Home Automation can be a daunting concept for most homeowners. We asked the experts at Homemation to provide some guidance to ensure optimal automation.
Generally, a home automation system will control lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances in your home and can include home security such as access control and alarm systems. Nowadays, many people are opting to have the system retrofitted into their older homes, while others are including it in a new build or renovation.
Tips to ensure optimal automation
- More inputs make smarter outputs i.e. the more information that the automation system knows about, the more intuitive the outputs become. By letting your automation system know about occupancy in the room and lighting conditions in the environment, the lighting can be activated only when needed. Add to this if there is a door contact sensor then the system can make sure that the light stays on for the duration of the door being closed and not turn off the light when there is no movement in the room during this time.
- Make sure that the automation contractor has a good sense of what your daily routine is so that they can design a system that meets your needs and fits into your lifestyle, rather than working against it.
- Redundancy is critical – inasmuch as these smart systems are designed to last as long as they can, at some stage an electronic device will fail. If there is no way to manually operate a device in these instances it doesn’t matter how good the system was when working, the client will never be happy. Think about a perimeter gate as an entrance to the home. It’s great that this can be operated through a home automation system to operate even when the home owner is not at home, but if something goes wrong with the automation system, or integration to the gate, how is the client to get into their home?
- Home network is the starting point – all the technology in the home these days relies on the home network to inter-communicate. An inferior home network is a guarantee for a bad experience.
- Power conditioning and surge protect is a must. When spending your money on technology you want to make sure that you protect the equipment from dirty power to get the best performance out.
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