— image credit: Carlie Connolly
From face recognition to a home office space, Telus’ Future home showed off many advanced technologies recently, giving people in the community a glimpse into the future.
Touring throughout western Canada, one of the reasons for their stop on the Saanich Peninsula is because Telus has invested $11 million in their fibre optic network in North Saanich.
“So essentially, any home, business, school can take advantage of having fibre optic directly to their premise, which is essentially the best connectivity that you can have not only in Canada or North America, but in the world,” said Sean Donnelly, senior regional market manager for Telus in Victoria.
Telus brings the Future Home, a 560 square-foot space, around to show people what they envision a connected home will look like in the next five to 10 years.
One of the features of the Future Home is a facial recognition scanner.
“So if you were to think of living at home with maybe your partner (or) your kids, you could program the door only to open when you’re standing at it,” said Donnelly, adding that the door won’t open to those it doesn’t recognize.
Once inside the home, there’s an interactive hub that has multiple features. If a person was running out the door, they could forget a certain appointment, so the hub can act as a reminder and can have pre-programmed messages.
“You can have it set up with multiple apps. You can have it being able to text someone an automatic message the second you get home,” he said.
There is also the smart fridge, which is currently available on the market. It’s not like any old fridge, as it has multiple features, including keeping one up to date on what food is about to expire, along with keeping tabs on what’s in your fridge. It would then give you meal ideas with what’s inside, along with what the ingredients are, how to make it and the time it will take.
Another feature is a fridge that grows its own herbs, a smart home stove that can pull up recipes while you’re cooking and a cool bike spinner that allows you to interactively bike with other people while looking at the virtual road ahead of you.
There was also a 4K TV, a home health system, virtual reality hub (Samsung S7 Oculus) and interactive art.
Some of the items in the home are available in market today, like the virtual reality hub and the herb fridge, while others are conceptual or under development.
The prices vary and can be purchased at a variety of home electronics stores.
Donnelly said the project was about showing people what’s possible on a fibre optic network. He said if you were to look back years ago, people only had one or two devices connected to the internet, and didn’t need a lot of bandwidth. But now, he said, there are many more products out there that are starting to connect to the internet — and more yet to come.
Having the pure fibre network to a person’s home, he said, opens up the possibilities of connecting such devices.
For more information on the Future Home, visit fibre.telus.com/futurehome.
