Apps on Your Fridge by Samsung http://bit.ly/nZXCPo

According to the Zpryme Smart Grid: Smart Appliance Insights report, “from 2011 to 2015, the global household smart appliance market is projected to grow from $3.06 billion to $15.12 billion, respectively with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2011 to 2015 is projected to be 49.0 percent.” With a large market growing larger that fast, companies take immediate notice.  That was definitely evident by the myriad of announcements of smart appliances at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

There is Smart and There is SMART

As discussed in a recent New York Times article “Not Quite Smart Enough”, smart appliances have a ways to go before they can be really “smart appliances”.  Andrew Martin warned us not to expect a Jetsons lifestyle anytime soon.  Well, let’s look at the types of smartness in today’s appliances and see if he is right.  Typically, you find smartness in four areas:

• Interaction with other appliances and the smart grid
• Interaction with owner’s smartphone as a remote management solution
• A centralized hub in the kitchen to information from the Internet
• An ability to track interesting information, such as food in the refrigerator

The low-hanging fruit is the first three items while the last one is the most difficult.  Integration into a smart meter (and consequently the smart grid) is probably the easiest and most non-invasive.  With additional information about energy consumption devices, you and your utility can better manage your overall energy consumption and manage the load.

The next level of smartness is to allow remote monitoring and access through your smartphone or tablet device. Your washer can tell you when your wash cycle is done and you can easily stop and start the dryer when leaving and returning to your home. No guarantees on wrinkle-less clothes though.  Now, if it could only separate the whites from the colors!

The smart refrigerator promises to be a hub of information from the Internet within the kitchen.  Internet radio solutions like Pandora and Spotify can be streamed and recipes, photos and weather can be displayed. The key question is how easy will it be to manage this additional source of information; will consumers go to their refrigerator as opposed to their tablet or smartphone?

The last level of smartness is the most difficult, but the killer application for smart appliances.  Smart appliances hold the possibility of being information databases about their primary activity.  For example, refrigerators would track the food inside.  Imagine being able to cross-reference a recipe with the contents of your refrigerator while standing in the supermarket.  Or by knowing the upcoming expiration dates, forever ending the science experiments that you are afraid to clean up that exist in the deep recesses of your refrigerator!

Unfortunately, today the information database approach requires significant human interaction – scanning the receipt or the individual bar codes. For someone with specific dietary needs, it may be a good solution, but for most people, we don’t want to work hard to understand our refrigerator. More automated solutions are needed.

The Value Needs to Exceed the Cost

Much of the discussion of smart appliances has been about the technology integration; however, the adoption will explode when the consumer benefit exceeds the cost, including acquisition cost, ease of interactivity, and reduced privacy risks.

Value-added software will be critical for consumers to pay an additional premium.  The increasing complexity of the software will drive more sophisticated memory requirements leading to more use of NOR flash at higher densities. The communications with the smart grid will drive more requirements for performance.

With your smart meter talking directly with your refrigerator, air-conditioning and washer/dryer, valuable data is leaving your home. This information is great to help manage their energy usage, but brings a host of privacy and security issues, particularly around personal information.  For example, will that gallon of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream eaten in the span of last week come back to bite you with higher health insurance payments?  Or will you simply be overwhelmed with coupons from Haagen Dazs trying to muscle in on the action?

Protecting your personal data will require Flash Memory that cannot be tampered with. NOR flash often contains the software that secures access to the content as well as the operating system and other middleware. Designers use the security features within the NOR flash such as permanent lockable region to protect against write or erase access by hackers and a One Time Programmable (OTP) region for sensitive data such as encryption keys and unique IDs.

Someday We Will Have the Jetsons

Unlike Andrew Martin’s assessment in the New York Times article referenced above, smart appliances do indeed have huge potential to change our lives for the better.  The technology exists or will shortly exist to solve many of the remaining challenges to smart appliance adoption and when the value outweighs the costs, adoption will soar.  Now, when can I get “Rosie the Robot” so she can make my bed in the morning?