24 eerily smart rooms and homes
Does YOUR house fire T-shirts out of a cannon whenever you ask it to?
Ecocapsule
This Slovakian-built, solar- and wind-powered compact mobile home is due to be mass-produced in 2018 and available now for order and preorder. It allows you to live off the grid while enjoying the whiz-bang comforts of an app-controlled smart-home system and sensors.
'High-tech film location'
This Airbnb space in London raises the smart-home stakes with an "automated bath [and] showering system" that gets your water running before you step foot in the bathroom.
Zuck's house
The Facebook CEO's personal challenge for 2016 was to build a "simple AI" for his Palo Alto, Calif., home.
The result: A Morgan Freeman-voiced system named Jarvis after Iron Man's AI assistant. It turns on lights, plays music to suit the listener's taste, allows recognized guests to enter... and fires gray T-shirts from a cannon.
'zeroHouse'
Called a "hybrid of house and machine," zeroHouse is a 650-square-foot prefab home. It doesn't just generate its own power but can also conserve it by going into a self-regulating "hibernate" mode.
Its architect promises a zeroHouse can be shipped and assembled "anywhere in the world."
924 Bel Air Rd.
You know a home is extra smart when it boasts "the most advanced home tech system in the world," including a 40-seat, 4K- and Dolby Atmos-equipped theater.
If you've been longing for those specs, along with a place to park your helicopter, then you're in luck: At the time of publishing, this 12-bedroom Bel Air house was on the market for $250 million.
Any home with a HiCan smart bed
This bed is Wi-Fi-enabled and comes with automated privacy blinds, plus automated and adjustable headrests and footrests. There's even an HD projector with a built-in 70-inch screen. Everything from lighting to volume is app-controlled.
The Skysphere
New Zealand-based mechanical engineer Jono Williams built himself the "ultimate app-controlled treehouse." Features of the solar-powered Skysphere include voice-activated lights, a voice-activated beer dispenser (that dispenses cans of beer from the couch) and an entryway fingerprint scanner.
House F Vienna
This house in the Austrian capital was reportedly commissioned by an IT entrepreneur. The tech guru presumably appreciated the space-age white decor, the computer-generated wall graphics and the audio components and LED lights that are "activated through a mouse click."
CNET Smart Home
Located in Louisville, Kentucky, the same hometown as its "urban baby sister," the CNET Smart Apartment, the CNET Smart Home is a "living lab" for an array of smart-home products such as the Samsung Family Hub Refrigerator, the August Doorbell Cam and Lutron Serena Remote Controlled Shades.
'The 'smartest' home in Sarasota, Florida?
Security, lighting and audio-visual components are easily and centrally controlled in this "mini estate." The coolest, smartest thing may be the "invisible" TV in the bathroom that looks like a mirror when it's not being used.
Proto homes
Proto Homes builds sustainable prefab houses that are ready to go from day one with app-controlled home systems featuring components by the likes of Apple, Nest and Sonos.
Grant Park Village
The "pre-wired" studio units, one-to-three bedroom apartments and townhomes at this Portland, Oregon, complex come ready to serve your lighting, temperature and music needs via a smart home platform by IOTAS.
The 'just-cool' media room
TYM, a Salt Lake City-based smart home and home-theater company, tricked out a home's main media room in Boise, Idaho. It's now got a Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 surround system with two in-ceiling subwoofers, Lutron lighting and a Savant Remote.
HGTV smart home 2017
This 3,300-square-foot, three-bedroom home in Scottsdale, Arizona boasts smart lighting, smart locks and an app-controlled bicycle lift that whisks two cruiser bikes from the floor to the ceiling for storage.
Dream green house
This U.K.-based smart-home consulting company has an actual smart home with its own automated Twitter account. The house even has a smart sensor in the lemon-tree pot for monitoring temperature and soil moisture.
Eco-smart home
This tiny 400-square-foot unit in Hong Kong has been dubbed a "luxury" because of its commitment to pricey green tech such as a solar water heater.
The coolest feature is the LED lighting, which has been programmed to "recreate the sun's color patterns."
Smart gym
The lighting, climate and TV stations in this home gym can be determined and set in advance of the user's arrival via a Savant automated system.
'Huge modern smart home'
This Airbnb rental in Denver has a "smart home control system to customize lighting, audio and video in every room."
Intel smart 'Tiny House'
The tech giant's 210-square-foot, "living, breathing" smart home grants entry via True Key facial-recognition technology, and deploys smart sensors to detect problems such as water leaks.
Casa Vista Paraiso
This 8,950-square-foot vacation villa in Costa Rica may be a splurge, but it prides itself on being as green as it is smart. LED lighting and security are controlled by your smart phone.
'No-expense-spared renovation'
This London home was reinvented with a touch-screen- and tablet-controlled Crestron system that integrated the space's lighting, climate, security and audio-visual tech.
Reignwood Hamilton Scotts
This 36-floor luxury apartment building in Singapore features "your own car porch in the sky."
Drive your car onto a metal plate in the basement where you'll enter a code or lend your fingerprint for ID purposes. Then thrill as an elevator whisks you, wheels and all, to a two-car "sky garage" just outside your living room.
'State-of-the-art smart home'
This 12,175-square-foot family home in England is is vast and brilliant. Everything from the blinds to the pool water to the heated towel rails are controlled through a Crestron management system.
'Monster Makeover'
The challenge in this mammoth, approximately 21,500-square-foot house on the island of Cyprus was to streamline 25 unconnected home systems.
In the end, the number of controls in each room was limited to just two: a touchscreen and a keypad. The creators boast that there are "no visible thermostats, switches, intercoms and so on."