The document discusses making the smart home more insightful by providing customers with real-time energy feedback and tools to help them understand and reduce their energy usage. It describes developing hardware and software solutions to give users energy usage data, detect patterns of usage, and allow utility companies to help guide customers towards lower consumption. The goal is to engage customers and make energy management fun and easy through challenges, sharing of data, and eventual integration with smart home devices.

1. Making the Smart
Home More Insightful

2. Kevin Foreman
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT VISION | VECTORFORM

3. Smart Homes
A LOOK AT THE INDUSTRY

4. The Smart Home Industry
Has been around for 30+ years.
Lots of products. Mostly geeky.
Average consumer lacks adoption.

5. The Smart Home lacks a killer app.

6. How do we get people to want a Smart Home?

7. Start with Energy.

8. “A nationwide poll found
87% of households want to
save more energy at
home.”
Energy Efficiency and Attitudes Survey, 2010

9. Homeowners prefer to
receive Home Energy
Management (HEM)
solutions from their
local energy utility
Energy Management Service Provider Preferences
Pike Research

10. Past Energy Efficiency Campaigns
Traditional energy reduction
campaign effectiveness

11. Customers were told what to do, but lacked the
tools to show them how they were doing.

13. Our Mission:
Provide customers innovative mobile
tools that give them the correct feedback
to drive engagement.

14. Real-Time Energy Feedback
GET ENGAGED WITH ENERGY CONSUMPTION

15. Real-time is the #1 most effective
way to get people engaged with
their energy consumption.

16. But real-time only gets you so far. It doesn’t show you patterns.

17. 24h Energy Clock
Real-time + contextual energy patterns

18. 24h Energy Clock
Real-time + contextual energy patterns
REFRIGERATOR CYCLE

19. GOT HOME FROM WORK
24h Energy Clock
Real-time + contextual energy patterns

20. 24h Energy Clock
Real-time + contextual energy patterns
BEDTIME

21. 24h Energy Clock
Real-time + contextual energy patterns
EXCEEDED ENERGY TARGET

22. TED5000
• 1-Second Reads
• Hard to Install
GE Nucleus
• 15 minute storage
• Discontinued
Rainforest Eagle
• Cloud-Based
• 15-Second Reads
Real-Time Energy Use Hardware

23. In order to bring our experience to life, we were
going to have to make our own hardware.

24. Vectorform is primarily a software company.
Electrical Engineers? Nope.
Industrial Designers? Nope.
Firmware Developers? Nope.

25. Apparently, we had experience
with prototyping hardware
solutions with Arduino and Xbee.

27. Disaggregation
IDENTIFYING SPECIFIC SAVINGS

28. People want to know what each individual device is
using to help them identify specific savings.

29. Other Load-Monitoring Modules
 Expensive.
 Lack context.

30. Our Goal:
To provide a low cost, easy to use, and contextual
tool to perform device-specific load profiling.

31. PowerScan™

32. PowerScan™ allows you to
determine the amount of power,
and cost, of any device with a
power cord directly on your
iPhone, with no additional
hardware needed. It's also free.

35. Energy Management Service Provider Preferences
Opower/Pike Research
Customers still
preferred to receive
these experiences from
their local utility
company, not a third
party.

36. Pitching the Utilities
WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE GETTING OURSELVES INTO

37. DTE wanted to pilot real-time feedback in customer’s
homes to see the impact within four months.

38. We had a prototype built on Arduino.
It wasn’t consumer ready.
You need to be Zigbee certified in order to bind to a Smart Meter.
You need FFC certification, UL Listing.
And a design that won’t scare consumers away.

39. We can pull this off.

47. 3 Weeks until our pilot deadline and we don’t
have an FCC certified device.
Not even close.

48. &

50. We began our initial pilot test of
real-time data with a small set of
users for about 1 month.

51. 1
The set up process.

