Institute For The Future

Crashing My Own Hotel Room

A Cautionary Tale

It was supposed to be a romantic evening. My wife’s business trip to London landed us in one of the nicest hotels of my well-traveled life.

When we arrived, an extremely well-composed blond woman escorted us to our room. Her sole task was training us in how to operate our room. She literally had to teach us how to turn on the lights. For two tech-savvy adults, this seemed almost comical—until we realized that it was necessary. The room had no light switches, no thermostat knobs—all of these analog controls had been abolished in favor of three well-disguised Android tablets. The room had over two dozen connected lights, plus three phones, a TV, electronic curtains, an aromatherapy diffuser, a heated self-defogging bathroom mirror, motion-sensing in-closet lights, a towel warmer, stereo wall-mounted speakers, and, of course, remotely controlled do-not-disturb lights visible from the hall. Every one of these items was—at least in theory—controllable by the three tablets.

My inner environmentalist and disdainer of luxury had been lost somewhere in the elevator—I was smitten by the sophisticated network of devices pandering to my every need.

On the second evening in the hotel, as my wife hopped in the shower, I set out to dial up some mood lighting.

And then...a scream from the shower. The room suddenly went dark, except for the tablet’s screen, which read: “Lucernic isn’t responding. Do you want to close it? Wait / OK.” Before I could click a button or respond to the scream, the entire room “restarted”—very quickly, the lights came back, the curtains opened, the TV came on, and, needless to say, the mood was not romantic.

The next day, I tried it again and, sure enough, the mood lights crashed the room.

As my new-fangled body area network failed me repeatedly, I felt something between frustration and a desire to laugh out loud. If ever there was a “first world problem,” this was it.

Out of curiosity, I researched Lucernic, the maker of the home automation system that seemed to be crashing. A message in Mandarin informed me that Lucernic.com no longer existed. Among the remnants of the corporation was a YouTube channel with 19 videos—all posted three years ago.

Was it possible that the M by Montcalm had purchased and installed 296 hotel rooms’ worth of hardware and software from a corporation that dissolved before the hotel even opened? If bugs like the ones I experienced could not be fixed, would the offending devices and wiring need to be gutted and replaced? How many tons of e-waste might systems like these generate?

As we struggle to understand and reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of e-waste, we simultaneously press onward into a world where we expect everything we own to be “smart” in some way. At the same time, we discard and replace these devices more quickly each year.

One online profile states, “Lucernic is an environment-friendly company. We design and manufacture a new generation of home automation systems.” While in theory, smart lighting with motion sensors could save us countless megawatts of electricity, the gains are illusory if these smart systems are effectively disposable.