09-24, 14:00–15:30 (Europe/London), Room L
Smart home automation provides many benefits. But for how long, and at what cost, financial and otherwise? In this session we discuss the current state of vendor lock-in, a utopian open solution and the very practical solutions delegates have built for themselves.
This is a highly interactive session, so although it begins with a talk on the pitfalls of the current state of affairs, delegates are very welcome to contribute their own stories to the overall picture.
Some delegates will have used their skills to build their own home automation solutions, so the middle section is a kind of show-and-tell of what's possible, the pros and cons and a sharing of ideas.
Finally, we look at what a more open off-the-shelf solution might look like for people without the software and electronics skills to build their own. Getting it adopted is another matter, but can we propose an outline design for a platform that offers consumers more control?
After two decades as a software developer, Gail eventually she became so obsessed with human aspects of the job that she began talking about them at tech conferences. She left the day job for a psychology degree, followed by PhD research in psychology of software development.
Sharing knowledge is the new day job in an accidental second career as an academic. Gail has taught programming and cyberpsychology, researched cyber security for software developers, and now has fun teaching problem solving and software engineering to final year students at the University of Portsmouth.