In our @smartest_home appliances like our lounge subwoofer can easily be connected using standard smart plugs or appliance modules. In this particular case the subwoofer has been connected because we only want it on whilst we are watching movies. The plug and switch on the subwoofer itself are very hard to reach with our particular installation, so we use a smart appliance plug to turn it on and off using voice commands. If it is left on, then our smart home will switch it off automatically.
In this instance, the subwoofer is connected using an Everspring AN7-3 Z-Wave appliance plug/module but our technology abstraction allows any similar type of appliance control plug to be used. This is used to simply tell our Home Control System when the subwoofer is switched on and off and to enable voice control. This particular module does not support energy monitoring.
Our Home Control System models all connected appliances and all types of connected appliances in our . Our technology abstraction this means that they inherit all of attributes supported by our models and all of the common capabilities supported by our contextual smart home. Essentially, every connected dumb device or appliance becomes much smarter and can also contribute to the wider pool of whole home context.
Our models include the ability to track when devices are switched on or off and how long each state is maintained. For all devices it is really easy to set a time period to generate notifications and/or change the state. So with some simple configuration, any connected device or appliance can behave this way. It is also possible to configure voice announcements or trigger the alarm.
We typically use voice control as the means to switch on the subwoofer as it is very convenient. Our smart home tracks how long the device is on for and if it is on and our lounge TV is also on, then it will extend the length of time the subwoofer is on for by 30 minutes.
Once our smart home 'sees' the lounge TV is off, it will wait 30 minutes and then switch off the subwoofer automatically, if we haven't switched it off already.
This kind of behaviour is really easy to configure for any device by using a controller.
