Smart house sensors are a core component belonging to the modern smart home, in part thanks to their capabilities in collecting data on day-to-day activities and improving convenience and energy efficiency for the end user.
According to Statista, the global revenue of the smart home market is projected to reach $174b in 2025, and expected to reach $250b by 2029; with the most revenue generated by the US. Household penetration is also forecast to rise, from 77.6% in 2025 to 92.5% by 2029. This paints a picture of continued consumer demand for the convenience, comfort, and energy efficiency that technologies such as smart house sensors offer.
A range of sensors meet the different needs of a residential environment; from sensing motion, to detecting light, sound, and even leaks, demonstrating that the role they occupy in the ecosystem is vast and varied. They effectively behave as the ‘eyes and ears’ of a smart home, there to detect any changes.
Engineers designing smart house sensors need to take into account how the sensors will be integrated into the smart home environment; focusing on communication protocols, gateways, and Cloud interfaces available. Although Matter, the standard – something we’ve covered more extensively in a technical article for those that are interested – is seeking to address the interoperability gap between devices of different vendors, engineers may still need to consider existing interoperability between products as the standard evolves.
Other factors to consider include sensor placement, environmental calibration, the robustness of firmware, and low-power design. For instance, when placing an occupancy sensor in a home – which tends to either be powered by Passive Infrared (PIR) or ultrasonic – the sensor needs to have direct line of sight with the moving object, and with PIR sensors, cannot be placed too close to HVAC supply registers as it can affect detection.
For ultrasonic sensors, which detect occupancy by emitting high-frequency energy signals and have a greater range, the placement is not as important: ultrasonic sensors can be placed in areas where a clear line of sight is not possible, such as on top of a bookcase.
Finally, both the engineer and end user need to think about the privacy and security implications of having smart house sensors installed in residential spaces, because of how they can be exploited and hacked into. Eavesdropping attacks, for example, happen when attacks can intercept and listen to data transmitted between smart home devices, like sensors, and gain access to potentially sensitive information about a user’s comings-and-goings. One scenario could involve an attacker ascertaining when a home is empty and can be broken into on the basis of occupancy data.
The growing demand for AI-enabled sensors, which applies AI to sort through the data and gain real-time analysis, and advancements in sensing materials like graphene-based sensors, indicate where smart house sensors may be headed in the future, fuelled by a healthy market and the need for greater intelligence.
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