Home automation is a hot topic that can mean different things to different people. My goal is cut through the noise and explain what home automation is and why you should care.
What is Home Automation?
I believe that home automation is a way of increasing the functionality of your home and is a platform for automating daily tasks. The home is such an important part of everyone’s lives, yet many people don’t do much to try and improve the time that they spend within it. Home automation simply put, means adding intelligence to your home so it can make decisions on its own to make itself more comfortable, safer, or more enjoyable to be in. Most home’s have automation in one way or another, and you may not even be aware of it.
The best example of home automation that almost everyone already has, is a thermostat. A thermostat is designed to keep your home at a particular temperature by turning on and off your HVAC system. It has some sort of temperature sensor within the thermostat that measures temperature and either turns the HVAC on, or leaves it off to maintain the correct temperature. This example is familiar, but when thinking about it as an automation you can begin to expand upon it’s functionality. By adding a motion sensor and a “smart” thermostat to your home, you can have your thermostat adjust its temperature from a nighttime to a daytime mode when there is motion in the morning. You can add “smart” switches in your bedroom that when turned off at night will change your thermostat into its nighttime mode. This makes your home more comfortable and can even save on energy bills in the long run.
These simple examples show how you can get your home to work for you and make your life more efficient. Think about when you want to go to bed at night and you might need to run around the kitchen and living room to turn all of the lights off. What if this happened automatically, or when you leave for work your lights can turn off to conserve energy, or when you turn on a relax mode the lights dim, music starts playing or your TV turns on. I will show you how to create all of these automations and many more, but the possibilities are endless.
Terminology
The next thing I think we should cover is all of the terminology floating around when people talk about home automation.
- Home Automation: Adding functionality and intelligence to your home so it can make decisions on its own
- Smart Home: This can mean the same thing as home automation, but usually is referring to a category of products. Smart home products include internet connected thermostats, cameras, speakers, lights and much more.
- Internet of Things: The internet of things or IoT is referring to everyday objects being connected to the internet. Whether an internet connected light, or oven, these products are often smart home products and allow for control and monitoring of the devices over the internet.
- Smart: When people refer to a smart light or a smart speaker. They usually mean a product that can connect to the internet and allows for some additional functionality. A single device might be called a “smart” product, and the whole collection of “smart” products might be called the internet of things.
As you can see, in many situations these terms can be used interchangeably, but the point I want to stress is that Home Automation is about much more than letting you turn on your lights with your smart phone.
How to get started
Getting started in home automation is easy to do and shouldn’t be intimidating. Most Smart Home products include their own app, so when you buy one you can immediately get setup and control your products from your phone, create schedules and many more features.
If you want to increase functionality further, and tie all of your products together then the next thing you will need is a smart home hub or platform. There are many options out there from Samsung’s SmartThings, Apple’s Homekit, Amazon’s Alexa Platform, and my personal favorite, Home Assistant. My home automation guides will primarily focus on Home Assistant, but many of the principles can be applied to other platforms if you choose a different route than me. I will create additional articles on setting up Home Assistant and why I prefer it to other platforms. The short version is that Home Assistant works with the most smart home products of any platform, allows for the greatest amount of control, and is free and open source to use. I will also give specific product recommendations in future articles, but if your looking for something to get started with, then you can pick up these switches by Gosund. You get 4 switches for under $50 which should get you well on your way to creating automations in your home.
Home automation is a constantly evolving area. As you begin down this journey you will discover new automations to make your life more comfortable and more enjoyable. It doesn’t need to be a sprint to the finish line, and you can start small and work up to controlling every aspect of your home. It is meant to be an enjoyable process, and at the end of it your home will be a more enjoyable place to live.
