Home automation is a fast growing and exciting industry and we wanted to explore many of the possibilities home automation has to offer:

Smart lighting

There are so many options for smart lighting, how about controlling all the lights in a room or in your home with one button?

Installing motion sensors in key areas is one way to take advantage of smart lighting, whether it’s in the home or garden. Landscape lighting with solar sensors can turn on and off with sunset and sunrise and motion sensing lights in the come can help conserve energy by switching lights off when no one is in the room.

With smart lighting you can also set moods, for example Bedtime lighting can offer you just enough light to read comfortably in bed.

You can also install a lighting system that can adjust the light in a room during the day if the natural light is less than 50% for example the lighting will automatically adjust. Great for cloudy days.

Smart music

Smart music applications can allow you to stream music to every room in your home from a dedicated keypad or from your mobile phone. You can also create music zones and have different playlists for each room. Music settings can also be timed to correspond with different times of day. Imagine all that shower karaoke!

You can even combine smart music technology with lighting to set the perfect dinner party or chill out mood at the touch of a button.

Home entertainment

Home automation can be a great way of enhancing your entertainment experience at home. Features could include a remote finder that beeps to let you know where the remote is, lights that dim automatically when you press play on a movie, automatic door locking when press play and lights that get 30% brighter when you hit pause.

Home automation for entertainment can also help parents solve common child-entertainment worries. You could set the sound on a child’s TV to have a maximum volume level and even set a “Good Night” mode that will switch children’s electronic devices off automatically at bedtime.

Smart security

An obvious smart security feature would be to install a camera near your front door that you can access via a phone or tablet, but the possibilities don’t end there. You could set it up so the camera footage pops up on any TVs in the house too, you could also have a series of security cameras you can access from your phone anywhere in the world.

You can set up motion sensors that text you whilst you are out if they detect movement and you could also set a security breach programme which will turn on all light’s to 100% and open all the blinds to alert your neighbours.

Similarly you can also set up a “Mockupancy” mood that uses lighting to make it look like there are people in the house from outside. You can also set your doors to autolock once you leave the house, this could either be through sensors in the garage door or at the end of your driveway.

Everyday smart applications

Home automation isn’t just glitz and glam, it can also help you out with day to day problems. For example you could get text alerts for everyday things such as leaving the garage door open, a leaky pipe, for when the oven has finished pre-heating and for when you get post.

You could also be alerted when the kids get home from school, when someone opens the fridge or a cupboard and when there is motion in a specific room of the house.

Automated heating

For a touch of luxury you could pre-set times for a heated towel rack to come on when you know you have to get up for work and you can have your underfloor underfloor heating come on based on the temperature of the temperature outside. You can even isolate this to specific rooms like the bathroom or the kitchen.

Similarly, if you installed under-driveway heating you could program this to come on when the temperature reaches freezing to prevent snow or ice build-up.

Environment control

Home automation can help you control the feel and environment of your home. As an example with home automation software you could program your blinds to open and close based on the position of the sun. You could also set a “Wakeup” mood that gradually wakes you up by raising the blinds and sets the correct temperature to avoid those abrupt alarm clock wakeup calls.

You can set your heating to turn off and on based on your homes occupancy and you could control the fireplace from your phone, tablet or smart watch.

Energy-saving automation

Home automation could also help to save energy. For example, you can set up a system that monitors your energy uses and warns you if you’ve used too much gas or electricity. It could even map your homes carbon footprint.

If you had solar panels installed a similar system could also monitor how much energy they are producing.

These are just some of the applications possible with the installation of a home automation system but as technology grows and develops the possibilities could really be endless.

Find out more on our Home Automation Product Hub.