Rising demand for housing means that new homes are built every day in today's Smart cities.
Technology begins at the foundation becoming a large part of both design and construction.
The shift has occurred to making the building itself smart the very materials of the building
will create the intelligence in the building as you build it.
This definitely has to be where smart homes are going because everything else didn't work up until now.
Join us as we explore the technology that enables a connected,
sustainable and energy efficient lifestyle.
Digi-Key presents City Digital
brought to you by Littelfuse, Taoglas, u-blox, and Supply Frame.
I think for me, it's you know, how technology enables us to live and work and
play in a more cohesive way.
It's um I guess we're technology and interior architecture meet. If we just look at,
you know, technology in general, it's constantly disappearing, right?
It's one of our ideas of the future that our
technology gets thinner, it gets more integrated, we see it less and less.
What used to be handled with 12 devices is now handled with one device.
Right? Right now, we're talking about how thin can I
make the tv to go on the wall. But what happens when the tv and the wall
become one? I think that's the future is that forms and
surfaces, ceilings and walls and floors, You know, they are not only a
platform for technology or surface for technology to a whole technology,
but they are technology.
We are about to undergo a revolution in the way that smart homes are built.
Matt Johnson of layer explains how smart surfaces can transform construction materials
to provide unparalleled visibility throughout the home.
Our view and vision has been that we are building smart buildings and smart homes in the
wrong way. Our vision is that you should just leverage the
infrastructure of the house, the materials that you use to make that house or that office and
make them smart at the point of construction so that it's already intelligent.
The most obvious use case that makes that really compelling is flat roofs.
So commercial buildings have big flat roofs of some houses do as well.
It's effectively an inevitability that there will be a flat roof leak.
The only way you achieve that is by literally making the entire roof smart the moment that
it's installed. And then the question becomes how do you do
that? You cannot do that with lots of small point
based sensors, you have to start looking at the roof as a material platform for sensors and
that's what we're really focused on.
Digi-Key very literally, enables the prototyping in our business,
you know, and so having really fast shipping and a huge product line and great customer
service makes it really easy to not feel constrained and having to choose from a
shortlist. You can actually get what you want. Manufacturers like Taoglas are pushing
the limits of what's possible enhancing quality of life by connecting devices to the home.
The smart home space is somewhat of a generic term these days.
So a lot of different devices can fall under the smart home space.
I mean everything from smart lighting, smart locking systems, and other alternative energy
sources. So we worked quite a lot across the board on a
lot of these products as well. The space that we're in,
I think it's forever going to be an involving space with constant new technologies,
constant new products and product ideas. I mean a lot of the new technologies have
allowed for products to become developed where previously maybe you know,
certain technologies may have been too expensive for a certain application.
Smart homes really begin from the construction phase.
I mean everything right down to sensors now that are being incorporated into concrete when
it's poured to determine the strength capabilities of that concrete to ensure that
it's optimized as much as possible. There's a large number of antenna integration
into those products to ensure that you know, IP67 rating etc.
We can start building homes wirelessly from the start, This definitely has to be where smart
homes are going because everything else didn't work up until now Finn Boetius of Nordic Semiconductor
reveals how engineers and developers can use new means of connectivity to
enable a more integrated and secure smart home ecosystem Nordic is by far the market leader
when it comes to beautiful energy and that's what a lot of smart home devices using nowadays,
like even if you have a wifi device, it most likely has a Nordic chip inside that does that
does the commissioning via bluetooth low energy because right now nowadays if you build a smart
home, what you do is you pull a single wire everywhere where you need current.
But you also pull a different wire which is a bit like tinier and has multiple wires in it.
You pull that also to every switch and every actuator that you want something.
So you need to plan ahead. If you want to actually build a smarter
wireless doesn't really work for electricians, you need a wire yet.
And if you get to the point where you can connect something and it works and it's stable
then we can start building homes wirelessly from the start and this is where Digi-Key
is like a whole leap ahead of like big distribution companies.
Okay, I need a development kit. I look at the Digi-Key and I ordered it’s there tomorrow
or the day after. So we're really enabling the next gen of smart
home technology by really providing secure and reliable wireless connectivity solutions all
the way from the silicon to the cloud.
Next we sit down with you blocks to discuss how smart technologies are enabling better tracking
and efficiency of utility usage throughout the home.
So generally some of the trends in the smart home industry today,
they are really focused around that's called Matter, which is a new standard that
incorporates over 200 companies from amazon, Google, Ikea and more because today there's a
lot of fragmentation in that ecosystem. If you have,
you know smart lightbulbs and outlets and whatnot in your home you may have a bunch of
different types of hubs and apps installed on your phone.
But looking forward this Matter ecosystem will allow all these devices to communicate with
each other and create a more kind of coherent and useful system for end users.
Digi-Key is a really important partner for u-blox and accelerating accessibility
to the smart home ecosystem for a lot of new vendors and existing players.
From home appliances to smart surfaces to energy Storage,
the next generation of smart home technology will be more accessible than ever.
Digi-Key and its partners are at the forefront of design
and innovation enabling the future smart homes of City Digital.