A Beginner’s Guide To Turning Your House Into A Smart Home

Though we might not have flying cars and robots waiting on us hand and foot, those shows about the future from the 1950s were right about one thing. We finally have the smart houses that they had envisioned. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT), our houses are able to take control of many of the little things that used to slow us down.

The only real difference is that we have to retrofit houses to make them smart. Which isn’t a bad thing since it costs far less money to do that way and we only need to buy the components that we think we’ll need.

From heating the house, to keeping it protected, there is a device perfectly suited to the job that takes all the work out of your hands. 

In this article, I will go over several of the ways that you can transform your house from a usual one to one that is smart and efficient.

Save electricity

One of the biggest benefits to having your house turned into a smart home is how much money you end up saving. Because it makes your fixtures and appliances more efficient, it will drastically cut down on your electricity bill and eventually these devices will pay for themselves. 

For instance, when it comes to lighting for the home, you have a few options to save on electricity. 

For starters, you can use smart lightbulbs. You can swap out your traditional bulbs not just for higher efficiency LED bulbs but to smart ones. Smart lightbulbs will allow you to control your lighting with either Alexa or even with your smartphone via an app. This way you can schedule them to turn on at certain times, or even on demand. The best part is that with an app you can set the dimmer on them for any brightness that you want even if you don’t have a dimmer switch.

With sensors, you can set your lights up to come on as soon as you walk into a room and turn off as soon as you leave. Never forget about turning the lights off in a room again!

At the end of each month, you can track your usage so you can see how efficient you’ve been and identify areas where you can save even more electricity.

Save on heating and cooling

Controlling your heating and cooling is as simple as it gets now. Artificial intelligence is used to help the smart thermostats in your home understand your lifestyle and patterns. With that information it is able to heat the areas you use the most and at the most frequent times. 

Smart thermostats have sensors on them and keep track of the areas of the house that you use the most. This means that you don’t even have to go through the trouble of programming them as they do it themselves. And with an app you have total control over when you heat and cool your house remotely. Rather than let the A/C run all day while you are out so you can have the house cooled down before you get there, it can be set to turn on as soon as your smartphone senses that you have left work. 

Remote security

Keeping your home safe has never been easier. With wife based security systems you can keep an eye on your home with a doorbell camera even when you’re on vacation. And if you forget your keys or need to let the delivery person in to drop off a package then you can unlock the door with an app. 

With the rise of porch pirates since everybody is ordering things online these days, you never have to risk your package being stolen. Even if you don’t like the idea of unlocking your door for a delivery person, you can at least see when they are dropping the package off because of the camera sensor. Then, you can either run home and pick it up or ask a neighbor to go get it. 

Entertainment

Even aside from the practical aspect of having a smart home, there is also some fun to be had with it. You can set up smart speakers that will play your Spotify playlist on voice command in any room you want.

Plus, some speakers even have a screen on them so you can watch a movie on them no matter where you are in the house. Watching a movie on your smart TV but need to go to the laundry room? It can sync up so you can watch it where you left off in any room you have the speaker set up.