At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, hundreds of high-tech companies displayed their latest innovations in technology for the home. A host of cutting-edge products are on the way that will do everything from regulating your home’s temperature to cleaning your windows to making your grocery list. Here are five of the most intriguing new high-tech ideas for your home.
Smart Thermostats
Smart thermostats record when and how often you adjust the temperature in your home, learn your habits over time and automatically adjust to lower your energy bills and keep your home at your ideal comfort level. This concept has been around for a little while, but the next generation, like the Eversense, also makes adjustments based on the times people are home and can sense how many people are present.
Smart Refrigerator
Technology has finally come up with a solution to the ever-present question of what to make for dinner. Samsung showed a smart refrigerator at CES that comes up with recipe ideas based on what’s in the fridge. A 10-inch tablet is embedded in the door containing apps to help you plan and organize mealtimes.
The fridge comes with Evernote for sharing grocery lists among devices and a grocery management app that helps you track what’s inside and when it expires. Reminders will pop up to let you know what’s going bad and what you need to put on the shopping list. Then the Epicurious app will take the ingredients you have and come up with recipe suggestions.
Smart Oven
Dacor introduced an Android-powered oven this year at CES. Similar to the Samsung refrigerator, the oven comes with an LCD panel containing apps with recipes and web-surfing capability. There’s a guided cooking mode if you’re inexperienced in the kitchen.
If you’ve never cooked a turkey before, you can enter its weight and the oven will set itself to the right time and temperature. Remote access means you can activate the oven and monitor the cooking process from your smartphone.
Motion Sensor Faucet
Motion sensor faucets have become commonplace, but Moen’s new innovation for the home, the Smart Touch Faucet, takes it a step further. The faucet is activated either with a tap against the base or by waving a hand above it. It turns off again when you move your hand away, saving water.
Robot Window Washer
Home vacuuming robots like Roomba have been around a few years and have gained quite a fan base. The Winbot is coming on the market soon to try to do the same for window washing. The Winbot works by suction to hold itself onto the window.
It slides over the window squirting cleaning fluid, squeegeeing and drying. When it hits the frame it turns around and moves up the window, then turns in the other directing until the whole surface haze been cleaned. It comes with a remote control to allow you to move the robot where you want to take care of any missed spots.