52. The smart grid is designed to be secure so only approved
devices can be bound to a smart meter.

53. The pilot setup process…
Not only was this a poor user experience, it wasn’t
scalable for DTE or any other utility.

54. So we worked together
with DTE to come up
with an industry-first,
auto-binding solution.

55. 2
Users wanted to see their real-time energy use away from home.

56. They loved the idea of being able to “check up”
on their home from away.

57. They want to be able to see…
…if there’s power. … if they left a light on. …if someone’s home.

58. Remote Connection Methods
Port Forwarding VPN Cloud

59. Dynamic Coaching
Our solution: Secure Relay-
Server.
• Requires no port forwarding
• Uses encryption and TLS for security
• Set up automatically during the auto binding
process
• Adds only 1 second to latency

60. 3
Once people started understanding their behavior and what
their home used, they visited the app less frequently. .

61. After a period of 1 month, we had only a 35% retention rate.

62. 3 Biggest Improvements to Engagement
Dynamic Coaching Challenges Sharing/Competing

63. Dynamic Coaching
A Dynamic Coaching engine,
similar to Google Now,
centered around home energy
management.
• Weather updates
• Compare your home with the
community
• Compare your home with
other like homes
• Send you spike alerts

64. Dynamic Coaching
A Dynamic Coaching engine,
similar to Google Now,
centered around home energy
management.
• Weather updates
• Compare your home with the
community
• Compare your home with
other like homes
• Send you spike alerts

65. Dynamic Coaching
A Dynamic Coaching engine,
similar to Google Now,
centered around home energy
management.
• Weather updates
• Compare your home with the
community
• Compare your home with
other like homes
• Send you spike alerts

66. Dynamic Coaching
A Dynamic Coaching engine,
similar to Google Now,
centered around home energy
management.
• Weather updates
• Compare your home with the
community
• Compare your home with
other like homes
• Send you spike alerts

67. Challenges
A weekly challenge system to
help keep users engaged with
their energy use, and also help
them learn about other areas
within the application.
• 3 Challenges per week
• Different levels of difficulty
• Built-in challenge feedback
• Earn points to unlock real
and virtual rewards

68. Sharing/Competing
A community system that
allows users to compare and
compete with other users, and
share their accomplishments
including:
• Leaderboards
• Wall
• Share Tips

69. DTE Insight
Know Your Own Power.

70. DTE INSIGHT VIDEO

71. Within the First 2 Months:

72. What about the Smart Home?
GIVING USERS THE ABILITY TO CONTROL THEIR APPLIANCES

73. “
“
” ”
”
“
“
”
“
”
I can see I
left a light
on…
I didn’t know
my AC used
that much
energy…
… I wish I
could turn it
off from here!
Oops, left
the coffee
maker on
again. Can I
turn it off?
…it would be
nice to adjust
it from here

75. Takes about 15 seconds on average.

76. There has to be a better way.

77. GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
GUI
NATURAL USER INTERFACE
NUI
NATURAL USER ENVIRONMENT
NUE

78. Wearable Technology.

79. Google Glass Video

81. Myo.

84. iBeacon & BLE

85. iBeacon Indoor Geofencing

86. Nymi

87. Nymi Slide
Visual? KF Decide

89. The smart home should feel invisible and comforting,
reacting to your needs and adapting to your lifestyle.

90. Thank You.
Kevin Foreman (Kforeman@vectorform.com)
SEATTLE
Vectorform LLC
2107 Elliott Ave.
Suite 303
Seattle, WA 98121
DETROIT
Vectorform LLC
3905 Rochester Rd
Royal Oak, MI 48073
NEW YORK
Vectorform LLC
190 N 10th Street
Suite 303
Brooklyn, NY 11211
MUNICH, GERMANY
Vectorform GmbH
Arnulfstrasse 37
80636 Munchen
HYDERABAD, INDIA
Vectorform Software Pvt. Ltd.
301, 3rd floor, Babukhan Estate
Basheerbagh
Hyderabad – 500001
Andhra Pradesh