Imagine a world where all devices are intelligent. Where your fridge can order your groceries, where your power network can tell you when you have exceeded a set amount of consumption, where your car will tell you and your mechanic it needs attention before the oil leak starts lapping at your rear bumper. Imagine a world where we can source any content, from any device, in any location.
Think for a moment what that would mean to you, to your family, to your colleagues…..
Imagine, you are driving home from work, it’s raining, you’ve had a long hard week and you want nothing more than to walk into a nice warm house with the smell of dinner drifting down the hallway. But you’ve just had an SMS from your partner that they are away for the weekend – the thought of heading home to an empty cold house is fairly unappealing.
Not to worry it’s the not too distant future and the digital city is upon us. As you head down the road a few simple text or voice commands has your house humming in a hive of IP enabled activity. Your lights are on, the heater has been set to automatically control the temperature and humidity levels based on the latest weather forecast, the oven turns on and that roast chicken begins to slowly cook, releasing copius quantities of all those aroma’s you recall from your childhood.
The garage too has had notice of your arrival and is opening for you. The small wifi sensor you installed in your car to synch your music and ipod library each time you get home has signalled your arrival. As you glide to a stop the vital statistics from your car’s engine are uploaded and transmitted to your mechanic for preventative maintenance. Your mileage, your fuel consumption ratio’s, the tyre pressure, and other vital data from the cars onboard computer are all gathered and shared to help you get maximum life from your vehicle investment.
You enter the house, shaking the water off your jacket as your latest music selection is pumped through the new wireless speakers you had installed. Great things these; when your friends come around they are perfect for the impromptu parties on the deck.
On the interactive display in the hallway you see the rate of energy consumption, the amount you have forecasted you will use (based on your 12 month rolling average). On this display you can choose when and how your power will be delivered. Hydro, Wind, Wave, Coal, the choice is yours. Sure you will pay a premium for that extra coal generated power to heat the outdoor covered spa pool but it’s worth it on a night like this.
At the same time you program your hybrid electric vehicle to re-charge at the low demand time of 2am. The washing machine will start then, along with any battery powered devices that need recharging.
This single home interface also controls the download of content from the internet or from your cable provider. Telco services too have headed the way of power utilities to get maximum use of the bandwidth. For some time now you have been able to do time of day downloading for rich media in the off peak periods and save a bit of cash too. Very handy for all those movies you have been adding to your media centre.
You sit down in front of the 3D multifunction display (formerly called the television) and flick your way through the items you earlier scheduled for tonight’s viewing. You can chose from music, recorded broadcasts, pay per view movies you downloaded last night on the off peak, or your own selection of downloaded content. Or you can dial up a friend pr group of friends for a high definition video chat.
You opt for a movie and just as you set up for a marathon session of “Lost”, the phone rings. You reach for the remote and press answer. On the screen is your best friend who wants you to come over. On a night like this you have got to be kidding you say. So instead you agree to share your evening together through your television. You each watch your own shows but in the corner of your screen is your friends show along with an emoticon that shows how they are feeling. You also have the video feed going at the same time so you can chat, text, share jokes and collaborate throughout the evening.
You tire as the night rolls on so you simply pause the movie and transfer it, along with your frieneds video chat session to the bedroom, where you hop into bed and reactivate the chat session and movie.
At the end of the movie you simply disconnect the video stream and set the alarm. The integrated building management system you installed kicks in, the air conditioning adjusts to occupancy demand, the lights sense no activity and shut down, the integrated security system activates and the IP Camera’s start recording the motion activated video snippets and storing them in your media centre for review. At the same time the intelligent recognition software picks up any abnormal activity and sends a feed to your security company for their action.
As you drift off to sleep three hybrid electric security cars gently glide into your neighbourhood and begin their nightly patrol with the images on their cell phones and vehicle MFD’s from your security system.
Sleep well, because at Datacraft, we build Digital Cities.
