We think home automation as definitely pretty cool and amazing, do you? Now, people are talking about home automation and making smart homes. Still, the biggest and the first question is how home automation benefits us?
This smart technology disrupts and influences the way we live life like never before. Before, who could ever imagine that we could control a lot of things at the touch of our hands. Now, we can live like that.
Thanks to evolution of smart technologies and smart devices. We have the chance to live better and smarter. Despite all the cool things about it, the most important things are the benefits we can get from home automation.
So, how does this cool technological advancement affect and influence the way we live? Can we really get something useful out of it?
Well, there are advantages and disadvantages of course. But for now, let’s take at the advantages of home automation.
What benefits we can get from building a smart home. Well, here’s a comprehensive list of the benefits of home automation.
Home Automation Benefits
1. Security & Protection
Security is one of the most important things we should have at home. So, when it comes to building a smart home, always think about home security. How does home automation improve the security at home?
In 2014, Lowe’s Smart Home survey results states that 62% of the Americans rank security and monitoring as the most beneficial reason to own a smart home.
The growing number of smart devices includes devices for the security and protection of your home and family.
A few of these smart devices include indoor and outdoor motion sensors, door and window sensors and smart door locks. These devices informs you of any potential threat to your properties and lives.
Smart motion sensors notifies you of any activities outside and inside of your home. Is there anything moving outside or inside your house which compromises your security?
Smart door and window sensors tells you as soon someone opens or closes them. Smart door locks let’s you know who enters or exits your home.
These are just common scenarios and sample cases where a smart home can benefit you. And, there are other smart devices out there which can boost your security and make you feel safer at home.
2. Convenience & Comfort
Convenience is definitely one of the easiest benefit to state when it comes to home automation. The use of a mobile application connected to the home automation network of smart devices is the common setup.
Using an application like those in mobile phones, you’ll have the convenience to control devices remotely and monitor your home.
The convenience and comfort that a smart home can give you is very much felt from anywhere you are. You will enjoy the comfort of your home.
In 2014. the result from Lowe’s Smart Home survey shows that 35% states that home automation will provide more convenience at home overall. Convenience at home is the fourth in ranking of the benefits of home automation in this study.
From PwC’s “Smart Home, Seamless Life” survey, 10% says that the reason for the first smart home device they bought is to increase convenience.
How convenient would it be when you can just turn off or on electrical devices without moving from where you are? Well, it’s definitely nice to be able to do that, right?
3. Save Energy
A smart home not only does provide security and convenience to you. It also helps you attain energy usage efficiency at home. With efficient use of energy, it will help you save energy and thus in turn save money which we will talk more about later.
From Bosch’s smart home technologies survey results, it says that the most important selling point of smart homes is saving energy worldwide.
In another result, the study from Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) states that home automation technologies which offer energy efficiency are the most popular home technology installations among U.S. consumers.
Aside from being beneficial for the environment, but it also helps save us from bigger energy bills.
With smart devices, you will have control over your devices at home. You will know whether a certain electrical device is on or off. And, if its not used, you can turn off any device from where you are.
You can also set automatic schedule for your devices to turn on and off. Thus, you are in control of your energy consumption. This will provide huge impact not only in your bills but also for the environment.
4. Save Money
Although you may spend money upfront to setup your home automation system, it will help you save money in the long run.
When you are able to efficiently use energy, then you’ll save money from your electric bills.
Since you are now able to monitor your electrical devices timely and properly, you will cut your electric consumption. This will in turn be a big help in saving money from inefficient use of electricity.
So, what else can a smart home system do to help you save money?
Well, here’s are a few of instances which a smart home can add up to your savings. When you forgot to turn off any device when you leave your home, you can see them through your app and then turn them off.
Or, you can set a predefined schedule on when your lights should turn on or off.
Also, the use of a smart thermostat can help you monitor and control your temperature at home with consideration of efficient energy use.
5. Save Time
Aside from saving energy and money, a smart home can also save your most precious time.
The adage that says time is gold is definitely right. We can’t turn back the time we spent especially if we use them unwisely.
When you have a automation system at home, you will spend less time doing some things at home. You can now automate tasks so you can focus on more important works to do.
There are several other scenarios when home automation can help you save your time.
A common example, when you forgot to turn off something and you already left home, you can just turn it off through your phone. You don’t need to go back to your house anymore just to do that.
Another good example is the manual switching of electrical devices like the lights. You can now do it with your smart phone. Yes it is simple, but you can save time from walking to the switches.
6. Remote Control & Monitoring
One of the best thing about home automation technologies is being able to control and monitor remotely the smart devices you have at home.
