There are still many problems in the development or acceleration of smart home appliances

At this year's World Expo in Shanghai, “green and low carbon” and “energy saving and environmental protection” have become the main theme. The display of smart home appliances/smart home life scenes is impressive: the refrigerator's LCD screen can display the status of stored foods, and timely reminders need to be supplemented. Ingredients, and automatic distribution of goods with the supermarket; washing machine can automatically identify the appropriate choice of laundry material washing mode; go out, just through the terminal platform for mobile phones and other text messages can be remotely controlled household appliances ... ... combines cutting-edge technology and Humanized design of smart appliances is becoming a reality step by step from the concept of creativity, and this new trend will also inject new vitality into the traditional home appliance industry, and even trigger a new round of industry reshuffle.

"It is expected that the business impact of smart appliances will be global," said Pierre Roux, strategic marketing manager at Atmel. At present, the smart home appliance market is in the initial stage of development and faces many problems such as standards, costs, industrial ecosystem construction, business models, and so on. It also needs to undergo a long period of market cultivation, and it will take time for large-scale commercial applications. However, “because of the rising awareness of people to increase energy efficiency and the incentives of several government programs, the smart home appliance deployment process is expected to accelerate in the coming years,” Pierre Roux said.

The main energy-saving card

As the terminal power equipment of the power network, the energy consumption of household appliances cannot be underestimated. Even the standby power consumption is not a small overhead. According to a survey conducted by the China Energy Conservation Certification Center, the average standby power consumption of urban households in China is equivalent to a light of 25 watts to 50 watts per day per household. It is estimated that the standby energy consumption of household appliances has accounted for more than 20% of the power consumption in the Chinese (see map). The U.S. Department of Energy’s report also shows that more than one-third of U.S. electricity production is used for home appliances.

The rapid development of intelligent control technology and information technology has made it possible to intelligentize home appliances. Smart home appliances are considered to be an effective way to promote energy conservation and consumption reduction because they can achieve higher performance. It is reported that the American Household Electrical Appliances Association (AHAM) has joined 26 home appliance companies and energy regulatory organizations to reach an agreement on improving the energy efficiency and water-saving capacity of home appliances and promoting the development of smart home appliances. The agreement also applies for smart home appliances. Enter the "Energy Star" certification program.

“We have seen a growing global market for smart home appliances (including China),” said Alan Lee, marketing manager for Microchip's Home Appliances Solutions Division in the Asia-Pacific region. This is due to the improvement of people’s living standards and their tendency to use more performance. Good home appliances; On the other hand, the market is more and more interested in high-efficiency smart appliances under the pressure of rising global warming and rising energy costs.

"People's demand for energy saving, human-machine interface and communication functions will be the main force driving the growth of the smart home appliance market." James Wiart, marketing manager of the Greater China Microcontroller Division of STMicroelectronics (ST), also said that Many countries in the world, including China, are encouraging home appliance manufacturers to develop such smart home appliances. ”

We are optimistic about the development prospects of smart home appliances in the field of energy conservation. Global home appliance manufacturers have formulated development plans or launched related products. For example, the US company Whirlpool announced that it will sell 1 million smart clothes dryers in the market in 2011; and by 2015, it will realize the intelligence of all new products. The smart water heater product developed by GE has been listed on the market. The company stated that it will also launch a series of smart appliances in 2010. Haier, Hisense, Midea and other Chinese home appliance companies also compete to launch a full set of smart home appliance solutions.

The basic technology is in place, the standard is yet to be unified

Smart home appliances are not new concepts. Several years ago, the intelligent functions of individual home appliances were realized. Products such as fully automatic washing machines and digitally controlled rice cookers have already entered people's lives.

With the gradual deepening of 3C convergence, triple play, and the application of Internet of Things technology, home appliances will move toward multi-intelligence, self-adaptation, and networking. A new generation of smart home appliances needs to solve the problems of interconnection and intercommunication between various home appliances and home appliance networks and external networks.

From the perspective of system development, a smart home appliance is a complex embedded system. Its R&D process involves multiple technical fields, including motor frequency conversion technology, low-power design technology, advanced graphic interface technology, and network communication technology. For the three basic technologies of smart home appliance systems - human-machine interface, connectivity and advanced motor control, Microchip's Alan Lee analyzed one by one: "With the continuous improvement of energy-saving awareness, consumers want to understand their consumption patterns, and QVGA LCD graphic display and touch sensing technology can present this information in a user-friendly manner; an innovative microcontroller can be used to form a complete embedded intelligent control solution; in addition, smart home appliances need to be connected to smart meters or home management devices. In order to be able to share and receive energy usage data and time-sharing power events, this requires robust wired and wireless connectivity solutions, such as those based on Wi-Fi or ZigBee protocols."

Home network communication technology is one of the keys to build a smart home appliance system. Home networks are mainly divided into home appliance control networks, home A/V networks, and home data communication networks. In terms of the IP domain, most of the global manufacturers follow the IEEE standard and will develop IPv6 communication technologies in the future. However, in the non-IP domain, there is no global unified standard. Regional standards belong to different camps, and devices of different vendors cannot be interconnected and interoperable. Typical standards include UPnP, SCP and LonWorks in the United States, Echonet in Japan, and KNX in Europe. China’s IGRS Standard and the “General Requirements for Home Multimedia Gateways” reported by the e-jiajiao Alliance have also been promoted to international standards.