A few weeks ago I profiled Brian Levy’s Micro Showcase in Washington, D.C. which included the Minim THOW design. This stylish tiny house just got even smarter. The first production line of the Minim was purchased by Intel and they’ve created a prototype of their smart tiny house to showcase the Internet of Things Platform.
The 210 square foot smart home in San Francisco explores all the possibilities that the Internet of Things Platform holds for our lives at home. The little house is outfitted with technology demos and use cases that features everything from an exterior camera with face recognition software that opens up the door to owners and approved guests to water leak detectors.
The house is controlled by a tablet (or voice recognition device) and software that controls the lighting and can detect problems in the home that will alert you to call an expert, and will even open the door for said expert when you are away.
While the smart tiny home is currently an experimental lab, the design by Kyle Schuneman still features the great space saving ideas of the original Minim including the bed that hides under the minimalist office and multi-use furniture.
Photos by Inhabitat. Video by Intel.
By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]
I do not understand….THEY were made for people who could not Ford a “normal” home. NOW they are more in cost than a normal small house. WHY WHY WHY.
They’re expensive because there are no expanses of empty floor space as in a larger home. Everything in a TH is engineered and customized to fit and be useful. That costs money.
Not being able to afford a “normal” home is only one of the reasons a person may choose to go tiny. Also, even if $40k seems like a lot if you compare size/price to a traditional home, you would certainly see a substantial cost reduction year after year in the form of vastly lower utility costs.
Too uptown for me! I’m at the low tech end of the tiny house spectrum. Makes sense for some though I suppose.
Regardless on what end you are on, the small small , or the larger small, the very simple, or more high-tech. to me, speaking only for, the concept is about not being a slave , or as much of a slave to a mortgage. Even if it’s 1000, 500 sq. ft. verses 100, I’m sure there are big savings, if that’s how one rolls with it, so it’s a very individual choice but I am just proud of a more humble living ( compared to the other end ) and being more resourceful. My dream come true would be more 500 or 400 sq. ft. Since I have a terminal illness, this would be amazing to me still allowing me to have really everything I own in it and still would have to buy a bed and such. If I went traditional, say even a town-home, condo, etc. , I would never be able to afford that. To each his own. Live and let live. we are just sharing really the need on these sites to be more resourceful and not be as big of slaves to a home that for MANY, don’t use maybe 50 % of. Even with bells and whistles, if these people are making a decent salary, they are still paying way less then traditional. XO
High tech just means more money to fix it when it breaks. Less is more.