An Amazon Alexa echo dot. Photo: (Photo by Andres Urena from Pexels) https://www.pexels.com/photo/alexa-alexa-talking-amazon-cortana-717235/
Imagine this, you come home from work and when you walk in the door the lights are already on and the blinds have closed automatically.
Your dishwasher pings your phone to let you know the cleaning cycle has finished and a camera in the fridge has told you you're low on milk before you left the office, so it's already on the shopping list.
The internet of things, a term given to devices that connect to the internet, is even able to tell you your cat is safely at home and has just used the litter box.
That could be a reality for some people.
When Pranil Wadan built his house, he made sure it was smart.
"If I'm walking down the hallway, depending on whether it's the middle of the night or whether it's during the day will determine how bright the lights will get. A really good example will be if you go into the bathroom and the sensors are on, what it will do is go okay it's now 10pm at night, he probably doesn't want the lights to be glaringly bright."
For Wadan, the motivation to adopt the tech was that his wife has a visual impairment, so smart devices make moving through their home much easier.
"She's able to just navigate the house and operate the house without having to look for buttons or try and figure things out."
Blind Low Vision NZ spokesman Dan Shepherd said this kind of technology makes life a lot easier for people with visual impairments.
"We are using Amazon Alexas to provide our library service to our clients in their homes. In terms of the other things smart technology can do for you in the home, there are opportunities to use smart technology to turn on your TV , to open and close blinds. This technology is advancing and it's supporting our community."
But there is one drawback, because every internet connected device carries a security risk.
AUT professor Jairo Gutierrez said sometimes security may not be the priority.
"The people that produce these devices, normally they want to produce something that has the functionality that people want, and security tends to be an afterthought, tends to be something that you tack on later on.
"It's not the main criteria for them, the main criteria is to build a gizmo that people would like to buy."
Dr Gutierrez said as long as a device is connected to home, WiFi it is hackable through the router, so router security is important.
If a hacker gets in, they can steal users' identities, remotely turn on smart devices, or even use them to attack other networks.
"People recruit all of these devices that people have on different networks, in different homes and use them to attack other networks. So, you can even be an unwilling participant of an IoT botnet and all your devices have been recruited just to do a nuisance attack on somebody else."
Wadan is aware security and has kept his devices on their own network to reduce the risk.
"Like 95 percent of everything I use is all kind of within its own network. It's not externally facing, it's not linking into something that's linking into an account that's cloud based, it is still locally hosted."
Dr Gutierrez said making sure your WiFi security is a strong as possible is important, and ensuring passwords are not weak.
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