Skip to main content

This smart house could keep track of your health like a live-in nurse

ku smart house
When people get sick, they go to the doctor. However, wouldn’t it be better to keep track of your health on a daily basis? That can take a lot of work, though, and so what if our homes could keep track of it for us? That’s a question that led Joe Colistra and his students to build a prototype smart house unit.

Colistra is the design and planning associate professor at the University of Kansas School of Architecture. Using two awarded grants totaling $51,000, he and his fifth-year students will build part of a home embedded with sensors to collect the biometric data of its residents.

Related Videos

“With Kansas City having Google Fiber, you ask yourself: What would you do with unlimited bandwidth? So we proceed to the question of big data collected through the built environment,” Colistra said in a statement to the university. “What if your house could capture your heel strike, the number of times you left your apartment, the number of times you go to the bathroom, how much sleep you got last night? The idea with connectivity and the Internet of Things is to link all that data together.”

These sensors would be sensitive enough to use with predictive algorithms. For seniors, sensors in the floor could automatically alert someone if a resident has fallen. Or, if there is a new stutter in a resident’s step, it could notify them of a potential early sign of Alzheimer’s. Smart mirrors could identify new moles, lesions, or the effects of a stroke. Sensors in the toilet could keep track of a resident’s hydration levels and how much waste they are producing. Most of these sensors exist in other devices, but this would be done automatically in the background, without the need to turn anything on.

“We are looking at the possibility of taking hydration readings that might lead to adjusting your diuretic or heart medication on the fly,” said Colistra. “It could revolutionize geriatric medicine. Your housing unit could be like a medical device; it takes care of you.”

The team expects to complete the project by the end of this school year using prefabricated components including walls and floor panels. This approach should allow the items to remain economically viable on a larger scale. Results will be presented at upcoming conferences including Makers Faire Kansas City in June.

Editors' Recommendations

Fluid One gives you point-and-click control of your smart home, from your smartphone
Fluid One app showing the AR room map and devices.

Ever wished you could use your smartphone to control your smart home, beyond just pulling up an app to turn something on or off? We're now starting to see companies create actual functionality around the Matter initiative. Fluid, a relative newcomer to the smart home field, is building a service on top of Matter to allow you to control smart devices around your home simply by pointing your phone at the device.

Fluid calls this new service Fluid One. You can point your phone at a device, and it will automatically and immediately show you options to control said device. The service also allows for location-based automation and gesture controls. For example, imagine walking around your home and having lights automatically turning on or off depending on how close you are to them.

Read more
Smart home tech for your office
temperature controlled ember mug deal best buy flash sale white charging

If you’re like most of us, you’ve increasingly spent time in your home office over the last few years and could benefit from adding more smart home tech to your space. Smart tech makes life a little easier and allows you to remove some steps and inconveniences from your routine. Not only that, but being able to issue voice commands or have lights and fans set up to activate when needed can improve your comfort and mood and even put a little change back in your wallet.

Add ambient lighting
Just because the downtown office has harsh fluorescents and bright white lighting doesn’t mean your awesome home office needs to be the same. It’s time to make your lighting funkier and less eye-strain-inducing.

Read more
Is HGTV’s Smart Home really that smart? We have different ideas
HGTV Smart Home 2022 in Wilmington, NC.

Everybody likes to get something for free, right? And when that something is an entire house, tricked out for maximum smart home effect? Well, it’s definitely a dream come true.

HGTV recently held a contest where one lucky winner gets the keys to a beautiful home in Wilmington, North Carolina, and the clincher to winning the home is that it’s supposedly tricked out with some of the smartest tech available. They even shared the Top 10 Clever Gadgets they brought into the space.

Read more