Drexel’s green home technology experiment

From left to right: Cody Ray, Dr. Joan Weiner and Aleksandra Wolchasty standing in front of the Drexel Smart House

In partnership with Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, the university’s capstone journalism class, students Chelsea Leposa and Jared Pass will cover neighborhood technology issues for Technically Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods through May.

The is the second of a two-part series about residential technologies being developed or explored in the region. See the first here.

Frat houses are usually synonymous with keg-stands and jungle juice. There, eco-friendly house technology would seem as important as finishing homework.

But a group of Drexel students are trying to alter that perception, using an abandoned frat house as a great green opportunity.

The Drexel Smart House, located at 34th and Race Streets, is a 19th century Victorian home that is being transformed into a living, working laboratory for green tech. The Smart House team, a student-run organization, hopes that after it is built, it can serve as a platform for green design, technology and research.

Read more

Smart home technology increases automation while lowering energy consumption

Philadelphia Smart Home's Patrick Griffin explains the control center

In partnership with Temple University’s Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab, the university’s capstone journalism class, students Chelsea Leposa and Jared Pass will cover neighborhood technology issues for Technically Philly and Philadelphia Neighborhoods through May.

The is the first of a two-part series about residential technologies being developed or explored in the region. Read the second on Thursday.

Dinner is in the oven. A grocery list has been generated after surveying the empty pantry. The front door’s been opened for the deliveryman and the authorities have been alerted of a possible intruder on a neighbor’s property.

Sounds like a fairly normal day. Except each one of these tasks has been miles away from the home.

Welcome the convenience of living in a smart home, technology developments for residential properties that are coming fast. While home technology is not yet able to allow all of these tasks, industry experts say we’ll quickly move toward a state of complete home automation and remote user-control.

“Smart homes are a culmination of products and functionality,” says Utz Baldwin, the CEO of the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association (CEDIA), a trade association for electronic home installations. “What makes a house smart for me will be different than what makes a house smart for you. It comes down to the needs of the homeowner.”

Read more