Home automation ideas – why should we talk about them? According to Statista, the number of Smart Homes in the global market will reach 482,8 million in 2025. This humungous number indicates that homeowners are increasingly tending towards home automation.
And the fact is there are many reasons behind this affinity for home automation.
We shall delve into various aspects of home automation and home automation ideas as we move ahead in this article.
What is Home Automation?
Picture this: Modern homes contain many appliances such as TV, security camera, fridge, lights, stove, window shades, AC, home theater, geyser, etc. How would that be if we control such household appliances with just one click and that too from miles away from home?
Home automation lets us accomplish this and much more beyond our imagination.
Home automation is a centralized process of remotely controlling household appliances by grouping them into a single connected network. The control of devices can be with a single click or by designing them to be triggered by preset events in response to the changes in the ambient conditions.
With home automation, one can eliminate routine tasks at home by fusing the next-generation hardware and state-of-art software solutions.
10 Best Home Automation Ideas
Do you know? Home automation ideas can be implemented for every inch of your home. Right from your entryway, patio, hall, kitchen, bedroom, play area, backyard, and beyond, you can obtain smooth control of turning off and on any electronic home appliances with home automation.
Here is a list of home automation ideas classified according to the room/living space:
10 Best Home office automation ideas
- Air quality control devices: Helps you in regulating the freshness of the air in your home workspace.
- Productivity trackers: Decodes what activities are consuming your time.
- Smart Desks: One that you can turn into a stand-up workbench with a single touch.
- Smart Pens: Does many more beyond just digital signing and taking notes.
- Self-encrypting drive: A drive that takes care of your data security as much as you do.
- Automated coffee machine: Gives you the much-needed boost and lets you enjoy the virtual chit chat with your colleagues on screen.
- Smart Personal Assistant: Never lets you forget your meeting schedules and lunch meetings.
- Smart earbuds: For convenient long hours of meetings that are indispensable these days!
- Air quality control: To provide fresh air for better health and productivity.
- Smart notepad: Do you know that it is microwavable? Yes, it indeed is.
10 Best Bedroom Automation Ideas
- Smart Mattress: With this smart mattress that tunes itself to the ambient temperature, your sleep worries are no more present.
- Smart Curtains: For lazy people (including us! 😊) who forget to close the curtains before going to bed but wished they could be closed with a single click without getting up from the bed.
- Sleep trackers: Your besties when it comes to giving feedback about the quality of your sleep.
- Light dimmers: Sets the perfect mood to drift away into sleep like a baby.
- Smart wake lights: They slowly attain brightness before your alarm turns on in the morning to wake you up energized.
- Smart lights for kids: They tell the kids whether they woke up at the right time or they need to go back to bed again.
- Smart Alarm: You can turn them on automatically when you turn off bedroom lights.
- Laundry notification: Just like a smart alarm, you can turn this on when you turn off the bedroom lights.
- Bed climate control: Works by air pumping technology and controls your bed temperature to perfectly invite a better sleep.
- Voice assistant: Though it suits anywhere in the whole home, it will make the best bedside aide.
10 best garden and outdoor automation ideas
- Automated pool cleaners: Swimming is enjoyable, but cleaning the pool? Meh! Leave the hassles of pool cleaning to these smart pool cleaners. Meanwhile, enjoy your cuppa tea!
- Outdoor and garden lights: Turn the outdoor lights on automatically when it gets dark. Also, you can optimize the brightness according to the time of the day.
- Smart Lawnmowers: Instruct these mini-robots about the desired size of the lawn. They will take care of the landscaping of your garden.
- Automated sprinklers: Now, no need to rely on your gardener or remind your partner to water the plants. Tweak in the automated sprinklers into your home automation and let them take care of watering the plants.
- Smart BBQs: Comes with automated features to alert you about the temperature of cooking, fire, smoking alarms, etc.
- Soil health trackers: They inform you about the soil’s health and indicate whether you need to replenish the nutrients.
- Automated garage door: Let your smartphone be remote to your garage door and open the garage door without breaking your back.
- Smart parasol: Forget the strain to open and close the parasol with changing weather. Let your home automation deal with it.
- Smart sound systems: Rain-proof and auto-adjustment of sound to ambient noise, these set the mood perfectly for outdoor parties.
- Weather alerting systems: If you loved to have weather alerting accurate systems, these smart devices can be your saviors.
