Home Automation 101: Everything You Need To Know In 700 Words

By: Michael Manouel, Jr., Social Media

Home·Au·to·ma·tion — noun

Pertaining to the field of “domotics”—(a portmanteau of the Latin word “domus” for home and “informatics,” the study of computing technologies)

1. The many objects in a house connected by a central control, e.g. an iPhone, iPad, android device, or touch screen remote.

This remote controls mostly everything electronic in the top floor of this customer's home. — The One Remote Solution: Automate Your Media, Shades, Lighting, Temperature, And More – Residence in Dallas, TX

Define Your Home For Yourself

While this is just one definition, some see it as the ultimate intersection of bleeding-edge technology and in-home integration. Others see it as comfort, safety, and ease in one swipe of a screen. And others still see it at as the breezy convenience of having an automatically-dimmed light lead your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, or a heated bathroom scheduled five minutes before you wake up.

Home Automation by Honest Install — Control Your Entire Home With An iPad –Residence in Dallas, TX

The smart home—once the domain of the rich and famous—has now, by the efforts of companies like Nest, Honeywell, SONOS, Lutron, Q-Motion, & RTi, been made a populist reality. “Smart” is the latest buzzword in the technology industry, but the smart home is anything but pure hype. Whole home automation includes almost all aspects of a house, including:

Lighting control
Energy efficient climate control solutions
Fire protection
Motorized shades
Whole home audio
Security (CCTV cameras, alarms and smart locks)
HVAC
Complete mobile access to your home

These stand-alone automated devices have all become relatively affordable and need only be tied to one master device in the palm of your hand. This is where programming and automation come into play, as when properly engineered and installed by Dallas/Fort Worth professionals, your home could even send you an immediate message or email about events you might need to know about when you’re at work or away, such as water leaks or about an intruder—or even a photo of who might be sneaking home with your son or daughter after school! A connected home will even allow you to send back an email to turn on a washing machine when you’re miles away from your home. Or with full voice automation, you could unlock your front door using just a simple command. Remember, home automation not only saves money, but is also easier on the environment—a green home is an automated home.

Home Automation, Key To Cost-Cutting Green Sustainability

Do you have a vacation home or a second residence that you don’t live in year-round? Home automation can not only save you cash on the maintenance and utilities of your property, but also gives you the ability to remotely set the lights to random pattern turn on-and-off at designated times of the night so it looks like someone is home, so as to ward off potential break-ins. With whole home automation, you have an edge when you’re able to view every room of your vacation house from your laptop or phone hundreds of miles away.

Honest Install -- Media Room/Whole-Home Audio -- Frisco, TX — Media Room/Whole-Home Audio – Residence in Frisco, TX

So we know the electronic house is no whim or fancy of futurists either, as we all now have at least some pieces of the home automation puzzle in our living rooms, our media rooms, our bedrooms. Add these few pieces of a smart home you may have to the fact that, now, everyday the systems to control them are becoming less costly–so much so–that home automation installation is not as expensive as you might think. But installing a home automation system means finding way for all these disparate electrical devices to ‘talk’ to each other.

No Universal Automation Language; Set It To Speak What You’re Most Familiar With

To ‘play nice’ together, these home devices all need to speak a single language, such as a radio frequency (RF) or something as simple as your home Wi-fi network. Once connected to the internet or RF and programmed by a specialist, each and every light, TV, surround sound speaker, motorized shade, smoke detector, indoor temperature system, outdoor lighting, security feature & smart lock, and even so-called “domestic robot” in your Dallas, TX home can be easily manipulated, even remotely at a distance, by an app or a touch-screen interface. This is a brief description of home automation at its most basic, but there are endless possibilities for custom configuration and tailored programming. The smart home is not the way of the future; it is the present tense of home technology.