My Home Is Smarter Than Me

The success of smartphones and tablets is jaw dropping. This success has led to a lot of big companies such as Philips, Nest and Amazon foray into the business of home automation, which is now known as a Smart Home.

There are many new recent home gadget additions to the market and the depending upon how smart you want your home to be the cost can be anywhere to some hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.

4 Products to Make Your Home Smarter

  • The Smart Hub
  • Smart TV
  • Climate Control
  • Lightning

The Smart Hub

smart hubThe Smart Hub is the brain of home automation, it connects all of the devices to each other and makes controlling them easier. A Hub includes multiple radios that can interact with various gadgets in the market, from a coffee maker in your kitchen to the lighting in the bathroom it can connect all of it.

Multiple radios are required because manufactures don’t always think about each other when designing these products. The Smart Hub takes protocols like the Z-Wave, Zigbee, Insteon and translates it into a single WiFi signal that can be understood by your router, allowing you to control everything from your smartphone.
Smart TV

The advent of 4K technology and the recently developed Ultra 4K have turned our normal HDTV’s into giant screens that have real life like imagery. The Smart TV is a device by which you can run native apps on your TV, connect to WiFi and stream media from the internet.  The capability of the TV often depends upon the operating system it runs, there are TV which run native OS such as LG’s Web OS and other that run Android. Generally the ones who have android are more capable due to the increasing app-store and hence are able to run applications.

Since more channels are getting on board, support for TV programs in 4K resolutions is bound to increase in the US.

Climate Control
Climate Control is basically controlling the temperature of your home using a smart thermostat.  The thermostat will adjust the room temperature to your liking, this can be done using a smart phone if the thermostat is connected to the Smart Hub. Some thermostats also work offline and some have a motion sensor inside them.

Using the smart phone you can also control the temperature while you are away.  If you forgot to change temperature before you left the house you can connect in and change the temperature remotely.  You can also use the app to turn on the cooling system prior to your arrival back home so it will be nice and cool when you walk in the door.

Thermostats like the Ecobee3 is compatible with Apple home kit, Samsung’s SmartThings, IFTTT and Amazons Echo Smart home systems.

 

Smart Lighting

With smart lighting, there is a motion sensor inside that detects when someone enters the room and immediately switches the lights on.  This smart technology can also detect if there is no movement in the room and turn the lights off after a set period of time.

Lighting devices are connected directly to the wall outlet with the switch (if there in low end systems) always in an “ON” position, remote control is provided by the Z-Wave, Zigbee and Insteon protocols, but is dependent on the company providing the tech.

In some cases there is also an ambient sensor present that can change the intensity of the light as you see fit, some lightning technologies are also developed to change the color of the light if and when desired.

Smart Home Tech is evolving constantly, and we are amazed every time a new gadget is released that makes our lives easier.   Can’t wait to see what comes next.  If you know of any cool smart gadgets, please let me know by clicking here.  We would love to write a post on anything new and cool.