10 Best Kitchen Automation Ideas
- Smart Fridges: Tells you what’s in the fridge and gives cooking suggestions without you needing to open the refrigerator.
- Water Sensors: Your saviors that alert you and turn off the water supply in case of any possible leaks.
- Smart Taps: With these, no more hassles to clean the taps stuck with grease and food materials you transferred while washing your hands.
- Calorie analyzers: Alerts about calories in your food items; apps to inform you about allergens, freshness, and ingredients are also available.
- Smart Cookers: Turn these cookers on when you are about to hit home after a tiring day at work, and hot food will be ready when you reach home!
- Smart Coffee Maker: Your dream to get that hot cuppa coffee without even stepping down from the bed comes true with this smart device.
- Assisted cooking devices: Turns you into top-rated chefs by allowing you to cook to perfection just like in your favorite restaurant!
- Smart Ovens: Now no more fear of burnt baking experiments! Set the instructions as per the app and relax while the freshest bake gets ready!
- Smart Kitchen gardens: Freshest produce in your kitchen, 365 days a year. That’s what these smart kitchen gardens help with.
- Smart Washing Machine: Throw the dirty clothes into these machines and forget about them. Let the smart washing machines handle the rest.
10 Best Smart Home Automation Ideas
- Home security camera: Monitor your home by sitting anywhere in the world. Panning options, push notifications, back up in the cloud – you get everything with these smart security cameras.
- Smart Doorbell: It lets you say bye to unwelcomed guests without needing to open the door.
- Smart Car trackers: Assures you peace of mind by constantly sharing information about your car’s location.
- Smart floodlights: Just with a single click, they get switched on from the remote and scare away thieves like no other.
- Smart smoke detectors: With these smart appliances, you can forget the age-old smoke alarms that do not help when you are not at home.
- Energy trackers: Gives you the summary of energy consumed by all the appliances in your home.
- Motion sensors: They work on infrared rays and are an excellent top-up for your existing home security setup.
- Smart Locks: Control the security of your house and check for intrusions all from remote locations.
- Smart alarms: Let you check the health of thermostats, stoves, and other risk-prone appliances for their health when you are away from the house.
- Smart pet trackers: Alerts you about your furry friends and informs you about their whereabouts.
The list of home automation ideas can go on endless. All these home automation work on the principle as explained below:
How does automation work?
Home automation works in three main classes: Monitoring, Control, Automation.
- Monitoring: Devices that come under home security such as smart cameras, baby monitors, doorbell systems, etc., come under this class.
- Control: These appliances provide remote control. For instance, switching on a smart cooker at home from your office, panning a security camera to cover more space under live feed, etc.
- Automation: Devices will auto-trigger and send alarms on any deviation from normal. Examples include smoke detectors, motion sensors, temperature monitors.
Home automation devices contain three main components: sensors, controllers, and actuators.
- Sensors: They vary with the type of device. They are responsible for the core functionality of the home automation device. As the name goes, sensors detect the physical property they are devised for.
For instance, motion sensors sense change in motion, and light sensors detect the change in light. Similarly, home automation devices make use of many sensors including pressure, weight, temperature, smoke, water level, etc.
- Controllers: These are the medium through which you control your end smart device. It can be your computer, tablet, or smartphone. You can receive messages and send signals to OFF/ON the smart device through these controllers.
- Actuators: These are the end devices or the smart devices that you are using. They may be the light switches, valves, and motors that control the final action. They get triggers from the command received from the controller device.
Home automation devices can work independently connecting to the router or as a hub of interconnected IoT devices. The home automation devices are connected via the internet through different communication protocols.
Control of Home Automation Devices
Home automation devices are controlled by using voice assistants or apps.
App-based control: Home automation devices that are app-controlled let the users control the devices in real-time through these apps. These apps are of two kinds: single-tasking apps, and multitasking apps.
- Single-tasking apps are designed only for one single home appliance or system. For instance, a home security camera, or smart cooker.
- Multi-tasking apps are designed for a hub of devices. You can control multiple home automation devices using them. Most such apps are compatible with Android and iOS. It means the related devices are comfy to users of both mobile OS users.
