Smart Home Systems Save You Time

By automating your devices, you can eliminate many everyday tasks like turning lights on/off, adjusting thermostats, and controlling appliances. You can even do any of these things remotely from one centralized control hub to save you time working between several different interfaces.

Imagine the time you’ll save when your lights automatically come on at perfect brightness, your coffee maker has already brewed your morning cup, and as the temperature picks up throughout the day, the AC automatically adjusts to keep you comfortable.

Save Money with Smart Devices

Most smart devices are built with the highest energy efficiency standards. For example, switching from standard incandescent bulbs to smart LED bulbs will save up to 90% more energy and last over 25 times longer. Now, imagine the energy savings by adding occupancy sensors that automatically turn lights off whenever a room is unoccupied and a thermostat that automatically adjusts settings to save energy. Your utility bills will quickly begin to drop.

Additionally, smart appliances are great at optimizing energy usage and monitoring maintenance issues. These features can notify homeowners as potential issues arise and allow you to address maintenance tasks promptly to avoid more expensive repairs and replacement parts later.

Smart Homes are More Energy Efficient

We already mentioned how energy-efficient smart devices help reduce utility costs. The other benefit is a bit more noble. According to a study by Research Gate, adopting energy-efficient smart home technology, homeowners have the potential to reduce their CO2 emissions by up to 13%. With a reported one-third of CO2 emissions coming from household energy consumption, smart homes offer an extremely viable way for homeowners to do their part to help reduce the impact on our environment.

A Smart Home Instills a Greater Sense of Security

You can rest easier knowing that your home works around the clock to help keep you and your family safe. By using cameras, motion sensors, door and window sensors, audio alerts, and push notifications, you can stay informed about certain activities around your house and potentially deter any wrongdoers before they can do wrong.

Live More Comfortably in a Smart Home

Comfort goes beyond physical comforts like a hard or soft bed. Aesthetics and intuitiveness play an important role in keeping you and your family comfortable. And something like aesthetics can be tricky to dial in. What feels aesthetically comfortable in the morning may not be so comfortable in the afternoon or night hours. What feels aesthetically comfortable in the winter months might feel different in the summer months.

Fortunately, smart home systems can easily adjust to your liking, either through automated routines or on-the-fly user controls. Different aesthetic settings are typically referred to as “scenes.” A scene can include specific lighting levels/colors, temperatures, sounds, etc.

However, user controls need to be comfortable as well. Thankfully, these technologies can be controlled from various devices, from traditional wall switches to phone apps.

Compatibility

When approaching a smart home integration project, choosing individual devices and brands that are compatible with one another is important.

When different brands use disparate software and technology to carry out certain tasks, many times, that software can’t speak with one another without purchasing additional gear to help bridge the gap. This can become more expensive and adds another layer of complexity to your system.

You’ll want to work with your system integrator to determine your needs and find brands and devices that are compatible with one another to get the job done.

Better yet, opt for one single brand that makes all of your smart home devices. This isn’t too common yet, but there are some brands, like Crestron, that provide complete smart home systems and strive to flawlessly integrate with other popular brands. By choosing a single brand, you can ensure that all the components will work together more seamlessly.

Cost

The off-the-shelf consumer products might tempt you in with lower prices. But make no mistake; these products cannot stand up to the sophistication, customization, and dependability of professional smart home devices. So, rather than saving a bit of money upfront and dealing with frustrating technical problems or device failures down the road, a better route is to invest in a good system through a professional installer at the beginning. This is the best way to ensure your system does exactly what you want when you want it to.

And as an added perk, installers typically offer service contracts so that they can maintain your system for you to avoid any issues from developing. It’s the best way to keep your system running at peak performance all the time.

Ease of Use

If possible, spend some time demoing smart home equipment before you purchase it. You’ll quickly begin to find that some brands are easier to use than others.

The best smart devices can usually accomplish any task within a few simple clicks and offer other helpful features like different colored indicator lights to help you keep track of device settings or customizable device dashboards so you can organize your favorite settings and find them easily.

Lifestyle

At the end of the day, it all comes down to your specific lifestyle. What do you like to do every day? What is your routine? How could technology supplement or enhance your life? These are the types of things to think about and discuss with a professional system integrator to help you choose the right equipment for your lifestyle.

Ensure Your Smart Devices Are Secure

There are several practical and easy steps you can take to help keep your smart home devices more secure:

• Research and purchase devices from well-known brands with a good reputation. Read through the device privacy settings to ensure you’re not sharing any data you’re uncomfortable with.
• Keep your devices up to date with the latest firmware. Consider an integrator service contract and let the professionals handle this for you.
• Set strong passwords. Make sure you change the default passwords on your devices.
• Consider setting your smart home system on a separate network from your family’s Wi-Fi® network.
• Enable two-factor authentication on all of your devices for an extra layer of security.

By following these steps and working with a professional system integrator, you can feel much better about your data security and privacy when implementing a smart home system.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a major buzzword for quite a few years. Now, with the onset of technologies like ChatGPT, many entrepreneurs and businesses are inventing new ways to incorporate AI into their technologies.

We’re already seeing this happen in some of the enterprise-level technologies. It’s only a matter of time before AI and machine learning become commonplace in smart home devices.