Effects in the smart home are things to communicate something, or to simulate an environment or feature. Effects can be both audible or visual. Effects can also be applied to displays and an example might be a real wood fire effect.
Effects are mostly used in the contextual smart home to indicate context or events and our dynamic smart lighting is a great example of how visual effects can be used to convey events, e.g. the door bell has been pressed or the telephone is ringing.
Effects can also be used to set a mood such as lights flickering like a lit candle or lights twinkling at Christmas time.
Visual effects can basically be split into two types:
Our dynamic smart lighting is capable of effects and stores it's current, steady state. When a request arrives to perform a a persistent effect it will over-ride this current state and state the persistent effect. When a request arrives to stop the effect, it will restore its previous steady state.
Transient effects have highest priority and will over-ride both the steady state and persistent effect. Once the transient effect is completed, the previous persistent state continues or if none was enabled, it will restore its previous steady state. This means that regardless of what the dynamic smart lighting was doing, it will always deliver visual notifications in the form of transient effects.
If the intenal alarm is activated, the dynamic smart lighting lighting in our smart shower will flash orange. For the external alarm it will flash red.
If the door bell is pressed the dynamic smart lighting lighting in our smart shower will flash green once.
We have developed our own RGBW/RGBWW controller for our LED strip lighting such as that used in our smart garden lounge and this supports a flickering flame effect.
If the phone is ringing the dynamic smart lighting lighting in our smart shower will flash blue three times.
In a highly integrated smart home such as our contextual smart home things like our lighting become common capabilities that can be used to provide valuable functionality. This is particularly useful for those that are hearing impaired but, it is also a useful capability for everyone in the home. This is a great example of our strapline - 'intelligent assisted living for all'.
