A Smart Home is one that provides its home owners comfort, security, energy efficiency (low operating costs). Provides convenience at all times, regardless of whether anyone is home.
Smart Home
“Smart Home” is the term commonly used to define a residence that has appliances, lighting, heating, air conditioning, TVs, computers, entertainment audio & video systems, security, and camera systems that are capable of communicating with one another and can be controlled remotely by a time schedule, from any room in the home, as well as remotely from any location in the world by phone or internet.
Benefits
Installation of smart products give the home and its occupants various benefits. The same benefits that technology and personal computing have brought to us over the past 30 years. Convenience and savings of time, money and energy.
Most homes do not have these appliances and systems built into them. Therefore the most common and affordable approach is for the home owner to retrofit smart products into their own finished home.
Communication
Most products are available in one of four protocols. The means of communication between themselves. All of these are compatible with the internet, phone, and cell phones. These are the names for the four: X10, Z-Wave, UPB and EnOcean. Products that use the same protocol offer the ability to add products and hardware at the homeowners own pace and budget. The system can grow to meet the needs of a changing family as time goes on. All of these products can be selected from various manufacturers, preventing an expensive obsolescence or non-competitive pricing.
Feature
An emerging important feature of a smart home is conservation of the earth’s limited resources. More and more people are becoming aware of the ability to make their homes truly smart and green. By utilizing home controllers integrated with all home sub-systems to increase savings by controlling lighting, window coverings, HVAC, irrigation and by monitoring usage. Many home controllers have built-in monitoring systems whereby they calculate and log usage by all connected devices. Giving the home owner heightened awareness and the knowledge to make changes as necessary. These systems can even be accessed over the Internet from anywhere in the world so the homeowner can adjust consumption any time, anywhere.
