If you have decided that you want to jump in and start building your own smart homes but with so much talk of amazon and Alex, where do you even begin to understand what od that even means and start building a smart home that works for you. before even starting to know about this, let us take a step back and answer eh question what is a smart home?
Controlling the house by smartphone and computer is something that is called smart homes. However, it does not define or make a home smart. It still requires you to manually press a button for something to happen much as the irregular light switch does. The same goes for voice assistance like google home or amazon. Even though using your voice is sometimes quicker than pulling out your phone as it still requires manual intervention.
Getting to the depth of smart homes
A more appropriate term for smart homes would be a connected home. The actual smart in a smart home comes from the ability to have things happen without any input from the user. This could be something as simple as turning on lights when you enter a room and turning them off again when you leave, all the way up to fully automated climate zones, home security and so much more. Of course, it is still all controllable through a phone or a computer if you want to but it is this combination of connected home coupled with automation that surely makes up the smart home.
Why start a smart home in the first place?
Well, there are many valid reasons for starting a smart home. Some of us just do it for the love of tech, some of us as a fun hobby but there are some tangible real-world benefits to having a smart home. The obvious one that a lot of people are aiming for is to simply make our lives easier. Imagine coming home from a holiday to your house, already having heated itself before you walked in the door, or a house that knows how to close the blinds to prevent your house from heating up too much in the summer months.
Another big one is for energy savings. With a smart home, it is easy to make sure that no lights, TVs, Xboxes are heating, and whatever else is left on when no one is there to use them. To start building a smart home there are two things to begin. One is smart home devices and a smart home hub or platform.
