Tag: home automation

Why now is the perfect time to make your home smarter

Why now is the perfect time to make your home smarter | H is for Home

Intrigued by the idea of a smart home? It seems that everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon at the moment. However, trying to make your home smarter has many benefits and is ideal for making your home greener, cleaner – and let’s face it – much more fun to manage!

With Black Friday and Cyber Week sales imminent, it’s the perfect time to invest in some smart tech for your home. Take a look at some of the benefits and get ready to transform your home.

Smart home device and smart phone

Why use smart home technology?

There are a lot of benefits that come with smart home technology. Having all of your lighting and heating accessible from your phone or computer can make it easier to cut down on your energy use, as well as make your home smarter for you.

You can put your lighting on cycles to get you ready in the mornings, or settle down in the evenings. Controlling your heating can be much simpler too, allowing you to turn off the heating if you’re going to be home late from work, as well as control different areas of your home. Explore 20 ways to upgrade your home with tech.

And let’s not forget the fun stuff! Virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home are perfect for helping you find the right music and lighting to create a mood at home, or even help you with your shopping list. The great thing about smart technology is that you won’t know how you lived without it once it’s installed in your home!

Smart door security

Affordable ways to go smart

All of this technology sounds like it could get expensive, but there is smart home technology available for every budget. With the pre- and post-Christmas sales on the horizon, you can guarantee there’ll be some bargains on smart home items. From lighting to speaker systems, it’s worth keeping an eye out to see what savings are around.

Don’t forget that there are many items that are compatible with smart home systems. IKEA has a great set of gadgets for your home that offer great value and variety, allowing you to kit out your home for less.

Smart home thermostat

Smart homes and the environment

One of the best things about smart technology is that it can help you cut your energy use. By making smarter choices around lighting and heating, you’re not only helping the environment, but also saving yourself money too. If you’re looking at ways to make your home more eco-friendly, this could be one of the ways to do it.

Going smart is an exciting step to take for your home. By making the most of the best smart devices, you can make sure you have the right tools in place to enjoy your home more and feel more in control of your tech. Get connected and invest in smart technology and see the benefits it could bring to your home.

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Cabling your new home for the future

Cabling your new home for the futurecredit

Home automation of today would have been considered magic just fifty years ago. Lights turning on and off as you move through your house, motorised blinds that adjust on their own, music of your choice being piped into the room you’re occupying and security, power and environmental controls being adjusted just as you arrive home after a hard day’s work. One system can take action based on the input or the status of another, all without any human intervention.

The mainstay of this magic is the wiring. If you take the right steps concerning your wiring when building your home, then you will be ready for most new technologies that will be available in the near and not-so-near future. With the proper cabling, upgrades to any of your systems won’t require you to uproot the existing cables from the walls to install new ones. You’ll just need to replace the equipment and devices on either end. Even if you don’t have the cash to create the systems of your dreams right now, you can install the appropriate cabling for it and take advantage of it when you have the funds. The most expensive part of any home automation system can easily be the labour costs involved with the installation of new wiring!

Before you begin laying down cable, it’s a good idea to develop a plan. It’s actually a good idea to develop a plan before doing anything in life, but that’s enough philosophy for now. It may also be a good idea to get the help of a professional at this point. Decide what you need and where. Electrical and mechanical automation, network communications, telephony, television, video, security and audio are systems that can be included in your plan, but this list is by no means exhaustive. Depending on the applications you’ll require, you must then choose the proper types of cables.

Any British cable supplier can provide the myriad of cable types for any and all home automation and smart home needs, so acquiring the cables should not be a problem.

You can begin your plan by making a list of all the rooms in the house and deciding what applications you want each to have. You can also make a list of functionalities that you want everywhere, such as audio and smart lighting. Think about the long term as well. How will your needs change over the years? How about when the kids grow up, or the guest room is converted to an office? Even if you install cable that you never use, it will still be worth it.

Future-proofing your house in this way will not only allow you to enjoy the benefits of home automation and smart home functionality, but just the very presence of the cabling in the walls will end up increasing its resale value.

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