The main features of a smart home
Today, every manufacturer that has an app and a sensor calls their system a smart home. But why you don’t have a smart home yet and which are the 6 most important features that your smart home must have, you will find in the following article.
Central control
From my point of view, nothing is more complicated and therefore the absolute no-go for a smart home if I have to install ten different apps on my smartphone. One for the light, the other for the vacuum cleaner and another for the alarm system. At some point, you’ll also have a camera and thus another app. In the vast majority of cases, this means that these apps and systems cannot communicate with each other and therefore do not act smart. However, centralized control is absolutely the most important feature of a smart home. This ensures “intelligent behavior” in the system: when you enter a room, the light comes on automatically. If you are absent, the vacuum cleaner starts its rounds and the camera automatically connects to the alarm system. Everything else are individual systems, but by far not a smart home!
Integration of different manufacturers
When you spend several thousand francs on a smart home, you assume that this system will also work for a long time and will be maintained by the provider. However, not only since Nokia has it been known that even a global corporation can go under quite quickly or no longer offer or update its products. This is also a danger with a smart home, where all components are made by the same manufacturer. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it by any means, but at least some caution is advised. Often the companies are not very long on the market and currently the topic of smart home makes huge strides! It can happen that a company falls by the wayside. And then it would be a great pity if the necessary cloud for this is turned off and your whole system becomes useless. Therefore, I recommend integrating devices from different manufacturers into your smart home.
Scalability
Start small and then steadily expand. That was and still is my motto when it comes to smart homes! Often it is very difficult to estimate from the beginning what you want to have in the end and especially what the smart home should be able to do. If you buy a scalable solution, then you have exactly this advantage and don’t have to think about everything at the beginning. The smart home grows with your (new) needs over the years.
Further development
As already mentioned, there is a great deal of momentum on the subject of smart homes right now. Therefore, it is very important to ensure that the manufacturers constantly develop and update the components and software of the smart home. This is the only way to make new functionalities and components available. This is the only way to keep your system up to date!
User view / GUI
In the household, the topic of smart homes tends to be male-dominated. However, at the latest when it comes to the controls, the female gender also has to deal with the system. And there is no more convincing argument than a simple and, above all, a beautiful user interface. This should be configurable so that the design is suitable for different control devices (smarthone, PC or a touch panel).
No dependence on the smartphone
There is nothing more annoying than when you can only operate the most important functions with your smartphone. In particular, the light must always be controlled in parallel with the old switches (OK, alternatively of course with the voice), but in no case only with the smartphone!
So, those were my top 6 features that your smart home must definitely have and here I tell you why Home Assistant is my first choice!
