A futuristic cartoon called The Jetsons that debuted in 1962 featured all kinds of time-saving hacks and a peel into what life might look like in 2062. We may still have another 43 years to go until then, but a growing number of today’s homes already boast all kinds of innovative hacks that would make patriarch George Jetson proud.
Thanks to the increasing available of smart home technology, homeowners can choose from thousands of devices that connect to some sort of app or hub and can ‘talk’ to us and each other. If you already use a digital assistant or apps to dim the lights and turn on your favourite playlist, you might be contemplating a full home automation system to connect all your systems in one convenient hub.
“ Everything is connected already so home automation is a natural evolution,” says Andy Tasakas, co-owner of New Wave Electronics in Richmond Hill. Automation refers to the ability to program and schedule events for the devices on your network. Time-related commands, such as turning lights on or off at specific times each day, is one example. It can also include non-scheduled events, such as turning on all the lights if your security system alarm is triggered.
Remote monitoring and access allow you to find out things like the current temperature of your home, pull up real-time video feeds to see what’s going on in your house and receive a notification when your security system registers severe weather alerts. Benefits of home automation include energy and cost savings. You can program your system to lower the thermostat at night and adjust it in the morning, so the house is a comfortable temperature when you wake up, for instance.
It’s also about convenience. “If your kids come home early, you can unlock the door and let them in,” Tasakas says. “You can even keep track of their comings and goings, such as who opened the front door from the code that was used and what time they came in. You can set a schedule so you can give nannies access during set times.”
When getting started, think about how you’d like to improve your home and your life, advises Nick Russano, fellow co-owner of New Wave Electronics. Even if you have a fairly good idea of what you want, visiting a dealer’s showroom, an experience centre or a model home decked out with technology will help you better understand a system’s capabilities.
Wireless technology is less invasive and easier to install than wired technology but might not be the best stand-alone choice for a home automation network due to interference, range and bandwidth issues. “It’s obviously a little more costly to install a wired system but in the end, you save money because it’s more reliable,” says Russano.
You don’t need to be a techie to take advantage of home automation, he assures. “Come into our experience centre and if I can’t show you how to use a home automation system in five minutes, I haven’t done my job correctly. It should be fundamentally easy for anyone to use.”
As home automation becomes increasingly mainstream, it’s not hard to find do-it-yourself systems. Homeowners might be able to tackle a smaller-scale system or ones that control a few aspects of home automation but setting up a whole-house home automation system might be a challenge better left to a professional who can work around unforeseen obstacles.
By Linda White
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
