Thoughts on Intelligent Furniture

The idea of having intelligent furniture is very appealing. When someone talks about a "smart" home, it is easy to imagine a home that has many of its electrical appliances wired up to a computer which controls and monitors everything. I have seen commercials of some sort depicting automated security, lighting, water heater and even the TV many years ago. But the trend never really caught on. Some of these features were just too extravagant and just unnecessary. Several years ago, adding automation to your home will probably cost more than hiring a maid to do those tasks for you. Now, with increasing maid levy and the increasing ease of programming (I don't know how but I think I should learn about it someday) simple applications for mobile phones, it is now easier to be a lazy person, but only if you are hardworking enough to wire everything up in the first place.

Last year, a Singaporean from UC Berkeley automated his room and this is the result:

Meet BRAD (Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm): http://lab.dereklow.co/brad/

From his website, he talks about the stuff that is used. Most of the things are easily bought from DIY shops, online DIY shops of course. DIY shops in shopping centres are ridiculously expensive and the cheap neighbourhood ones are hard to find because they are usually run by the older generation.

I don't think I'll need a party mode in my room but I do like several of the design features he used for BRAD. I particularly liked the way the lights are positioned. As a dorm room, everything is designed to be as minimalistic and efficiently, and so, the lights only light up the areas that need them, thus reducing the amount of electricity needed and also to make it less disturbing to your roommate when you are mugging way into the night. This makes the room very sleek, just like a well thought out hotel room. Secondly, I like the way motion sensors are used so you don't have to trouble yourself to walk to the switch to turn off/on the lights.

However, over-automating your room can be quite an annoyance at times when the automation does things at times you don't need. A friend of mine stayed a night at MBS and told me about annoying experience of having all the lights, curtain opened and the radio turned on when her roommate came into the room at 3am in the morning. Apparently, these things are programmed to welcome the guest when the door is opened by the keycard.

Time for another lighting project!

So, I don't want my room to be too smart for its own good. I just need it to give me purpose-built lighting. My current room lights follows the popular strategy of flooding the area with as much light as possible while using the least number of bulbs and fixtures.It does the job well, but it lacks sophistication. I don't want to turn on so many lights just for a simple task.

When I am at my desk, I only really need lights for my desk area. By doing so, I can decrease my electricity usage even lower through better placement of my lights. Currently, I am using CFLs for my room light, which is already quite efficient. So, I have to make sure that I do not end up using more electricity with my replacement lights.

For that extra bling, I will also add lights to my drawers. To add a touch of sophistication, I will be using magnetic switches which will turn on my lights as I open the drawers.

The table I'm using is ikea's MALM desk. It is a clean and simple table with 1 slide-out drawer and a lower cabinet with a swing door. I like the fact that it is simple, but it is by no means elegant. There is nothing that really stands out about this desk.

 

So boring hor... (picture from ikea)

And so, I want to give it some smarts by wiring some LED lights to it. Before I bought anything, I took my trusty dioder drawer light and placed it at several positions to see which position gives me the best lighting for my drawers.

Top drawer: It turns out that the best position to place the LED strip is on the edge of the table, shining down on the drawer rather than at the edge of the drawer. This allows the LEDs to be placed higher and shining evenly onto my things! Unfortunately, this means that I'll have to modifiy the sensor of my dioder strip and I didn't have the heart to mod such an expensive and well made LED strip. It is like modding a ferrari. Any mod you do to it probably makes it worse because the people who made it really knew their stuff.

Lower drawer: Best to place at the top edge of the swing door. The drawer is actually very deep and it is very difficult to see anything even if I were to light up the inside of the drawer. So, to make more efficient use of my deep drawers, I went to buy these boxes to keep things organised. I keep the things which I need most frequently on the outer side for more convenience. For example, my printing paper is on this tray below which I can easily take out. With the LEDs pointing towards the floor, I can see my things really clearly :) yay!

But, I don't intend to buy another 2 ikea dioder strips with sensors because they are really expensive! 2 of these will set you back $60! Instead, I ordered the components online and I'll fix them up myself to save cost. I'm a young and poor person who just joined the workforce, you know?