Smart Homes are becoming more and more widespread and will soon become the norm but what exactly is Smart Home technology? A Smart Home is defined as a residence that has devices in the home that are connected to each other allowing these devices to communicate with each other and be controlled remotely. Besides control, Smart Technology allows us to monitor a given device or room’s activity remotely as well. For example, Smart technology allows us to monitor a refrigerator’s water filter’s lifespan and be alerted when it needs replacing or receive a notification when the dishwasher is done. Smart technology can alert us if we’ve forgotten to turn the oven off, give us the ability to turn the oven off remotely and confirm that it was turned off. Sounds great, right? There’s just one problem. It is costly. If you want a smart kitchen you will need to purchase a Smart refrigerator, dishwasher, faucet, stove, microwave, toaster, coffee maker, etc and there is no guarantee that these devices built by different makers will seamlessly communicate with each other. What’s the solution? The brilliant minds of Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University may have the answer; Synthetic Sensors. With just one tiny device for an entire room, we can monitor virtually all the activity within it. Do you want to know if someone is coming into the kitchen for a midnight snack and at what time? Done. Have you wondered how much water you use when hand-washing pots and pans? Easy. All of this and much much more is possible. Learn more about Synthetic Sensors by watching this video: Synthetic Sensors