On your way out the door your HVAC system sets the temperature a little lower, your alarm system arms itself and all the doors in your house automatically lock. And when you get home that evening your porch light is on to greet you, and when you open the front door lights in your house spring to life to welcome you home.
This amazing day was brought to you by the magic of home automation, a system that allows all of the disperate electrical systems in your house to communicate with each other and gives you full control to program their behavior in any way you can imagine. Today’s home automation technology lets you network nearly every system in your home, but there are a few systems that get automated most frequently. These include:
There are smart bulbs, smart fixtures and control systems that let you do amazing things with your house lighting. You can program lights to turn on and off at specific times. You can control your lights with simple voice commands. You can have lights dim when you turn on the television.
Smart bulbs are capable of generating light of different colors and different intensities and with different effects. Imagine throwing a party and having your home automation software change over all of your house lights to strobing colors while it pumps your house music playlist through your whole house speakers.
Home security is where home automation all began, and it’s still a key component of any smart home. Today smart home security systems let you arm and disarm them from anywhere through your smartphone or tablet. You can use network-enabled cameras to see who’s at your door and then unlock your front door remotely if it’s someone that needs access to your house.
You can tie other, unrelated home systems in with your smart security system. Imagine how disorienting it would be for a would be burglar if, when they entered your home not only did the alarm go off, alerting you on your phone and your monitoring company, all of the lights in your house also came on and started flashing, and your whole house stereo system began blaring death metal at full volume. They wouldn’t stick around long.
We’ve mentioned whole house audio a few times and that’s certainly a benefit of home automation. With simple voice commands you can have music playing throughout your house, with all speakers playing the same thing or tailored to whomever is occupying a given room.
But video is included as well. Have your DVR send recorded television programs or live TV to any screen in the house. Have your TV already on, playing your favorite movie when you get home from work.
Give your kids voice access to all their favorite programs with smart parental controls. Watch the feeds from your security cameras right on your television.
We all know we should close our window shades and blinds at night so that we aren’t putting on a show for the neighbors, but it’s easy to forget. Adding all of your window shades to a home automation system makes certain they’ll all close, simultaneously, at whatever time you choose. And in the morning you can have specific shades open at specific times to let you wake up naturally instead of depending on loud alarm clocks.
The possibilities of home automation are are only limited by your imagination. When every system in your house is connected to and communicating with every other system in your house can do some pretty amazing things.
And the possibilities are growing everyday as the technology matures. Now is a great time to get your home automated!
