Towards a smart future #SmartHomeRevolution #GetFitWithFlipkart

• You have left your house for a long drive and have been on the road for few hours. Then suddenly the thought strikes you whether you had switched off all the electrical devices before leaving.
• You are out on vacation but was expecting an important package to arrive by mail. You wish if you could have spoken to the delivery guy and let him know where to put it lest it gets spoiled.
• It's a hot and humid summer evening when you are on your way to home. If someone could have switch on the AC few minutes before you reach home, it would have been really nice.

These are all quite familiar cravings we have and would be part of many of our wish lists. The answer to these above requirements could be a smart light, a smart camera or in entirety a smart home.'

India today has the second highest smartphone using population in the world even ahead of the USA. However considering a penetration of less than 30%, it means there is still ample scope to increase the smartphone usage in the country.

Today smartphones are an integral part of our life. We remain connected with family and friends, pay our bills, keep track of finances, update social media and even do work through smart phones. The smartphone that we have in our hands today comes with immense computing power. It is said that the computing power we have in a high-end smartphone today would have been enough to blast off a rocket into outer space in the 1950s.
However the gap that not been bridged yet is that between the phone in our pocket and the other devices we use in daily life; our car, our watch or the electrical and electronic appliances in our house. It is to bridge this gap that smart devices have come into picture.

Smart wearables were the first smart devices that became of popular use. Today we can see enough people wearing a Fitbit or Apple Watch or Samsung Gear or any other smart watch to consider. With these wearables we can not only do things which we would have otherwise done using a smartphone like receive calls, text messages, check emails, listen to songs but these devices also act as a personal health monitor by keeping a tap on some vital body parameters like heart rate, pulse and also track calorie erosion when we engage in physical exercise.

The wearables help us to set personal health goals and help keep a track how far we progress on that; it helps us to live a bit more healthier life. Google Glass has opened a new frontier in the wearable technology field with widespread application starting from medicine to journalism. In India Google Glass should find application in the education field as well; when many of  the children are deprived of quality education, enabling live streaming using Google Glass has help students in far flung areas to have more accessibility to quality material

The Global Wearable Devices Market is expected to exceed more than US$ 51.50 Billion by 2022. Wearable devices are here to stay and penetrate our daily lives. In India the wearable device market is set to reach to a stage very close to $2 billion by 2023 while the penetration is not expected to change much from current levels.
Hopefully that will change soon as more Indians become health conscious and application of wearable is expanded beyond just the millennials. Wearable technology should be able to find wide scale used case among the elderly population where the devices can be used to trigger emergency response.

And when we talk of daily life, nothing is complete without an interaction with our home and it's appliances be it the oven, the air conditioner, lights or the security system. We now have smart thermostats which can be controlled remotely through apps in smartphones; thus we can now switch on the AC or heating before reaching home to have a more comfortable experience. Smart thermostats can also alert the owner in case of any abnormal changes like fire. We now have smart lighting solutions which can be controlled through apps.

Thus while on vacation you can still switch on and off the porch lights remotely or may be control the Diwali decoration lights. Smart cameras can help you keep an eye on your house remotely. There are also voice integrated smart security camera which can help the owner interact with any unknown person knocking at the front door or may be instruct the delivery guys to keep the parcels in the right place. And to integrate all these smart devices we can have a Google Home or Alexa; from playing the favorite song to opening the garage door these smart device integrators can do any task you just ask them to do. And that means no need to even use a smartphone app; you just say and Alexa does it.

Apart from convenience, smart devices add to the better management of energy by controlling the devices effectively as per need. Artificial Intelligence integrated with smart devices increases their utility many times more. Thus while we may witness a marginal increase in the initial installation cost, the effective savings on running cost over a longer time would weigh out the initial investment many times over.

In the US alone, smart home is expected to be a $40 billion plus business with a penetration into more than 50% households by 2023. Compared to that in India the penetration is expected to be less than 10% by 2023 generating a business of $7 billion. Thus India provides a far larger market in terms of opportunity.

One of my first interactions recently has been with smartness built in today's car. I had recently the experience of using a Bluelink enabled Hyundai Sonata. With this new technology you can now start you car remotely with the a smart phone app, lock or unlock the car, control the cooling and also technology will help send alerts and updates from the car. This is something very basic considering the world has moved into the realm of self-driving cars. However such smart connectivity is yet to come in cars which fall outside the premium segment in Indian. Hopefully in very near future that will no longer be the case. Connected car market and ecosystem is evolving across the globe. By 2023, connected car and related accessories will be a billion dollar market in India alone.

Smart devices are expected to have widespread use in the public space as well. Smart lights can help municipal bodies to more effectively control the city lighting and manage any wastage. Today's cities consumer more than 70% of the world energy production, thus effective management of resources can definitely help in the long run to create a sustainable ecosystem.
Chicago has undertaken an ambitious and largest (in USA) project to replace 270,000 city lights with smart lights resulting in an estimated savings of $10 million is energy costs annually.

Smart cameras can be used to monitor security and more effectively manage traffic in busy urban freeways. And the data from all these connected devices provides the as big an opportunity for analytics and machine learning to work more effectively. In Nairobi, Kenya Huawei has installation communication system that integrates 1800 smart cameras with 195 police bureaus and 7600 police officers providing a sense of national and economic security. India has also embarked on an ambitious journey of building 100 smart cities with an estimated funding of $14 billion. In India such smart solutions can also help to address to the problems related to women's safety.

