Take a Smart Stroll Through the Smart Watch-Controlled Smart Home of Tomorrow

When it comes to overused buzz phrases, "smart home" is one that's fast approaching an eye roll-inducing boiling point. The idea that "the internet of things" (there's another) will soon connect all of our appliances to streamline the mere act of being at home has been relentlessly pursued by electronics companies for years now, and the hype isn't slowing.

Today was maybe the first time I stepped into a smart home prototype that reasonably demonstrated what the concept sets out to do. The smart home, it turns out, was mostly what I'd expected: convenient, efficient, a little buggy and occasionally irritating. So come, step with me into the intelligent machine-stuffed house of the future.

Qualcomm's smart home tech showcase was a surprisingly major draw at CES; a long line wrapped around outside its proverbial digital picket fence. Once inside, we were lead into a living room and kitchen combo. The dominant features were a high-res flat screen TV, the weird yellow-brown carpet, and a monolithic air conditioning unit. In the kitchen space, there was a countertop/dinner table with two places set, a massive tablet hovering over them.

But the first feature the Qualcomm representatives directed our attention to was the smart lock-sporting doorknob, our smart portal into the interlocked ecosystem of the smart home. They call each such smart action like locking or unlocking a door an event, which triggers a notification.

"What are the notifications that a really awesome door lock will do?" asked our tour guide, rhetorically. The answer was: Everything you'd typically do within the first three minutes of being home, paired with a robotic greeting.

"Welcome home, Paul," a disembodied welcome bot intoned, as our guide used an app to unlock the door, which automatically awoke the smart home. The TV, lights, and climate control all whirred into action. All of the above can, of course, then be controlled by a single smartphone or smart watch or the surely forthcoming smart goiter. Qualcomm's platform, Alljoyn, which makes the appliance synergy possible, isn't exclusive to certain brands, either; any smart object can play.

At one point, Paul adjusted the levels of the Windfield air conditioner from his wrist. Then he opened the wine cooler—and the notifications appeared on his watch, as well as the top corner of the LG TV screen. The idea was that it would remind you or your family members that the door was open, and was letting cold air out.

This would probably be annoying to anyone watching TV, but it undeniably took some pretty smart programming to pull off.

"Finally, you can reset all your clocks at the same time," Paul said, before we departed the room.

We moved on to the kids' bedroom, where a smart alarm clock can wake up your son, let's call him "Bobby", as the reps did, in a kid-friendly robo voice. "Teddy" the kid-bot can be tailored to trigger what the Qualcomm rep calls a "good morning event"—basically starting the A/C or heat automatically and vocally encouraging Bobby to get the hell out of bed.

"You can make your own unique experience for a good morning event," the guide added. "Mine would be turning up the heater and getting the coffee brewing so I could go about my day."

Once Bobby's out of bed, he grabs his tablet and plays video game with his friends, who've arrived with their own tablets, which they use to play cooperative games together, even though they have separate systems. Then, when it's time to go back to bed (in this demonstration, Bobby is awakened by a robot, plays video games until dark, and is ushered to bed by the same robot), there is a Goodnight Event that bids him sweet dreams. It did not immediately work when prompted by our guide. But he did point out a service called Stream Boost, which can make sure that the littlun isn't hiding a tablet under the covers. It detects his activity and sends him an exhortation to get to bed—and a text message to the parents downstairs, too.

In the last room we come across, the recreation room, there's a smart painting that's actually a speaker you can control with your smart watch. It wasn't immediately clear if the painting was capable of playing music that did not sound like bad Coldplay b-sides, but we'll assume it is indeed smart enough to do so. There was also something called the Canary smart home security device, which is basically like a remote-control panic room button. (I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for the obscene repetition of the word "smart" in these product descriptions, it must be grating I know; but I am just trying to play the part of a scrupulous tech journalist, and that is how Qualcomm's marketing term describes these products.)

Once it's activated, it will send your smart watch a warning and an image if its tripped—if it's just your cat, no need to respond.

If it's a burglar, however, our guide suggests "scaring" him by turning on the alarm, and sending a picture of him to the TV screen. The alarm, however, when demonstrated, was pretty indistinguishable from a rave—lights flashed and the alarm pulsed to an EDM-esque rhythm.

All in all, the smart home of the future was often interesting, frequently pointless, and sometimes a little obnoxious. Having the ability—again, something that's been pursued for decades now—to control all your stuff from your watch would be nice.

But I left unconvinced that most of this was terribly important or even alluring; it struck me as a novel way to synchronize the host of gadgetry currently available primarily to the upper and upper-middle class, to provide small efficiency gains and a few 'oh cool' moments. If only for that reason alone, it probably does represent some variation of where the future home is headed. Not all of the technology is actually intelligent or even useful—but much of it is likely to become a smart status symbol anyway.