The Hindu Business Line : The future at home

IT's a warm, sun-splashed day in Jamwon-dong, one of the several bustling arteries of Seoul, South Korea. A bewildering array of Korea-made cars and SUVs jam the motorway, some of them quite recognisable to an Indian: there's the Atoz, known as Hyundai Motor's Santro here, the Accent and the Terracan, and luxury car Sonata, ubiquitous as a lowly cab in Korea. The bus comes to a halt before an imposing office building, whose façade is a huge patchwork of mirrors, reflecting the bustle of the street it's on.

The name board proclaims that it is Samsung's Homevita gallery - Homevita being the $36.5 billion chaebol's home networking solutions brand, which converges various information and communication technologies to enable users enjoy a futuristic digital lifestyle in their homes. A motley bunch of South Asian journalists from the Philippines, Thailand and India tumble out of the bus, ready to be transported into a world where devices remotely respond to commands at the touch of a button on a `HomePad' or a hand-held PC.

The media team is in Seoul at the invitation of Samsung for an exposition of its cutting-edge technologies. The din of the street subsides as we enter the gallery.

A Samsung team is ready, waiting to transport us to a 21st century home, brought alive at Samsung's Homevita. Entry to the gallery is not with a key or an electronic card or sensors that spot an approaching person and open the doors, but fingerprint identification. Our guide places a finger in a small slot on a door panel and, presto, the doors slide open to reveal a large living room, which could well be in any upmarket home. The touch-screen HomePad, is put to work now: the curtains draw open on their own on a deft touch of the screen, the TV springs to life and you can even shuffle through programmes, says our guide, clearly enthused by the `oohs' and `aahs' the technology is generating. More such gizmos follow: the gallery is tastefully made up to represent the different spaces in a home: the living room apart, there's a bedroom, a kitchen (where the coffee maker starts brewing on its own upon a command from the HomePad), a work area and even a space for a toilet. No, there is no electronic loo here, but a `non-invasive' device, yet to be commercially launched, in which you place your finger and it immediately gives you a reading of your cholesterol and sugar levels!

The HomePad is evidently the `master' of the home. We saw only a fraction of its use, but as Samsung officials explain, the dynamic HomePad, a mobile home network remote control device, can control a range of home appliances such as the washing machine and refrigerator, alarms in case of fires or gas leaks, home lighting, door phones for visitor checks, TV and video, apart from a myriad other uses as a phone book, message board, scheduler and even as a photo album. The network structure enables users to control their home appliances anywhere at anytime via remote access over hand phones, wireless PDAs or Net-connected PCs.

We ask Hyoung hoon (aka James) Kim, Manager (Product Planning), Samsung Electronics, whether what we see and what they're talking about is in the realm of fantasy and the future. Kim avers that whatever we've seen is very much commercial technology and being installed in Korean homes; South Korea, he admits, is a much quicker adapter of technology than the other countries where it is taking the Homevita brand, like Hong Kong, Spain, Singapore and Russia.

Samsung, he points out, offers seven home networking solutions:

Security: which monitors the front door, captures and stores digital images of visitors and detects attempted break-ins

Safety: Should an accident like a fire or gas leak occur, the system detects it and automatically notifies pre-determined response contacts.

SOHO: which creates a wireless LAN at the home. The high-speed wireless networking enables super-fast file and printer sharing; helps when you need to transfer large image and date files from desktops to other connected devices.

VoIP: The Voice Over IP connects the building complex with videophones, ensuring low-cost video communications between community residences as well as building management facilities (especially useful in Korea where people prefer living in large communes with multi-storeyed apartment blocks)

Home control: Lighting, air-conditioning, heating and major appliances can be controlled remotely inside and outside homes.

Entertainment: The HomePad can turn the living room into a home theatre. Wireless TV and digital storage enable saving favourite programmes.

Samsung's Kim says that the chaebol is very cleverly working with residential builders who are looking to differentiate their offering with Homevita and provide buyers with digital lifestyle opportunities. The experiment was kicked off around three years ago when devices were installed in 100 homes on a test basis. Today, having taken these technologies commercial, 1,500 luxury apartments in Seoul are using a part of the home networking solutions that Samsung offers. People are averse to spending money and renovating their homes to adopt new technology, so the Net-savvy younger generation which is at ease with technology, is the one snapping up Homevita-enabled homes, explains Kim, who has studied for a couple of years in the US, with several Indian colleagues, whom he describes as "brilliant people". Says he: "As you can expect, home builders adopt a so-called "basic package" and not the whole system due to price, and characteristics of the products. So, right now, builders opt for more infrastructure-oriented packages only, while installing personalised and customisable products is personal choice."

The basic package that Homevita offers is: security, home control (lights, heating, cooling systems and also include some networked appliances control), community portal, remote metering and so on. Elaborates Kim: "In terms of usage, most consumers accept `security' as a fundamental system necessary for their homes. We've seen that there is a slight difference between people's need and people's preference. They've shown us that `security & control' is now considered basic infrastructure and they "would" install them at their homes, whereas entertainment is treated as an option. They do like it and consider it a `most-wanted' item but only few home buyers who have deep pockets adopt it."

Ask Kim about the costs of adopting new technology, and he takes a different tack. "Please understand the home buildings market and their business pattern in Far East nations. Typically, houses sold here already have installed home automation devices and built-in home appliances like refrigerator, washing machine, cooking range ... The price of those devices is already included in the price of the house, pretty similar to the US house buying pattern. Basically, what we are doing now is connecting the devices and trying to create value from it. I believe that home buyers have little severe resistance to the `price' of the new products but the `concept' of a new environment."

The connection of devices that Kim describes is done through various ways: by integrating power line control and wired/wireless local area network technology. The PLC system controls all `wired' devices like home lighting, heating, air-conditioners and home appliances. To operate through the high speed Net, the network is connected to a residential building server, router and firewall and then extended to individual residences through a home gateway installed in each unit.

Ask Kim whether home networking solutions are spreading like wildfire across the world where Homevita galleries have come up, and he is circumspect. The South Korean people, he says, love to experiment with new technologies, so adoption has been easier. However, he admits, it's not the same in other countries. As he elaborates: "Homevita studios around the world are important windows to communicate with people who live there,to give them opportunities of testing and trying real products and expressing their ideas and needs to us directly. I don't think these trends (or technology fever) are limited to the Korean market only." So, who knows, soon, if you want to settle down to watch your favourite movie, want a nice cuppa and don't want to be disturbed, just stab a few buttons on your Homepad! It'll be at your service.

Pictures by Vinay Kamath

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