Home automation: how to get smart homes

When we talk about home automation we can think of rain and movement sensors, lights that turn off by themselves or blinds that go up and down when you press a key on your mobile. An exciting world that turns normal homes into smart homes. If you want to know how to transform your home into a house of the future, keep reading!

To understand home automation, we only have to resort to the etymology of this word, which gives us a very clear idea of what we are talking about. Domotics comes from the union of two words, domus (which means “house” in Latin) and tica (from the word automatic, which comes from the Greek and means “that works by itself”). Joining them we have the meaning of home automation: a house that works by itself, a smart home.

As you can see, it is about automating a home using different technologies that manage aspects as important as energy, well-being or home security. It may seem like something only within the reach of some pockets, but the truth is that more and more people are switching to home automation at home, thanks to the ease of installation and its increasingly cheaper prices.

What objectives does home automation have?

Home automation seeks to provide intelligence to a house so that it can do certain tasks by itself according to our requests. From controlling the temperature of a room or turning on lights at a certain time, to increasing the security of an entire building, everything can be controlled from one device.

To do this, we need a system that has three basic elements:

Sensors that measure what we want to control, such as temperature.
Controller who makes the decision of what to do according to defined rules.
Actuators that modify or change what we want to control.

With this home automation system, it is pursued to achieve four main objectives in a house:

Manage energy more efficiently, with the consequent savings that this produces.
Increase the comfort and convenience of the inhabitants, automating daily tasks.
Improve the security of the house through different devices and highly efficient systems.
Provide accessibility to housing for people with special needs, as in the case of having reduced mobility.

What can you control in your house with home automation?

Thanks to home automation you can have control of such important aspects in a house such as:

The light: turn on or off lights, increase or decrease the intensity, etc. and all depending on the sunlight, whether that particular room is being used or through motion sensors, among other options.
The temperature: both heating and cooling can be fully controlled from external devices, which regulate the temperature intelligently and help save energy all year.
The safety: sensors with motion detectors and light access, surveillance cameras and alarms go to the next level with home automation, raising the maximum security in a smart home.
The Control of appliances and other household appliances, such as video and audio systems is another function of home automation, turning on or off, regulating their activity and making you more comfortable life.
The cost of your house and its different elements: electricity, water, … practically everything can be regulated automatically with home automation and therefore, practically everything can be optimized to be more efficient and cost less.

The monitoring of elements such as shutters, blinds or doors, from something as seemingly simple as opening the door to the garage with mobile automatically lower or raise the blinds talking to your watch.

The summary of what is being pursued is clear: improving the quality of life and safety of people living in a smart home, while improving its efficiency and making it more sustainable. Therefore, betting on home automation for your home can be a great investment, as long as you do it through professionals who study well the specific needs of each family, house and situation.

What are the advantages of a smart house?

Virtually everything can be controlled thanks to technological advances in home automation. This offers us a good number of benefits if you are willing to take the technological leap. These are the main advantages of living in a smart home:

Increased security, something key and fundamental in any home: from preventing a burglary attempt with alarms and sensors, to deterring potential thieves thanks to the control of the lights to pretend that there are people inside.
Optimization of energy consumption, achieving an efficient home: decide when to turn your appliances on and off, improve their efficiency and extend their useful life by using them in the best possible way, even when you are not at home.
Saving the different costs for light, heating, etc. if you can control when you use an appliance, you can program it for the hours when the rates are better, with the consequent savings. Another example would be taking advantage of sunlight to automatically dim your lights and spend less.
Ease of installation: it is becoming easier to take advantage of the advantages of home automation thanks to wireless technologies, which mean that you do not need works to make the most of everything that these systems can offer you.

You can turn your home into a smart home, evolving towards a higher level of comfort, security and savings thanks to home automation. Soon there will be no excuses to join the change, each according to their needs and always counting on experts in the field.

A few months ago, the giant Apple launched its Home application to control the home from the iPhone. And this is just the beginning: in a short time, these options that now seem to us from the future will be very common in many houses. So it’s time to join the change and take advantage of all the advantages that home automation offers at home: we want smart homes!

And to you, what do you think of everything that home automation offers? Are you willing to take the step towards a smart house?