The How and Why of Smart Home Technology in Kissimmee, FL
As the convenience and power that smart home technology offers have become greater and more obvious, ever larger numbers of people have started using it. In what follows, we’ll explain what smart home technology is and how it works, clarifying some of the benefits it can bring to your Kissimmee, FL home.
What Is Smart Home Technology?
“Smart home technology” is a catch-all term that refers to the combined effect produced when a series of devices and household appliances — including smartphones, security systems, refrigerators, thermostats, washing machines, voice assistants and more — all connect to the same home Wi-Fi network and interact with one another. At the center of it all is the smartphone or tablet that you use to control, monitor and communicate with all of the other devices. The communication between them produces benefits in the form of greater convenience, energy efficiency, health, safety and comfort.
Convenience
For many people, increased convenience is probably the most tangible advantage of having a smart home. Suppose, for example, that you wish to turn on your thermostat and activate your HVAC system. Ordinarily, you would have to get up, walk over to the thermostat and manually set it to generate the indoor temperature that keeps you comfortable.
With smart home technology, however, things become much easier. If you have a voice assistant device, for example, you can simply speak the command to turn your thermostat to a given temperature, and the voice assistant will communicate with the thermostat to make that happen automatically. Alternatively, you can use your smartphone or tablet to remotely access the thermostat and perform the same actions.
This principle applies to any other device or combination of devices that you’ve connected to your home Wi-Fi network. You could, for example, access your security camera to check for possible intruders outside as you sit on your couch, command your smart lock to automatically lock your doors or ask your voice assistant to dictate important health metrics to you that your smartwatch has gathered so that you can better plan your exercise routine.
Efficiency and Energy Savings
All smart devices continuously gather data about your usage patterns, tracking the intensity with which you use them, the times when you’re most likely to use them, the settings you prefer when using them and so on. With smart home technology, all of your smart devices will be able to share these data, and certain devices will then have the power to act in your benefit based on what they know about what you like to do with other devices.
Let’s say that your smart energy meter sees that your home energy use is inefficient. If connected to a smart home network, it can then communicate with your programmable smart thermostat to alter your energy use patterns to save energy and reduce your energy bills. Best of all, thanks to options like the thermostat’s recovery mode, it can do so while still sticking as closely as possible to the indoor temperature patterns that you’ve shown that you enjoy.
Keeping You Safe
Smart cameras, locks and alarm systems are obvious ways in which smart home technology can keep you safe because it has the ability to discretely and automatically contact emergency services for you if it detects danger. Because smart networks have access to so much analytic data, they can promote your safety in much more subtle ways.
Smart thermostats have sensors that allow them to determine when something is wrong with your HVAC system and even offer an educated guess about the nature of the problem. Using these data, the smart network can then contact HVAC technicians for you to come and take care of the issue. Similarly, since annual HVAC maintenance is so important, your smart network can remind you to schedule another maintenance review when the time approaches.
By automating so many actions and combining analytics data in interesting ways, smart home technology can place enormous power into your hands. To equip your Kissimmee, FL home with this power, call Frank’s Air Conditioning and ask for our smart home services.
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