FAQs for Smart Home Solutions

Comfort and security are the two most important reasons to buy a home automation system. As an added benefit, the homeowner will also enjoy convenience, remote access, savings, and peace of mind. Recently, home automation systems have become more accessible and advanced, so homeowners are upgrading their homes across the country.

It's true that smart homes are affordable. Nevertheless, smart homes were viewed as a luxury at one time. It is easier than ever to set up your smart home, but choosing the right smart home system to integrate your devices and get them talking to one another is the biggest challenge. Knowing what you can gain from making your home a smart home can help you choose the right product.

Investing in home automation now would be a wise decision. Smart technology offers real-time security and safety for your family and your home - nothing compares to this. Home automation was initially best installed when building a new home or renovating an existing one. However, thanks to the reliable wireless connectivity, the homeowners can now get down to the wireless easily without any major issues.

With home automation, your home uses resources like electricity and water more efficiently to reduce waste. Home automation can, among other advantages, make a significant difference in the environment and reduce your utility bills. By using energy management devices such as smart power strips and switches, you can save energy and reduce costs by turning off lights and appliances when not in use. Lights, for example, can be set on a timer to prevent lights from remaining on throughout the night or day. Smart light bulbs can also work with motion sensors and turn on and off when people leave or enter a room, saving you energy and money.

Home automation is mostly a good investment as it helps in saving money and time. The following benefits will help you understand why home automation devices and systems are worth the investment. Security: Home automation delivers security and safety, helping you to lead a stress-free lifestyle. This is true because once you start using these home automation devices you will realize that you can relax as an alert will be sent if anything strange occurs in your house. Whether burglars or unwanted guests, these automation devices will alert you when these individuals approach your house. Cost Savings: Some home automation systems save you money on water bills and utilities. For instance, a smart thermostat and sprinkler system guarantee that your electricity bills do not shoot up in the summer. Comfort: Home automation is a good investment as it prevents you from rushing around in the morning and getting all stressed when trying to get the lights turned off before you leave home and also when trying to get the thermostat set. These devices are so comforting because if you forget to turn off the coffee pot, these devices will monitor the situation and automatically turn it off for you.

Making your whole house smart is NOT necessary. You first have to prioritize all your options and then decide whether to invest in a full-scale home automation network or in separate smart gadgets. If you want a automate your whole house, there are tons of home automation solutions you can choose from and these include appliances, climate control devices, access control and security elements, entertainment technology, lighting controls, and energy management tools to name a few. Also, you need not buy all the smart home devices you need at one shot. To help you stay within a planned budget, you can plan your purchases in different stages. No matter how you plan to buy the home automation systems or devices, always make sure that you choose your devices carefully because not all devices are compatible. You need to verify that the devices or systems you want to buy actually work together.

A smart home automation system lets technology take care of your home and business. In just few clicks, life is made easy and every device connected to the home automation system can be controlled through a voice command or a mobile app installed on a smartphone or tablet. For instance – if you are going out, you can just say “Away” and all the activities programmed while in Away mode is made to control instantly – it locks the doors, turns of the lights and other devices that has to be turned off, etc.

ZigBee is a low-power, low data-rate variant of wireless protocols like WiFi, using many of the same networking, security, and interference avoidance technologies and protocols. Zigbee is designed to carry small amounts of data over a short distance while consuming very little power. As opposed to WiFi, which uses a star network, Zigbee uses a mesh networking standard, meaning each node in the network is connected to each other.

Home automation is all the rage these days. Smartphone resident apps can interface with controllers to adjust lighting, turn on or turn off electrical devices, and just about anything else electrical. The three most popular standards are Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and ZigBee. The one thing that all three have in common is that they operate at about the same frequency — on or about 2.4 GHz. The similarities end there. When it comes to controlling a smart home, one size definitely does not fit all. If you need to monitor and control your smart home from afar, Wi-Fi is the way to go. If many of your smart devices are battery-run and conserving power is paramount, you might be better served by ZigBee. For economy, it’s hard to beat Bluetooth. ZigBee is the most widely used standard for smart homes. Each device has its own built-in wireless capability, so they do not require a router as does Wi-Fi, but they do require a smart hub. Unlike the other two, ZigBee is often controlled by a specialized device rather than via smartphone. Despite ZigBee’s extremely low power consumption, it has a long reach, as each device can communicate with its peers as well as with the smart hub. Indeed, the individual smart devices create their own “mini internet” to relay signals up and down the “network.” A smart device that might otherwise be out of range of the controller can receive its instructions passed through any number of pathways. This is a configuration know as mesh network, and such arrays are very useful wherever the world wide net as we know it isn’t available. Each Wi-Fi smart device has its own built-in ability to communicate over Wi-Fi. Your home network, of course, will need its own Wi-Fi router, but that is hardly a drawback for anyone these days. The great advantage to Wi-Fi is that, because it is welded to the internet, you’ll be able to control and monitor your home’s array of smart devices from anywhere in the world via smartphone, tablet, or laptop. And, because of Wi-Fi’s ubiquity, there is a wide range of smart devices that adhere to this standard. A downside is that WiFi-controlled smart devices tend to be more expensive than those that operate under ZigBee. Compared to the other options, Wi-Fi is relatively power-hungry, so that will be a problem if you are controlling a battery-run smart device, but no issue at all if the smart device is plugged into house current. Just about every smartphone on the market today is Bluetooth-enabled, and this methodology takes advantage of it. Android or iOS apps match the smartphone to the controller’s unique code, and the phone’s own Bluetooth signal affects the control. The great advantage here is economy, as no separate routers or networks are needed. Additionally, the smart devices themselves are generally less expensive than those for either Wi-Fi or ZigBee. One disadvantage is that the Bluetooth, at its heart, is designed for close-distance communication, so you can only affect control of the smart device from a relatively close range. Another is that, even though Bluetooth has been around for over 20 years, it is a new entrant into the smart home arena, and as yet, not many manufacturers have flocked to the standard. The choice For some reason, discussion on this topic seems to center on power consumption, but that would only seem to be relevant for industrial applications in which devices may run on batteries and be in locations where it is expensive, dangerous, or impossible to replace a spent battery. For home use, wherein smart devices are powered by 220 VAC, what’s a few tens of milliamps one way or another?