Smart homes: how does a smart property work?
The ultimate low down on what is a “smart home”, the benefits and how to create one…
A “smart home” is a new comfort concept for modern homeowners looking to make their property more convenient with more security and energy efficiency. Installation of smart products gives a property’s occupant’s various benefits from a comfort point of view. Setting up your smart home is easier than ever.
What is a “smart home” or a “smart property”?
New technology is becoming a vital part of our lives. From voice assistants to remote home control, controlled light’s and tv’s, your property is set to get a lot more intelligent in the coming years. This mean your goods can be monitored from anywhere in the world, cameras connected to your smartphone let you fawn over your house interior whenever you are.
A smart home is a house where appliances and devices can be automatically controlled locally and remotely using a smartphone or other networked device (tablet, pc, laptop). Smart devices connect to the internet and many of them have smartphone apps allowing you to access and control appliances around your home.
How to make your house a smart home
With the right products, almost everything in your house can be connected to the internet and remotely controlled with a mobile device or smart speaker. Virtual voice-controlled assistants like Siri, Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa make it easy to control smart products by speaking simple commands like: “Hey Siri, turn on the TV!”.
Generally, you will need the following:
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A Wi-Fi network
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Appliances connected to the Internet
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One or more apps
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Smartphone or a voice-controlled smart speaker
Connecting the technology in your home to your Wi-Fi network has a few benefits. First up is controls and convenience. You can control everything in real time either from an app on your smartphone or tablet or from your voice-controlled smart speaker. Second, smart home gadgets can give you real-time data on things like security, energy data or other data from different sensors.
The most popular categories in the smart home right now are kitchen appliances, baby monitors, garage monitors, doorbells, garden, lighting, networking, security systems, speakers and thermostats.
Best smart home devices
Here are the best smart home devices to make your home a smart home.
Smart speaker’s
Amazon Echo, shortened and referred to as Echo, is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon.com. The devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa, which responds to the name “Alexa”. This “wake word” can be changed by the user to “Amazon”, “Echo” or “Computer”.
The device is capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real-time information. It can also control several smart devices acting as a home automation hub.
Google Home is a brand of smart speakers developed by Google. Google Home speakers enable users to speak voice commands to interact with services through Google’s intelligent personal assistant called Google Assistant. A large number of services, both in-house and third-party, are integrated, allowing users to listen to music, control playback of videos or photos, or receive news updates entirely by voice.
Google Home devices also have integrated support for home automation, letting users control smart home appliances with their voice.
Smart light
Controlling lights with your voice used to be something only a god could do, but these days we have smart lighting systems to make any of us feel all-powerful. Smart lighting is lighting that you can control from an app, usually on your Apple or Android phone. Smart lighting is a lighting technology designed for energy efficiency.
This may include high-efficiency fixtures and automated controls that make adjustments based on conditions such as occupancy or daylight availability. Your automated lighting could include task lighting, accent lighting, and general lighting.
Smart thermostat
Smart thermostats are devices that can be used with home automation and are responsible for controlling a home’s heating and air conditioning. They perform the same functions as a programmable thermostat as they allow the user to control the temperature of their home throughout the day using a schedule, such as setting a different temperature at night.
Smart security camera
A smart camera or intelligent camera is a machine vision system which, in addition to image capture circuitry, is capable of extracting application-specific information from the captured images, along with generating event descriptions or making decisions that are used in an intelligent and automated system.
This means smart home security cameras can identify visitors and send alerts in order keep your home safe when you are away.
What can be automated?
Control individual objects located in different parts of your home all from your own bed or from your car. Home automation gives you full authority over your home’s lighting, cameras, Tv’s, air conditioner from where ever, whenever. Home automation can be accomplished using various types of connectivity today.
An automated house is about the convenience of saving your time and effort by setting up your house to automatically do routine functions such as turning lights on and off, setting the thermostat, closing curtains and more. Automating your home is fun and exciting, and the possibilities are limited only by your imagination!