Home automation

Home automation (part of domotics) is the residential extension of "building automation". It is automation of the home, housework or household activity. Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security. Home automation for the elderly and disabled can provide increased quality of life for persons who might otherwise require caregivers or institutional care.

A home automation system integrates electrical devices in a house with each other. The techniques employed in home automation include those in building automation as well as the control of domestic activities, such as home entertainment systems, houseplant and yard watering, pet feeding, changing the ambiance "scenes" for different events (such as dinners or parties), and the use of domestic robots. Devices may be connected through a computer network to allow control by a personal computer, and may allow remote access from the internet. Through the integration of information technologies with the home environment, systems and appliances are able to communicate in an integrated manner which results in convenience, energy efficiency, and safety benefits.

Typically, a new home is outfitted for home automation during construction, due to the accessibility of the walls, outlets, and storage rooms, and the ability to make design changes specifically to accommodate certain technologies. Wireless systems are commonly installed when outfitting a pre-existing house, as they reduce wiring changes. These communicate through the existing power wiring, radio, or infrared signals with a central controller. Network sockets may be installed in every room like AC power receptacles.

Although automated homes of the future have been staple exhibits for World's Fairs and popular backgrounds in science fiction, complexity, competition between vendors, multiple incompatible standards and the resulting expense have limited the penetration of home automation to homes of the wealthy or ambitious hobbyists. Possibly the first "home computer" was an experimental system in 1966.

Housing estate

A housing estate is a group of buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Accordingly, a housing estate is usually built by a single contractor, with only a few styles of house or building design, so they tend to be uniform in appearance. Generally housing estates are monotenure.

In Asian cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul, an estate may range from detached houses to high density tower blocks with or without commercial facilities; in Europe and America, these may take the form of town housing, or the older-style rows of terraced houses associated with the industrial revolution, detached or semi-detached houses with small plots of land around them forming gardens, and are frequently without commercial facilities.

Housing estates are the usual form of residential design used in new towns, where estates are designed as an autonomous suburb, centred around a small commercial centre. Such estates are usually designed to minimise through-traffic flows, and to provide recreational space in the form of parks and greens.

This word usage may have arisen from an area of housing being built on what had been a country estate as towns and cities expanded in and after the 19th century. Reduction of the phrase to mere "estate" is common in Britain, especially when prefigured by the specific name, but is not so called in America.