This feature is probably the best thing about having a smart home. You can always check the status of your devices and control them from wherever you are.
From Lowe’s 2014 Smart Home Survey, there are 70 percent of Americans who wish they could control something in their home without getting out of bed.
More than that, how much more if they can do it even if they are away from home.
This is a great advantage when it comes to situations where we are away from home like during vacations. You can still turn on and off the lights from the beach or hotel.
As long as you have an internet connection, you can check your electrical devices and manage them.
7. Protection from Fire, Carbon Monoxide & Water Leaks
We already mentioned that security is very important benefit of home automation. In fact, a survey from IControl Networks named 2014 State of Smart Home Report shows that family security is very critical or important.
To be more specific, fire and carbon monoxide alarms are essential when talking about family and personal security.
The survey results shows that 85% of the respondents said fire detection is one of the most important things when it comes to family protection. There are 60% of the respondents who cite it as number one.
With carbon monoxide detection, 64% says its part of the top 3 most important feature of a smart home. However, only 11% says that carbon monoxide alarms as the most important feature.
While these numbers are from a survey a couple of years ago, it still shows how much people care about their security.
In particular, they have concerns with regards to fire and carbon monoxide detection because these are important in protection themselves and their families.
Another thing that smart home devices can help you is on the detection of water leaks and flood.
This is also important for those who are in the areas prone to floods. Smart devices such as water leak sensors can also notify you in case there are leaks in parts of your house like near pipes or water systems.
All together, smart sensors and other smart home devices can help you provide timely updates with regards to your home and surrounding. All of these is help provide protection for you and your family.
8. Task Automation
Task automation can help you ease up some work and to dos at home. When some work and tasks at home needs to be done at specific times or intervals, you might think of automating them.
This will help you ease up the load of work at home and spend the time with other tasks or with your family.
A good example of this is to set schedule on when to the lights turns on or off. You can do this through setting automatic schedule based on time of the day.
And, you can even control it better with the use of light sensors which turns on or off your lights depending on the darkness of the room or surrounding.
This kind of workflows help you manually do the things. You never have to do the task manually.
9. Timely Reminders & Notifications
With all things you need to worry in life, there’s nothing more helpful than at least ease some burden of keeping track of things.
Thanks to smart technology, you will have better access to data and reminders through automation and notifications.
Timely reminders from your smart devices of things you need to do or just to let you know of the status of your devices are very much helpful in a really busy life.
With so much to worry and think on family and work, notifications can inform whether something needs to be taken good care of with some things at your home.
When you get timely reminders and notifications, you can prepare for things you need to do. In general, you will always be aware of things important to you at home without even thinking much about it.
10. Life is Easier
All of these benefits are good but the general benefit we can say about smart technology is that it makes our life easier.
After all, this is one of the most important things of why people keep on building things and keep on inventing, it’s to make life easier.
Smart technology and home automation is just one of the things that makes people’s lives better, more convenient and easier.
With all of the things it can make, it surely gives that advantage of keeping us from doing things we usually do manually.
Now, what do you think? Do you think smart home automation makes your life easier?
11. Save Lives
Yes, home automation can provide the convenience, save money and time. But probably the most important thing that home automation can provide is to save lives.
Smart sensors, like smart motion sensors, can fortify the security at home. Smart door and window sensors can help you who opens and closes the entrances of your home.
Through these sensors, you’ll know if there’s anyone or anything who might probably be posing a threat to your home and family.
In addition, smart sensors which can help you get alerts of environmental hazards can also save lives.
Devices such as water leak sensors, fire sensors, temperature and humidity sensors can provide you a sense of relief. It’s all because of knowing that you will have time to prepare and react accordingly whenever these threats and danger might come.
It’s always a great thing to keep on the alert mode even with doing your daily things through the help of these smart detectors.
Here’s what TecHomeBuilder says more about how a smart home can help save lives.
These are additional insights about how a smart home automation can keep people’s life safe. And, these probably are not the complete view of it but we do can get the point.
So, How Does Home Automation Benefits You?
These benefits laid out here talks about the different angles and aspects of life where home automation can benefit someone.
While, home automation is not all about advantages and benefits as there are also some disadvantages.
But, this presentation of the benefits of home automation is definitely a good start to think about and consider creating a smart home.
So, transforming your home to become a smart home through smart devices is not about convenience but most importantly, it should be about keeping a safe and convenient life.
These home automation benefits will definitely be a good venue for anyone who considers building or creating a smart home. Now, what do you think about it? How does home automation benefits you?