Protect Your Smart Home From Natural Disasters
August 10, 2023
With Canada still experiencing its most destructive wildfire season on record, hundreds of blazes burning from coast to coast continue to send plumes of smoke into the atmosphere. This has caused air quality issues all over the US. This same problem could affect us in Amarillo soon as wildfire season recently started here. It’d be great to have some kind of forewarning if wildfires are near our home.
Integrating natural disaster detection systems and sensors into a smart home can provide added safety for homeowners and their family, allowing the smart home to take steps to minimize the chance of damage to the home. If nothing else, sending notifications to homeowners, based on sensors incorporated into the smart home or based on a National Weather Service warning will allow homeowners to make informed decisions on what actions they should take to safeguard themselves and their family.
Even with double the annual rainfall in Amarillo this spring erasing some of the drought, wildfires are not going away. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, as of July 18 this year, nationally, 24 large fires have burned 136,061 acres in seven states. Since January 27, 303 wildfires have burned 777,732 acres across the United States.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, Wildfire smoke can harm people in multiple ways. Studies show that chronic exposure to wildfire smoke can cause asthma and pneumonia. It also increases the risk for lung cancer, stroke, heart failure and sudden death. People with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or heart disease, children and pregnant women, are especially at risk. However, without a way to measure air pollution levels at your home, it is difficult to take steps to protect your family.
Torch Sensors is a company that is developing a distributed approach to outdoor fire detection. Torch sensors measure the thermal, visible, and chemical signs of a fire and can detect fires as small as 2’ x 2’ when placed every 10 acres on a property. These solar powered devices provide immediate alerts of outdoor fires with 24/7 protection.
Torch sensors are scheduled to be released in the winter of 2023 but are currently available for pre-order (with a 25% discount). While the sensor will trigger alerts to a smart phone, details are currently unknown regarding the ability to integrate those alerts into a smart home.
There is significant value to integrating alerts of a nearby wildfire into a smart home. The smart home could alert homeowners of the event, even if it’s the middle of the night and their smart phones are all on do-not-disturb. This could be the difference between a family’s ability to evacuate in time, or not.
The smart home also can take steps to give the home and its occupants the best chance of surviving the fire. It can activate a smart irrigation system to keep the grounds around the home wet and minimize the chance of the fire reaching the home.
PurpleAir manufactures smart outdoor and indoor air quality monitors. Since 2020, PurpleAir has released new models with enhanced features. These new models include the PurpleAir Flex Air Quality Monitor, the PurpleAir Touch Indoor Air Quality Monitor, and the PurpleAir Zen Air Quality Monitor.
The new Flex and Zen air quality monitors’ feature:
- Dual laser particulate sensors (the most accurate type of particulate sensors) for measuring PM2.5 particulate concentrations.
- A sensor for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
- Built in WiFi for transmission of data for display on the PurpleAir air quality map.
- A slot for an optional SD card for data logging when the unit is located outside of WiFi range.
- A translucent case that allows the unit’s power and air quality level LEDs to be seen. The intensity of these LEDs can be adjusted through the unit’s web interface.
The Zen air quality monitor also includes a stand for inside use and the ability to adjust the LED intensity by double tapping on the unit’s case. The PurpleAir Touch indoor air quality has similar features as the Zen air quality monitor except that it is designed specifically for indoor use, only has a single laser particulate sensor, and doesn’t include an SD card slot.
Weather events can be severe — including hurricanes, drought, tornadoes and blizzards. While nobody can control the weather, integrating information about these events into a smart home can add real value. Knowing when the rain will fall at home can trigger systems like motorized windows and skylights to close, potentially saving thousands of dollars in water damage.
WeatherFlow-Tempest has created a massive, cloud sourced, weather data collection system through all the Tempest Weather Systems they have sold. They use all the data collected to create forecast models that rival many of the other commercially available forecasts and sell this data to their clients and partners.
By monetizing the data collected from all the Tempest Weather Systems publicly sold, they can support the cloud computing and research/development costs and helps keep these devices affordable for consumers. But WeatherFlow continues to innovate. With the trend toward dryer, drought conditions, and the water used for irrigating lawns using huge amounts of water, smart irrigation controllers can leverage weather information from the internet to optimize the amount of water used for irrigation.
WeatherFlow’s UDP broadcast messages can inform a smart home system when lightning is detected by the homeowner’s WeatherFlow Tempest Smart Weather System. The Tempest Lightning Network (TLN) correlates lightning data from nearby stations to improve the accuracy of lightning strike detection.
The use of WeatherFlow’s UDP broadcast messages also makes the system more resilient as these messages are generated locally on the homeowner’s network instead of having to rely on a working internet connection and the WeatherFlow cloud service. A home’s internet connection could easily be down during a significant storm.
Earthquakes are another natural disaster that can strike suddenly and without warning, causing a variety of dangerous events, including landslides, tsunamis, flooding and fires. Most damage and deaths happen in large population centers, as the shaking can cause windows to break, structures to collapse and fires to break out. Earthquakes can also cause soil liquefaction, deformation of the ground, and cracks in walls and other structures leading to their collapse.
For the most part there are two types of earthquake sensors available. Inexpensive stand-alone sensors can be purchased from Amazon that sound an alarm when an earthquake is detected. Seismic sensors that are designed for scientific use, can provide precise measurements of the earthquake’s intensity, but can cost thousands of dollars.
The Raspberry Shake seismograph and infrasound monitor offers an alternative for citizen scientists. A basic indoor model with a single sensor capable of sensing up-down motion activity costs under $500.
The developers at Raspberry Shake are writing new software that, while not currently designed for smart home integration, should be able to provide for integration between a Raspberry Shake sensor and a smart home hub. The software will run on a customer supplied Linux or Windows computer and interpret data from the Raspberry Shake then send alerts to a smart home hub based on seismic activity.
I found doing the research on this article pretty interesting — certainly not your typical smart home technology. Granted, not a lot of smart home integration just yet but these companies are working on it. I can’t wait until the integrations exist with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or Apple Homekit so the voice assistants can alert you to dangerous events audibly, with lighting and trigger other technologies to help protect you.
If you live in an area prone to wildfires, poor air quality or earthquakes would you consider one of these solutions or something similar for your smart home? Have you experienced any of these events? Debbie and I have been through blizzards and hurricanes and would have liked to have had some of this gear. I don’t know about earthquakes in Amarillo but the wildfire threat is enough to make me consider enhancing our smart home.
Let Debbie and I know what your thoughts are on all this with a comment, DM or email as we really enjoy hearing from you. Thanks again to all those following Debbie and I through our home building journey. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions as we move through our home build process. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’
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