

This software can be used to program Samsung Smart devices and also other brands of smart devices. This is a good user-friendly feature. You can buy any brand of smart devices and you can couple them with different smart devices. 

With this experience, I got a step closer to IoT enabled devices and its practicality of usage, of this technology in the near future. 

Are these benefits of IoT ?  I guess, it is for us all to decide !!

I suggest, when you get a chance, visit the Bangalore's iconic Opera House Theater to admire the architecture and to experience Samsung's futuristic smart offerings.