That day is not far when on a long road trip while driving you can feed an instruction to the Alexa or Google integrated car to switch off the lights in you drawing room and the task will be done. And when you reach back home exhausted your car will communicate with the garage security system to open the gates and also ensure the hot water is ready for you to take a refreshing bath.
And the local police station become aware of a theft or burglary even before the owners actually dial the emergency response number.

The applications and opportunities are just endless. So get your first smart device from Flipkart which provides an amazing collection of Smart Wearable, Smart Home, Smart Camera and Smart Light solutions to choose from.

#GetFitWithFlipkart  #SmartHomeRevolution

References:

• https://www.statista.com/outlook/279/119/smart-home/india
• https://www.statista.com/outlook/279/109/smart-home/united-states 
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2018/04/06/smart-cities/#5b8a459113c8 
• http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/specials/connected-world/government.html

The images are sourced from Google Image search and the writer of the blog doesn't claim ownership of the same.

Visit to Houston Museum of Natural Science - A Twitter thread

A very Happy Newfamily, went for a trip to Houston. Houston is a 4 hour drive from Dallas and is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the state of Texas. The city is named after Sam Houston who was the first President of the independent Texas Republic.

On the first day of our visit to Houston, we went for the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The institution is more than hundred years old having being established in 1909 and is one of the most popular museums in the United States.

During the visit I clicked a number of pictures of the exhibits for which I created a twitter thread. I created the twitter thread rather than a detailed blog post as I found it much easier to maintain and update the thread rather than a blog post. I can easily update the thread from my phone where I have all the pictures stored. Doing all that for a blog post is a bit cumbersome.

I am still in the process of updating the thread with pictures and information on new exhibits. Also during the trip I did visit few other places of great interest for which I will be creating separate threads. So please keep watching.

Wishing you all a very successful and Happy New Year.

Platybelodon... mammoths with a shovel like tusk. Estimated to be there around 17 million years ago. pic.twitter.com/7wYuXnnQPi

— RaktimⓂ️ (@1cosmicguru) January 2, 2019

National Unity Day

We can have a good and bad memory associated with a date. But how we would want to remember the date is our choice; 31st October provides us with such a choice. While the 31st October is widely known for an event in 1984 in which country's only woman and one of the most popular Prime Ministers ever was assassinated; followed by a wide scale application of misdirected hatred in which thousands of her own countrymen lost their lives. On the other hand 31st October is also the day on which one of independent India's most popular and powerful leaders, a leader who gave shape to the map of Indian union, was born.

Thanks to propaganda the death of Indira Gandhi has for decades received much more public attention than the birth of Sardar Patel. The assassination of a reigning prime-minister was an unfortunate event but even more unfortunate were the reprisals unleashed on a particular community whose lineage of serving the sub-continent is unparalleled. While a leader was glorified, an entire community was vilified. In simple terms the events on or after 31st October, 1984 represent the 'divisive' facet of India and brings to fore the deep cracks within our diverse country.

On the contrary it would not be exaggerating to say what Sardar Patel achieved in the few years between independence and his death in 1950 united India as a nation is it we know today. If you tend to disagree, then have a look at this map of India at the time of independence. More than 35% of the entire sub-continent area was at that point of time under the control of princely states numbering more than 500. All of whom had no obligation to join the Indian union and could have declared independence on their own.

Our colonial masters were very happy to leave behind a disintegrated country which would have fought years of civil war to settle their territorial disputes. It would have ultimately led to a sub-continent split into scores of small countries; may be something like the Soviet blocs of Eastern Europe. The seventh largest country in the world would have been Argentina and not India. But that was not to be since India had a certain Sardar Patel as the Home Minister. It was the only time when a Home Minister was the Commander-in-Chief of India's armed forces (later on President) and only time when the Home Minister was equally if not more important that the Prime Minister. While the PM was more focused in stamping India's presence at the global stage, the Home Minister was very much aware that the situation at home has to steadfastly handled.

The chaos that was, is unimaginable. On one hand there were millions displaced and tortured by the partition caused by an imaginary line. And on the other side was the task of stitching together the country with a hostile neighbor breathing over the shoulder. With the help of his trusted secretary V.P. Menon, Patel was able to achieve accession of most of the princely states through diplomacy and negotiations. In some cases, as like for Junagadh, Hyderabad and ultimately Kashmir force had to be used.

It is quite doubtful had it not been for their contributions, whether the nation that we see on map today would have ever come into shape. A case in point is surely that of Kashmir, in which the advisories from Patel and his team were sidestepped by the higher authorities until the very last moment, resulting in a quagmire of never ending dispute between the two neighboring countries which now yearly drains millions from exchequer along with loss of lives. It is noted that Patel's cautious view points w.r.t to relationships with China were also over looked and for which country paid the price later.

As a political leader Sardar Patel's contributions before Independence had been many but his achievements in the integration process remains unparalleled. Considering the diverse and divisive landscape, integrating most of the states within just 2 years post independence is a super-human achievement. His other contributions in curving out an efficient bureaucracy in the form of IAS and IPS and laying the seeds of White Revolution though formation of Amul's parent cooperative society tend to get ignored in comparison.

In memory of such a tall act, today the tallest statue in the world will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister. Though it is quite debatable whether it is the most appropriate way to honor this great son of India by building an immovable statue for INR 3000 crore within just 3 years. It is interesting to note that one of the sub-contractors for this massive statute is a Chinese firm.

It almost seems that it's payback time for all the years when his legacy had been pushed into oblivion and his contributions skillfully omitted from the pages of history text books in school. However, leaving those divisive thoughts aside let's celebrate the National Unity Day in memory of the 'Iron Man of India'. Hope soon to get awestruck by this magnanimous Statue of Unity.