From sensor technology to camouflaged control panels, CEDIA experts explore and report from January’s Consumer Electronics Show — Part 2. By Ed Wenck, CEDIA

 

The CEDIA Technology Councilis group of CEDIA volunteers who do their best to stay abreast of trends in tech so that those responsible for integrating that technology into the home know what’s on the horizon. Here are three trends (and cool solutions) they noticed at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that might have an impact on the kitchen and bath industry.

A greater number – and variety – of sensors will appear in the home.As more devices are introduced in the home to monitor everything from our gestures for control interfaces to our health, sensors will become more numerous. Peter Aylett of the Dubai-based firm Archimedia noted that one firm on the CES floor, Korea’s UMAIN, was demonstrating sensors that utilized — of all things — radar.

“As long as you’re within about two meters, using radar, it can detect your heart rate and your respiration rate. So, in terms of monitoring kids in nurseries or the elderly, the vulnerable or the sick, this is a fantastically noninvasive way of doing it. There’re no cameras, there’re no microphones…you can hold a conversation and this thing isn’t picking it up. It’s picking up respiration, it’s picking up heartbeats, it’s picking up activity, it’s picking up presence, it’s doing security monitoring — and all through radar.”

Modifications to a home’s data infrastructure are needed, but the company claims the potentially lifesaving benefits far outweigh any extra costs.

Look for control panels to take on new, aesthetically-pleasing forms.Rich Green of Rich Green Designs, Palo Alto, Calif., is taken by a device from a company called MUI that has introduced a control panel that looks like nothing more advanced than a block of wood. “It looks like a two by four that’s sanded down really nice and stained pretty,” says Green. “But when it activates, there’s a glow that comes from behind the surface, which makes it a touch-panel interface. It’s a soft and appealing kind of an interface. You’re touching a piece of wood.” Think of the various form factors here that could really blend into a room’s décor.

Adaptable TV screens will deliver multiple streams of content. Bigger screens, flexible screens, modular screens, screens that can cover an entire wall with panels that are doing different things at once, taking on different aspect ratios — you name it. They’re all here. Kris Hogg, one of the folks at Samsung who’s intimately involved with developing that firm’s large-format screen technology (dubbed “The Wall”), noted, “We’re able to play with the form factor. A TV screen doesn’t have to have an aspect ratio of 16:9, It can be 23:1 if you’d like. Additionally, you can have a TV playing in one part, a ‘newspaper’ appearing in another part, shopping lists, weather reports, the feed from your doorbell — all arranged to fit the space at hand.”

Imagine that data-driven screen living on a wall of a kitchen — or even appearing on a shower door.

Kitchen and bath designers and remodelers looking to collaborate with CEDIA integrators can find local experts at www.cedia.com.