Home Automation Benefits: Is A Smart Home For You?
By now you probably have heard about smart homes, and all of the fancy things they can do, but you are still unsure about what fully-integrated smart homes are and how you could benefit from it. After all some people are still skeptical about introducing a smart home into their lives as they don't fully trust the security surrounding these devices, while others don’t fully understanding how this technology actually works.
Many homeowners are still hesitant to introduce a smart home system into their house as they believe it’s complicated to set up and believe it will be expensive to hire a professional to take care of the installation if they don't feel capable.
From energy efficiency to full smart home security, climate control and smart lighting. This will help you decide if a smart home is for you or not.
How to make your house a smart house.
In order to start changing your house into a smart home, you will first need a voice-controlled assistant to help you have total control of your home. Take a look at Alexa by Amazon, Google’s assistant or Apple’s Siri.
By simply speaking to Alexa, you can ask her to play music all over the house or just a single room, have her switch the lights on and off and even tell you the weather, making it a very useful tool and a great step to start your home automation system.
Google’s assistant, although not very different from the Amazon Alexa, is generally smarter, meaning that you as a homeowner get to ask your Google assistant a wider range of questions thanks to the Google search engine incorporated in the device.
Siri is probably the most recognised of the three when it comes to smart technology programs, but the reason why Siri is so well recognised is because of the safety it offers. Apple ensures all of your data is always secure and encrypted at all times.
Once you have decided on the HUB you will be using, you can start transforming your house into a smart home, look around the house, see what is required in each room. You can start incorporating your smart security system in your windows, entryways and around the house perimeter. (Products like NEST allows for 24- hour visibility around the house, offering high security at home.)
As for the rest of the house, you want to start considering the spaces and what are the rooms you spend the most time in, think about the living room for smart entertainment and your kitchen.
You can install smart speakers around the house that will allow you to listen to your music whenever you want to, tell you the news during the morning or even work with you and your personal assistant to help you add items to your grocery list.
Having your smart assistant linked to your smart home system gives you full control of your house. You can be sitting in your living room and just ask your voice-controlled assistant to dim down the lights while you watch a movie on your TV and want to set up a nice cinema atmosphere. You can even ask your voice-controlled assistant to turn your ceiling fan on or close your blinds for you.
In order to save energy, you can install smart thermostat technology to manage your heating so you are never going to be wasting unnecessary energy by using heat or A/C on rooms nobody is in.
Transforming your home to an automatic one does not take a lot of effort or time. In most cases all it takes is to connect some devices to your Wifi. In addition to that, keeping up with the maintenance of certain products is not required, things such as changing a battery or reconnecting the devices to the Wifi is as much as you will ever have to do.
Smart home and energy savings.
As previously mentioned, you are aware that a smart home is a network of all technologies linked to your internet and will be controlled via any of your smart devices.
This is not the biggest benefit you can acquire thanks to your smart home. Having the ability to improve your energy efficiency at home is a big-time favorite, and it will help you overcome the initial investment done when installing your new system.
Your smart home can program your thermostat to be set automatically to turn off and on when you are in and out of the house during your usual schedule, but what if you had an unexpected event occur and you couldn't make it home at the normal time from work?
That is no longer a problem, as with the help of any of your smart devices, from anywhere, even the office, you can send a command to your smart home of any problems or delays you may have, and turn it off automatically and back on when you are on your route home.
Your smart devices you can also control the temperature of all your house or rooms individually. The smart home energy savings is a huge benefit for you and for the environment while saving your wallet a few pounds with the help of more precise temperature management.
The smart home systems are always thinking about your energy, even in cases when you are not. With products such as the Nest, you can make slight adjustments that will track your thermostat habits, creating a personalised schedule for you and your home that balances all of your comfort and costs on electricity.
Although energy efficiency is very helpful it is not the main reason why homeowners decide to invest in a smart home system.
Smart home system comes with many useful applications, one of them being the heighten security in your home. It doesn't matter where in the world you are, your house will always alert you of any unexpected changed at home.
As an example, in case of a fire, not only will your fire alarm trigger but the smart system will also unlock the doors, give a call to the fire department and light up a special path to safety for everyone at home.
Many smart security systems include motion sensors and cameras that will alert your home and call the police department in case of any emergencies or unexpected company at home.
Smart homes are not only taking in consideration the people of today, they are also a great help for the elders, with simple voice commands that are easy to remember, elders can control their lights, lock their doors, and even use the telephone without them having to move around a lot and instead be as comfortable as possible.
Your smart home has different ways of reminding you of things, such as if you have left the oven on at home or perhaps doors unlocked or a windows open. The smart home system will provide you peace of mind at all times.
Everything regarding smart home security concerns.
Privacy and concerns about security are always a big part of the reason why people don't make the switch to smart homes. Security through technology can always attract hackers, there won't be any denying of that.
Those who are aware of your home programming can find many ways to access your home network and even disable your security without you even realising it.
However, this can be easily prevented if you take the security measures necessary, such as creating long and strong passwords with special security password generators and regularly changing them around the house to make yourself less vulnerable to any type of attack.
Acquiring a smart router can provide even more safety as they can provide you with added security over all your networks without having to worry about each device.
Manufacturers are always eager to address customers about the concern of data breach. Many smart devices have ways to contact customer support through their website to answer any questions consumers may have to understand the product better and show data breach should not be a concern.
Smart home service industry is constantly ramping up the efforts to address security in all of its smart devices and homeowners are learning different ways to keep their systems protected at all times and avoid any vulnerabilities.
What the house of the future will be like
Now that you have a better understanding of smart homes and smart devices, you can start wondering what may be coming in the future, what are things gonna be like? How much will technology change? Options are limitless, there is so much more to come, many experts predict that in the future we will see smart home systems that will adapt to each individual to fulfill their preferences and needs, having precise recognition by using a wearable device that will detect your unique pattern of heartbeats.
Chores at home will be done on their own, like having your smart slow cooker to start up dinner and allow you to monitor the temperature and condition of the food while a smart vacuum starts up when dinner is close to being ready to have everything clean and tidy in the dining room for you and your family.
For those concerned about fitness, there will be smart scales that will track your body weight, muscle mass, cholesterol, fat, and many other things, helping you create goals.
Smart devices will be fully integrated and take care of everything, your refrigerator could start to order groceries that you need from the store a day before they run out, never having to worry again. The house of the future will be designed to be precise and fulfill your every need to grant you as much comfort as possible.