Examples of home automation apps:
- Samsung Smart Homes App
- Apple Home Kit App
- Danalock Bluetooth Z-lock
- My Q Garage and Access Control
- Ecobee
- Honeywell Home
- Philips Hue
- Wemo
Though Amazon Alexa App and Google Assistant apps also come under the app category, we shall talk about them in the next classification, i.e., voice assistants, as they are popular in that sect.
Voice-based control: Emperors getting things done with the command of a single word may be history. With voice-controlled home automation devices, everyone is the emperor of their own sweet homes! These voice-controlled assistants allow you to get things done with just a simple command. Unsurprisingly, the most famous voice assistants we see daily are Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri.
Some voice-controlled home automation devices include:
- Amazon Echo
- Honeywell Wi-Fi Smart Thermostat with Voice Control
- Samsung Smart TV
- LG Vacuum Cleaner
- Athom Homey
- Vocca Light
Pros of Home Automation
Home automation is a topic of interest for many. The graph of the number of users using home automation is increasing every year. Many other consumers are showing interest in home automation. Thanks to its many benefits as below, no wonder that home automation which is looked upon as a luxury now will turn into a necessity very soon.
Safety and care
Home automation takes care of your home and your dear one’s safety end to end. Be it your mother who needs assistance or baby who needs your monitoring, you can leave it to home automation while away at work. Home automation devices such as motion detectors for patios and backyards, smart locks, smart calling bells will eliminate intruder threats.
Reduced electricity bills
With home automation, you are all geared up to save on your monthly electricity bills. With home automation, you need not worry if someone left the geyser or AC on, or if the lights are switched off in the bedroom when you are away from the house.
Lights that adapt to surrounding brightness, lights, and fans that work only when you need them, temperature controlling beds, room shades, etc. will make living space more livable, trimming down the energy requirement.
Better lifestyle
By automating routine tasks and making sure that your family is assisted and cared for all the time, your lifestyle improves. You find more time for your interests, career, business, and other aspects. Besides, spending quality time with family is no more a dream when you have ample time thanks to home automation.
Kitchen-based home automation helps working women and mothers save several hours. They can cut down hassles and focus on their own and children’s well-being. With your garden being watered at pre-set timings and as per the requirement, all that you need to do is sit and relax after a tiring day. You can get home-cooked food ready as you start from the office with just one click. With home automation, such benefits are endless.
Cons of Home Automation
Despite the advantages that make life simpler, safer, and convenient, home automation has its disadvantages.
Cost
The initial cost of home automation can be burdening. Technology has improved and costs of home automation are coming down. Still, home automation is not fully within the reach of everyone yet.
Security breaches
The Internet always has had its quota of threats when it comes to security breaches. Can you imagine someone hacking into your home security system! Such issues need to be weeded out if more consumers have to step forward for home automation.
Dependence on the internet
Needless to say, it is the connectivity that brings the best out of home automation. In case of loss of smartphones, or internet connectivity, all the plans may go upside down with home automation.
Installation and Maintenance
Home automation needs expert intervention when it comes to installation and maintenance. The cost of repairs and maintenance needs to be accounted for while calculating the budget for home automation.
Complexity
In case you wish one of the devices is not needed or if one of the components gets damaged, it might be complex to get the repairs done or to replace. Besides, everyone who is using home automation should be able to understand how it works in its basic functionalities. Else, the purpose may not be met.
Compatibility
Home automation means interconnected devices that are controllable via a single hub. But if the devices are not compatible, then the purpose is not met in its first place. It may also necessitate a centralized component that will make all the devices compatible with each other. This will add more cost to the already expensive set up of home automation.
Under this backdrop, some common doubts that can arise about home automation and smart devices are answered below:
Are IoT and home automation the same?
Home automation is an application of IoT. IoT refers to things that can be remotely connected and controlled by a software application. These ‘things’ could be your lights, TV, or switchboards, and they are connected to software via the internet.
Home automation is a hub of all such ‘things’ that are interrelated to each other in most cases. Home automation is a subset of IoT. IoT has many applications and home automation is just one instance.
Are Smart Home and Home automation the same?
A smart home is a class of home appliances or ‘smart’ devices such as TVs, refrigerators that are controlled via the internet. Home automation is a methodology to use smart home devices so that they respond automatically when a trigger or abnormal conditions are found.
Conclusion
Home automation is a trend that will help us in achieving many things beyond our imagination. It is up to us to make the best use of them and gain the maximum benefits from this trend.
