Digital Home Strategy

The goal of this chapter is to discuss and analyze strategies related to private computer users and digital homes. The chapter begins with an analysis of ICT users based on (1) age and (2) skill level in using digital technologies. Based on these two factors, four categories of users are identified: (1) young uninformed, (2) old uninformed, (3) old informed, and (4) young informed. The chapter analyzes each category in detail and discusses digital strategies for each group. Next, the chapter examines strategies that can be used to digitize houses, such as the use of temperature monitoring and light controls. The chapter concludes with an analysis of smart home trends.

Exploring Use of Digital Home Assistants for Older Adults: A Demonstration Project

Emerging digital home assistant technology has potential to support older adults in their homes. Voice-activated assistants can be used for entertainment, environmental control, physical activities, health management, and social engagement. However, many older adults have limited experience with these devices, which are not designed with them in mind. We conducted a demonstration project to explore how seven older adult assisted and independent living residents interacted with digital assistants over four months. We conducted monthly semi-structured telephone interviews and pre/post questionnaires. Participants desired to use their devices to communicate with others, and for a range of health activities, including nutrition tracking, medication management, and health information searching. However, numerous usability barriers emerged. Some participants perceived their device as a social companion. These findings indicate that older adults are willing to use digital assistants for various activities that may enhance independence, although instructional and training materials are needed to support their use.

Smartphone and Digital Home Assistant Use Among Older Adults: Understanding Adoption and Learning Preferences

Smart technologies have increased dramatically within the last decade. Their availability has improved opportunities for productivity, health, and entertainment, and this is especially true for technologies that act as central hubs to link other devices and applications that expand their capabilities (e.g., smartphones and digital home assistants). Older adults may significantly benefit from integrating these devices into their lives to mitigate the various challenges they face with increasing age (e.g., cognitive, mobility changes). To understand the potential of these technologies for this population, we investigated use patterns, learning preferences, and other perceptions related to the adoption of these devices. Seventy older adult participants responded to an online survey regarding their use and preferences with smartphones and digital home assistants. The results informed our understanding of current adoption rates as well as provided key perspectives to inform their design for older adults.

MPPT-Based Single Phase Solar String Inverter

A microcontroller primarily based totally method of producing a sine wave from the sun panel output is designed and carried out on this paper the usage of a two-degree topology for a sun string inverter. This paper offers the improvement of a most energy factor tracking (MPPT) and manipulate circuit for a unmarried section inverter the usage of a pulse width modulation (PWM) IC. The elegance of this configuration is the removal of a complicated circuitry to generate oscillation pulses for transistor switches. The controller IC TL494 is capable of generate the vital waveforms to manipulate the frequency of inverter via right use of switching pulse. The DC to AC inversion is correctly completed along the switching signals; the circuit produced inverter output of frequency almost 50 Hz. The major goal of the proposed method is to layout a low cost, low harmonics voltage supply inverter basically targeted upon low energy digital home equipment the usage of variable sun energy as inputs.

The COVID digital home assemblage: Transforming the home into a work space during the crisis

Major changes to home life and work practices globally have been brought about by the COVID-19 crisis. Periods of strict restrictions placed on people’s movements outside their homes, aimed at curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus, have meant that the home was requisitioned as a primary site for work for many people. In this article, we draw on case studies from an ethnographic project that explored how people living in Sydney use digital technologies in the home setting. Our fieldwork commenced in early 2020, just prior to the national COVID lockdown period in Australia, and continued throughout the lockdown and the months following. As a result, we were able to document people’s experiences of transitioning to working from home during the first year of the pandemic. In this article, we adopt a sociomaterial approach together with domestication theory to analyse the complexities of the changed COVID home in the context of digitised working arrangements. We surface and theorise the tensions and leaky boundaries between workplaces and family/domestic life that are brought about by, through and beyond the digital. By addressing the sociomaterial choreographies and modalities of presence involved, we attempt to capture the processes through which the COVID digital home assemblage is continuously configured and the more or less simultaneous presence and absence of people in both domestic and work domains.

The digital home learning environment and its relation to children’s ICT self-efficacy

With the rapid progress of technological development, self-efficacy in reference to digital devices (i.e., information and computer technology [ICT] self-efficacy) is an important driver that helps students to deal with technological problems and support their lifelong learning processes. Schools, peers, and home learning environments are important sources for the development of positive self-efficacy. Expanding on previous research, we investigated the associations between different aspects of the digital home learning environment and students’ ICT self-efficacy. The moderation effects of gender were also tested. A total of 651 children answered a questionnaire about different digital home learning environment dimensions and estimated their ICT self-efficacy using an adapted scale—Schwarzer and Jerusalem’s (1999) general self-efficacy scale. Using the structural equation modeling technique, a digital home learning environment containing six different qualities of parental support was investigated. Families’ cultural capital, parents’ attitudes toward the Internet, and shared Internet activities at home contributed positively to ICT self-efficacy. We observed small gender differences, with the moderation effect being nonsignificant. The results help researchers and practitioners to understand how different dimensions of the digital home learning environment support ICT self-efficacy. We will discuss how parents can enhance the home learning environment and how teachers can integrate this knowledge into formal education.

GSM based Smart Irrigation System

Irrigation is defined as artificial software of water to land or soil. Irrigation manner may be used for the cultivation of agricultural plants at some point of the span of insufficient rainfall and for keeping landscapes. an automatic irrigation machine does the operation of a machine without requiring manual involvement of folks. each irrigation gadget such as drip, sprinkler and surface get automated with the assist of digital home equipment and detectors such as computer, timers, sensors and different mechanical gadgets. the automatic irrigation gadget on sensing soil moisture assignment is supposed for the development of an irrigation machine that switches submersible pumps on or off with the aid of the use of relays to perform this action on sensing the moisture content material of the soil. the main benefit of the usage of this irrigation machine is to reduce human interference and ensure right irrigation. The targets of this paper have been to control the water motor mechanically with the help of soil moisture sensor. in the end ship the facts (operation of the motor) of the farm field to the cell message to the user. an automatic irrigation gadget for efficient water control has been proposed.

Precarity, hospitality and the becoming of a subject that matters: A study of Syrian refugees in Lebanese tented settlements

How is it possible to gain a sense that you have a voice and that your life matters when you have lost everything and live your life as a ‘displaced person’ in extreme precarity? We explore this question by examining the mundane everyday organizing practices of Syrian refugees living in tented settlements in Lebanon. Contrasting traditional empirical settings within organization studies where an already placed and mattering subject can be assumed, our context provides an opportunity to reveal how relations of recognition and mattering become constituted, and how subjects in precarious settings become enacted as such. Specifically, drawing on theories on the relational enactment of self and other, we show how material-discursive boundary-making and invitational practices—organizing a home, cooking and eating, and organizing a digital ‘home’—function to enact relational host/guest subject positions. We also disclose how these guest/host relationalities create the conditions of possibility for the enactment of a subject that matters, and for the despair enacted in everyday precarious life to transform into ‘undefeated despair’.