Contents
Imagine this. You’re walking home late at night, and as you reach the driveway, your front door light switch on, and the air conditioner automatically hums to life. This is how smart devices bring change to your everyday life.
The concept behind a smart home is rather simple: to provide you with more convenience and ease in your daily tasks. When smart home devices were initially introduced, not many understood their benefits.
There was a time when smart home devices were unaffordable for many people. However, because of the increase in demand for smart home devices, today many companies are offering these devices at reasonable rates.
We understand how overwhelming this gets when making a smart home. Therefore, we have decided to share how you can create your very own smart home, and you would be surprised to know how easy it is!
What is a Smart Home?
Let’s first understand what a smart home is before diving into how you can create one. Many new gadgets are now a part of the Internet of Things (IoT), such as home appliances like a smart oven.
These ‘smart’ devices connect to your home Wi-Fi further enabling you to control them from anywhere around the world through your smartphone. It’s your choice if you want your smart home to have just a few or many smart gadgets.
The more gadgets you add, your home becomes more connected. A couple of years back, IoT devices could only follow simple commands like turning on and off, setting alarms, and so on. Today, you can control your entire home through these devices without even having to lift a single finger.
When these devices are combined with your smartphones or smart assistants, they become much more accessible to use. Creating a smart home is mainly plug-and-play. There are three ways to utilize smart home devices.
Applications
There are plenty of apps that control smart home devices. That said, most of these smart home products have both iOS and Androids apps, and manufacturing brands tend to stick to one app which can control all their smart products.
Google Home app is one exception that allows a user t control multiple devices from a single app.
Smart Assistants
There are three major smart assistants: Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. All of them can act as a central hub for your smart home. Of course, it’s not mandatory to use them, but it allows you to control all your smart device from one platform through voice commands. Hence, making your life easier.
Android smartphones have built-in Google Assistant, whereas iPhones are Siri-enabled. There are no smartphone that have Alexa built-in. That said, you can also purchase a smart speaker that has one of the three smart assistants in it.
To activate your smart assistant, you can use the voice command feature and tell it to do something. For instance, “Hey Google, who’s at the door”? Once you become familiar with your smart home gadgets, IFTTT apps will allow you to create your very own voice commands.
Automation
Some apps and devices can communicate with one another without you having to act as the go-between person. For example, you can set the coffee machine to begin brewing your morning coffee while you are still in bed. Different product brands have different features that allow home automation.
Is It Complex to Create a Smart Home?
In all honesty, this solely depends on how much of a connected home you want. Unless you are someone who wants every little thing in your home to be connected, you will realize that setting up IoT devices isn’t that complex.
To be able to fully use your smart devices you will have to:
- Have a consistent and stable Wi-Fi signal throughout your home.
- Have a smartphone, smart speaker, or tablet to control your smart devices.
Some smart home systems needs a hub to be connected to your internet router or modem. This allows the signal from your home network to reach your smart devices. Theoretically, all you have to do is install the apps onto your smartphone and connect each smart device to your home Wi-Fi.
The tech will be able to do the rest of the work. Networking is seldom straightforward so you might find hurdles until communication is seamless between the device and your smartphone.
Conclusion
Well, there you go! Creating a smart home is doable if you know what parts of your home you want to automate and which smart assistant you want to use to get this done.
