Live in a Smart Home: High-Value Automated Homes
If you recently bought a home in preparation for retirement or simply like the idea of an automated home, consider making your next or current home a “smart home.” Smart homes make sense for many reasons, but first let’s define what a smart home is.
What is a Smart Home?
A smart home is one that is equipped with the latest technological innovations such as climate and lighting controls that make your life easier. Automated or smart home systems rely on the Internet, cell phones, and other wireless communication technologies. Wireless light switches, sensors, monitors, and automated voice or touch screen remote controls are all examples of smart home technology.
With smart home technology, the wires that control phones, cable, lights, thermostats, sprinkler systems, televisions, and security alarm systems are combined into a single unit called an integrated network system so that they may be controlled from the same location. For example, you can control the temperature and lighting in every room in the house from a single keypad, touch screen, computer, or a telephone.
Why do Smart Homes Make Sense?
One reason that smart homes make sense is that a fully automated house can be operated via a simple voice command from home or from halfway around the world. Just landed in Munich and realized that you forgot to close the garage door? No problem as long as you have access to the Internet or a telephone.
In most cases these integrated network systems work together. When leaving the house for the day a simple command such as pushing the “away” button is all that’s needed to adjust the temperature and lighting systems throughout your home. Upon your return home in the evening, a driveway sensor may alert the system to open the garage door, turn on the lights in your home and adjust the temperature without you having to do a thing except press a single button on a keypad.
Smart homes also make sense for the baby boom generation. As the population grows older, smart home technology can enhance the quality of life. Homes equipped with sensors, monitors, and other gadgets enable boomers to maintain their independent lifestyles longer, thus allowing them to stay in their homes for more years. Smart home technology also allows caregivers to monitor vital signs such as blood pressure and to detect when out-of-the-ordinary behavioral patterns occur - for example, not waking up at the usual time or staying in the bathroom for too long.
Getting Started
The good news is that you don’t need to build a new home to take advantage of smart technology, an existing home can be retrofitted with smart technology as well. The first step is hiring an Integrated Network Specialist who will come to your home for a consultation and can advise you on design, installation, and service for an automated home system.
If you are a do-it-yourself type, there are a couple of smart home products that you can try before hiring a specialist, such as installing a closed circuit camera or automated window blinds that use sensors and a small motor to open the blinds during daylight hours and close them when the sun sets. Once you get started down the path to home automation however, you just might not want to stop and end up hiring that specialist anyway.