Podcast #829: Five Reasons to Automate Your Home

Five Reasons to Automate Your Home The HT Guys have been singing the praises of home automation for about ten years now. It starts slow with one device and then quickly becomes an obsession. But it's the one thing that we have added to our homes that gets no pushback from family members. So if you are thinking about going down the home automation rabbit hole and are looking for a way to justify it, we have you covered. This is our list of five reasons to automate your home! Convenience - Automation reduces the number of steps required to setup your home for the perfect evening. With a touch of a button or tap on your phone lights are dimmed, blinds are closed, and temperature is set to make watching a movie a perfect experience. And because your home is Smart, it will adjust for sunrise and sunset times year round. Did you leave your home with the heater on? Maybe the garage door was left open. Automation allows you to deal with this issues from the office. No need to rush home. This also leads to piece of mind. Speaking of which… Peace of Mind - You never have to worry about an appliance left on or weather the front door is locked are even if the garage door was left open. The other day I (Ara) noticed that my neighbor's garage door was left open. Fortunately I was home. I called him and asked if he wanted me to close it for him. He was very appreciative of that. Needless to say it would have been inconvenient for him to drive home and close it. Since we can't be everywhere, having a means to remotely secure your home does offer you some peace of mind! Security - This goes hand in hand with Peace of mind but we are separating it out to focus on those who want to steal from you. We know that in most cases thieves want easy targets and if your home looks like no one is home it's an easy target. To avoid this we can use automation to turn on lights. Sure you can turn them on with manual timers but if someone is casing the place they see a pattern. Automation can add some variability to the lighting sequence. You can also install cameras with sensors in your doorbell or place a camera in a window. If a crook sees a home that is highly automated he will probably just move on. Savings - Have you ever left for vacation and forgot to set your thermostat to vacation mode? Depending on the season, heating or cooling your home for no one is a waste of money. Without automation you would have to call a friend and hope that he or she has a way to get into your house and adjust your thermostat. Or just forgo the cost savings, which depending on where you live could be significant. With home automation you can just pull out your smartphone and adjust the thermostat from anywhere. No More Keys - With a smart lock you can enter you home without fumbling for keys. You can even create codes for specific individuals that have limited time access. On a recent trip we had a package that arrived after we left. We didn't want it sitting there for a week so I created a special one time use code for a neighbor and I asked her to take the package and put it inside the front door. I was alerted when she walked up to my door by my SkyBell doorbell. Then I received another alert when the door was unlocked. The door lock log stored the time and access number that was used to open the door for historical reference. Then when she walked into the home I received a notification from the motion sensor. And finally the whole thing was captured on camera. Without the automated door lock I would have had to ask her to keep the package at my neighbor's house and then get it the day after we got home which was Christmas. So no more keys hits on all the other points, Convenience, Peace of Mind, Security, and even Savings!