Our Smart Apartment That Might Be Smarter Than Us
71
Virtual House Tour
- Loft & Industrial
- Condo
- ~400 sqft sqft
- 1 br
- Couple Living with Kids
As we first step into the home, we have a smart lock on the front door. It is synced with our Apple HomeKit, so it knows when you are near home by using the phone’s geolocation. When we get within 200m from our home, the lock will be “awake” to look out for the Bluetooth signals from our phones. After stepping out of the lift, the door will sense the Bluetooth signal and unlock the door. No turning of knobs, no keying of passcodes, no thumb print scanner; all you have to do is push the door open. This is very practical after a trip to the supermarket, where you have extra hands. Gone are the days where I fumbled for keys. The smart lock also send instructions to all other smart devices in the house. For example, when it is unlocked, it also “tells” the entrance doorway light to switch on and tells it to switch off a minute after the door is locked. If there’s someone else at home, nothing else happens. On the other hand, if nobody is home, the geolocation trigger will get the house ready to welcome us. White daylight hues for daytime and warm white tones in the evening. The air-conditioner will also come to life to ensure that the house is cooled and ready for our arrival. 
Hello! I’m in my late twenties, working as a buying assistant for a furniture company. I stay with my husband, who works as a Radiographer. I recently moved into this home as we just got married 6 months ago. We are currently staying in a 484 sqft studio apartment. The size of it is just nice for the 2 of us, but once we start a family, we definitely need a much bigger space. 
We have a beautiful brick feature wall, made just for our OOTDs. Besides it adding texture to our home, we also took advantage of the brick wall to hide secret spaces. Within the small panel, we have the electrical DB box, a shoe rack, the Fibre Termination Point (FTP), and the Optical Network Terminal (ONT). We have an abundance storage space in this small area alone. Behind the bigger panel is another secret compartment, a pseudo door! What’s behind is actually the bathroom. 
We love the simplicity of the bathroom. Cabinets with a lot of storage hidden behind the mirror, the toilet that is attached to the wall as opposed to being attached to the floor, and a glass shower screen. The smart motion sensor in the toilet will switch the toilet lights on at full brightness during daylight hours and at 30% brightness during the night; all programmed using Apple HomeKit. When it senses long human presence in the toilet, be it for showering or for number 2, it “tells” the toilet ventilator to suck the moist air from the toilet out, keeping it fresh and dry. How smart can it get?! 
The kitchenette is small yet functional. It only takes up about 5m in length and it houses the refrigerator, the washing machine, microwave oven, and cooking hob & hood. The rest of the kitchen is made up of storage cabinets. We included a “tray” on top of the wall-mounted cabinets to store our luggage bags. To take advantage of the high ceiling, we have a loft. The issue with loft spaces is the allocation of its function. We decided to use it as a bedroom and an entertainment room. Somehow, long story short, the position of the air-conditioners became the decisive factor in the allocation of the bedroom being on the top deck. The stairs up to the loft is naturally used as storage space. Remember the small brick wall panel? A LAN cable brings high-speed internet directly into this staircase cabinet and transform into an IT centre. This is where all our Smart Home hubs are housed; the Apple TV 4K, the Philips Hue bridge, LAN switches, etc. Its proximity to the entertainment area means that we get to use the TV as a computer display, and that would also put the Wi-Fi mesh primary node roughly at the centre of the house. With the upper loft only accommodating a 53 sqft area, where do we keep our clothes? After placing a queen-sized bed on the upper deck, there will be no space available for a wardrobe. Therefore, we needed it to be in the living room. Nobody likes to see a wardrobe in the living room as it sticks out like a sore thumb. For it to exist where it doesn’t belong, it needs to be super stealthy. The solution was to have a seamless wall feature that houses various compartments; each serving a unique function, with the wardrobe being one of them. 
Within this feature, there’s a foldable dining table for 5, there’s a storage compartment for foldable chairs, there’s a cubby hole from which a robot vacuum unit would emerge from, there’s a hidden ironing board, a long vertical compartment to house a 10-step ladder, 4 electrical outlets along with a LAN port for Work-From-Home, and last but not least, the wardrobe component that runs vertically to take advantage of the otherwise-unused-space leading up to the high ceiling. A small outdoor-facing compartment also housed one Wi-Fi mesh secondary node to supply internet to the balcony. 
In total we have 5 secondary nodes, running high-speed Wi-Fi with high latency covering every corner of the house. This is the reason we can successfully run a fully automated Smart Home. To add on, our Philips TV is also synced to our Philips Hue system, and they work like dream as the lights will follow what is being played on screen based on the lights’ physical location within the entertainment room. We try to keep our home neat and tidy since its small, if not the place would look really cluttered. Although this is not the last home we’ll have, we tried to make this place cozy and welcoming after a long day at work. Hope to share our next home soon!
- 29 January 2023
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