For me it was as a little kid when I read an article in a computer magazine about automating your home with a Commodore Vic 20 and the Vic-Rel cartridge. I vividly remember being amazed at the thought of actually being able to open and close the curtains from my computer, it seemed like proper real world science fiction. I’ve never been able to track down that article though, despite looking through endless magazines on the Internet Archive.
What was yours? Maybe a movie scene, a science fiction novel, or a real world problem that could be solved?
Initially, I imagined a smart home as having a robot bulter to handle everything for me. Nowadays, a smart home could be described as many little robots each doing their own tasks. You really knew about smart homes very early!
I think the idea of robot butler could be a lot of people’s inspiration early. It was a very popular concept in 70/80s fiction.
Looking at Vic-Rel cartridge manual what’s interesting is that it was basically the same as modern smart relays like the Aqara Dual Relay Module, just sticking out the back of your computer rather than a wireless remote device. You can still buy clones of it to make DIY retro smart home systems.
