Smart home automation makes it possible to proactively heat your home from the road, automatically close your garage each evening and conserve energy, among many other modern conveniences. 

The low power, affordable and reliable performance of today’s leading Internet of Things (IoT) solutions make them ideal for critical workplace safety applications, including contact tracing, facility hygiene, room and desk usage, and social distancing enforcement. Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many governments, organizations and institutions are relying on Semtech’s LoRa® devices and LoRaWAN® protocol to combat the disease’s spread in workspaces.

In 2018, the U.S. made up 35 percent of the global smart home market, which is expected to grow five-fold to a $192 billion global market by 2023. The same data from IHS Markit shows that over a third (38 percent) of U.S. households already have at least one smart device. Consumers in the market for smart home devices are faced with an overwhelmingly wide variety of device options and technology platforms. Among those offering the longest range and lowest power consumption are YoLink LoRa®-based devices offered by YoSmart. Smart home sensors leveraging Semtech’s LoRa devices are only a few clicks away, available now on Amazon in the U.S.

Smart homes are booming in popularity. The increasing volume of connected devices that collect data make them an attractive target for hackers. Accordingly, buyers are increasingly concerned about the privacy and security of their smart home data. The combination of LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® standard provides powerful levels of security for smart home system consumers.

Managing a building certainly isn’t easy, but the Internet of Things (IoT) sure can make it feel that way.

Another CES is in the books, and as usual, it was a blur of visionary concepts demonstrated alongside very useful, near-term technology. While much has already been written about CES 2020, I will focus my impressions on the connectivity technology choices for the smart home and building. While the market continues to evolve clever ways to present, manipulate and use data to make our lives and businesses simpler and more efficient, feeding the appetite of the big data engine presents many challenges in the smart building connectivity market.

Real estate is the second highest operating expense for employers behind salaries. At the same time, the workforce is rapidly transitioning into an “anytime, anywhere” work ethos. Despite these realities, little has changed in the way office space is utilized. As a result, very expensive office space is going unused. Worse still, without adequate data to prove otherwise, facility managers often request additional budget to lease even more space due to the belief that they are out of room in their existing facilities.

As the vertical market director for Smart Homes and Buildings in Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group, and lead for the Smart Buildings Working Group of the LoRa Alliance®, I recently had the pleasure of attending the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA) World Workplace® Conference and Expo in Phoenix, Arizona. According to IFMA, the event is the largest and longest-running event series for facility management (FM) and workplace professionals, attracting an audience of nearly 5,000 professionals from 17 countries.

The emergence of smart buildings is not a new development. Building automation has been around (typically behind the scenes) since the mid-80s, having evolved from BACnet to a host of IEEE protocols, and recently from strictly wired, to both wired and wireless sensors. Building Management Systems (BMS) have played an important role in this evolution. However, historically these have had a limited role outside the realm of managing HVAC systems and the other physical operations within a building.

Among the many fascinating topics that captivated the 180,000 plus attendees at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) were innovations for smart homes and buildings. From smart kitchen appliances to voice assistant-enabled lighting, consumer electronics companies are leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect everyday devices to the Cloud to create new experiences for consumers at a rapid pace. Business Insider forecasts that in the United States alone, more than one billion smart home devices will be deployed by 2023.