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A Beginner's Guide To Building Your Smart Home | The Loken Group

There are many ways in which we can use modern technology and automation to improve our lives, and the ability to build a truly smart home is now more accessible and affordable than ever before. The idea is to grow your own smart home system that meets your individual needs, at your convenience, and within your own budget. Whether you’re looking to automate individual household items such as the door locks within your home, or are thinking of a fully connected system of intelligent devices, this basic guide to smart home technology will help you achieve your specific home automation goals.

1. What is a smart home?

At its core, smart home technology is about using automation to improve your home life. A smart home can mean any device or appliance connected to the internet that you can control using a smartphone or whose function you can automate. Most applications relate to lighting, home security, home theater and entertainment, and thermostat regulation.

2. What are the benefits of having a smart home?

The first and perhaps most obvious benefit of having a smart home is time management. Ordinary tasks such as setting the thermostat or closing the blinds, although mindless, can eat up precious minutes of your day. Secondly, the accessibility and convenience of having a smart home is a huge motivating factor for many people to make the switch. Smart technology can also end up saving you a lot of money in the long-term. In fact, smart home owners who use thermostat controls alone saved 10-30 percent on their energy bill. Consequently, you reduce your carbon footprint as you eliminate needless energy consumption.

3. How do smart homes work?

Any device in your home that uses electricity can be put on your home network and at your command. Whether you give that command by voice, remote control, tablet or smartphone, the home reacts.

4. What is a smart home hub? 

A smart home hub provides a uniform platform through which you can control and automate multiple smart home devices that otherwise wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other.

5. What can you connect to your smart home setup?

There are a myriad of different components that can make up a smart home, some of which include lights (all smart lights are LEDs), speakers (such as the Amazon Echo), smart plugs, locks, security cameras, thermostats, video doorbells, smoke detectors, robot vacuums, universal remotes, and garage door openers.