Smart Homes, Malaysian Style

WITH a total of 65,000 smart homes of various categories, from apartments to terraces to bungalows, to be completed by 2010, Putrajaya Homes Sdn Bhd can be considered as one of the biggest smart home developers in Malaysia. According to the company's director Wan Hashimi Albakri Wan Ahmad Amin Jafri:

“It’s the vision of this cyber city to equip its residents with state-of-the-art lifestyle, through the smart homes. As a housing developer in the country’s first intelligent city, it’s our motto not to just provide bricks and mortar to the buyers. We provide the homes together with a lifestyle, that is the digital lifestyle, which we hope will add value to the house buyers in the long run.”

Putrajaya Homes’ smart homes are equipped with a "brain", ready to be connected to the various smart home devices such as Web camera, sensors and lights. Basically, smart homes in Putrajaya have three types of intelligent features, namely home intrusion detection system, home automation system, and home structured cabling system. These systems are interconnected with each other to make an effective smart home. Wan Hashimi has a short but comprehensive definition of what a "smart home" means:

“A smart home is a home that interacts with its owner."