Are you new to the Smart Home trend? Is all “Automated This” and “Synchronised That” a complete mystery to you? Then read on and find out what Smart Home Automation is, and what it can do to help you live a life of ease and leisure!
I was thinking “perhaps it’s just me, I work writing about Smart Home Technology, so I go looking for more information about it than most, do other people even think about it?” but then you see adverts on TV and even the Prime Minister speaks to the United Nations about it, speaking from the point of view of someone who’s watched one too many dystopian science fiction movies featuring the nightmare world of limbless chickens and mind reading beds.
It’s only natural for people to fear change, and if you watch those scary movies today you’re likely to see ads for Smart Tech during the breaks, so perhaps there is a reason why the conflation is made, so why not look at what the Smart Home is all about and how to stop worrying and learn to love it!
Talk To Your Tech With A Smart Speaker
The route to entry for most people is going to be buying a Smart Speaker and some lighting. Smart Speakers are handy gadgets to have around the house as a stand-alone technology anyway and lighting is the easiest and most obvious ‘in’ to synchronisation. Speakers generally are way better than earphones, for the former have less chances of subjecting you to wear tinnitus masking hearing aids than the latter. If you have a Smart Speaker you’ll know that you can simply ask it questions and it will interrogate the internet to get the answer. Ask it to play your music, read your email, set an alarm or call your family to dinner. Even when unsupported by other tech, it’s a fun and handy piece of tech to have around.
But when you add Smart Lighting you start to see what possibilities are available. You can control them just by telling them what to do, so if you want them dimmed, to change colour, to go off after twenty minutes, all you have to do is ask. And that’s just the basic Smart Lights. Go for broke and you can have motion sensors which will not only turn the lights on, but can tell you in real time if somebody is moving about your house while you’re out. You can have speakers in the lights so you can make announcements to the family, or play music in every room.
Keep Your Smart Home Cool, Until Things Warm Up
Another advantage to Smart Home Technology is the ease to which you are able to control the environment. Traditional thermostats allowed you to control the overall heat in the home, adjusting each radiator to get the best out of it individually, an imprecise art in most homes where turning the valve a fraction of a degree would mean the temperature swung wildly from arctic to ‘surface of the sun’ and that radiator could stay on all day and have little to no effect on the thermostat controlling the boiler. Smart Environmental Controls allow you to control when heat comes on to the second. You control the precise temperature so that the home is a comfortable place to be in while you’re home, and it saves energy, and therefore money, when you’re not.
Keep Intruders At Bay
Another Smart Home technology we’re really keen on here at Briant Communications is Smart Home Security. We hear all the time conflicting stories about how reports of crime are going down, but the incidence of it is going up, how police numbers are being cut, but this is supposed to have little effect on overall crime rates. It’s difficult to know what to believe. SO why not believe in your own home security system?
Smart Home Security Systems are quick and easy to have installed and easy to operate from anywhere you have WiFi or phone signal, even when you’re abroad. We’re all quite familiar with having CCTV monitoring our streets, and bringing that technology onto your property means that you have a visible deterrent which will put many burglars off of breaking into your home. Smart burglar alarms can work in concert with your Smart CCTV and access control systems, or separately, only being triggered if somebody opens a door or window to which you’ve attached the alarm’s sensors. Motion sensors inside the home can monitor activity in specific spaces within the home, so if some rooms or areas are out of bounds while you expect people to be on the property you’ll know about it. The beauty of Smart alarms is that they don’t solely work by activating a siren! If you choose they can simply send you a text, pictures or film if you have a home camera, or audio from your Smart Speaker.
Other Emergencies Such As Fire And Flood
Smart Home Security includes emergency, and not just intruder alarms. Old fashioned domestic alarms and detectors, including carbon monoxide, fire, smoke and water would sound, but if there was nobody to hear them there wasn’t much more they could do. Smart detectors and emergency alarms work differently. When they’re triggered they will sound an alarm, but they will also send alerts to your phone, computer, and any third party monitoring services you retain. They will tell you the nature of the emergency, where it is located, even turn on lights and unlock the doors to aid in a rapid, safe evacuation. While they work primarily through wifi or Bluetooth, should the router or hub they’re working via become damaged they will continue to make an audible alarm, meaning that in a worst-case scenario, they are still at least as good as old fashioned alarms and detectors.