This is the era when everyone is leaning towards smart electronics. Mobile phones have been smart, computers have been smarter and there are new inventions and improvements to electronic devices and gadgets every day. Many people have already come to know of smart homes and many have already transformed their homes into smart homes. However, smart homes or automation of your home comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. So, if you are thinking of automating your home and make it a smart one, here are some of the major advantages and disadvantages or pros and cons of smart homes that you must take into consideration.
About Smart Homes Before you delve deep into the advantages and disadvantages of smart homes, you need to understand what the smart home is all about. Having a clear idea of home automation will be the first step towards taking a decision whether you want to transform your home’s system at all or not. To put it simply, smart homes are homes that have all the electronic devices and security systems controlled by the owner with the click of button, either using a mobile phone or any other device. From ventilation to heating, from security to air conditioning, everything will be in your control, at a distance of a button. You click a button and you can have the entire control of which decide would be working and which would stop working, right away. Sometimes, the smart homes also involve the usual home appliances like the cooking stoves, the refrigerators as well as the washing machines and dryers etc. How much control you want to take on these, depends on you and your budget. Of course, you can control the security of your home through a click.
How does it Work? When you install the smart home system into your home, all the electronic devices and appliances that you want to take control over, would be connected to a central hub called the “gateway”. It is this gateway that would now be controlled by a web interface like mobile phone software or something similar. Now that you have known about what the smart homes are, the pros and cons of smart homes must be known.
Advantages of Smart Homes The number of advantages of the smart homes is huge. This is the reason, why so many homes are being transformed into smart homes nowadays.
1. Easier to Lock and Unlock the Doors The security of your home is the most important aspect of any house. No matter how many locks you use for your house, the risk of burglars and thieves breaking into your house is always there. Then there is the additional catch or the fear of losing your keys. Mostly in case of those members of your family, who frequently lose their keys or forget to lock some of the important doors of your house, it is always a great idea to install the smart home security system. With this system, you will be able to take care of the security of your home. Even when you are not in home, you can lock the door of your house. If someone has reached your home and you haven’t reached yet, you can open the door for him or her and your friend of family member can wait inside.
2. Save Energy Energy saving is probably the primary concern for every house owner. With convenient appliances and so many electronic gadgets, the amount of energy consumption is greatly increased. Hence, you would always want to make sure that there is no amount of energy wastage. With the smart home system, you can ensure that there is no waste of energy. The machines, devices and appliances can all be managed and turned off immediately after usage, when you have a smart home system. Not just this, controlling the lighting of your house will be a lot easier. Since lighting wastes the maximum amount of energy, you can save a lot with the home system. This is a great advantage of this facility. If you are not in a room or have left a room thinking that you would come back and hence, kept the lights or fans turned on or if you simply forgot to turn the lights off, you can be benefit hugely with the smart home system. In the apartments in Kozhikode, you would often require the air-conditioners or the fans or the air coolers to be turned on. With the smart home system, you can turn them off when you are not using them.
3. Know About Maintenance and Service When your devices and appliances need servicing for maintaining its performance, must be known in advance. However, monitoring this is not always easy. In that case, you can rely on smart home system. This will notify you whenever you need to take care of the appliances and devices.
4. Customize as per your Convenience It is very convenient with the smart home systems to customize the appliances and devices in your home as per your needs. When you want to increase the temperature of your heating system or want to decrease the temperature in your air conditioner, or if you want to turn the water heater on before you reach home or want to turn off everything while lying in the bed, you can do them with just a click on your mobile phone.
5. Ease Along with all these facilities and benefits, another important advantage is the ease of using this. You can control all these things, without any trouble or difficulty. You can easily manage these things. Even if you are not a very tech savvy person, you will be able to understand how these things work very easily, with some following of the manuals.
5. It’s Smart Smart homes are the new and the in thing. If you want to upgrade yourself and your house according to the global standards, this is what you can do to your house.
6. Increase Property Value Having your house upgraded to a smart home will increase its property value all at once. If you resell your property, you are very likely to get a very highly increase return out of your investment.Know more on different ways to Increase Your Home Value.
Disadvantage of Smart Homes Now that you have known about the major benefits of smart homes, there are many disadvantages of smart homes as well. Just as disadvantages of home appliances, your smart home system also has some disadvantages. If you are wondering whether you should install the smart home system to your house, you would want to know about the disadvantages as well.
1. Cost The biggest problems, con or disadvantage of a smart home system is the cost. There are quite a number of companies that provide the smarty home system, but all of them are quite expensive. This is something that only a few can afford. You would be able to have a good savings and income to install this system.
2. Dependence on Internet The basic requirement for the smart home system is the internet. Without a good and strong internet connection, you will not be able to take control of this. If there is no internet connection for some reason, there is no other way through which you can access and control your system.
3. Dependence on Professionals In case there is a problem with the smart home system, you cannot simply call a handyman or someone similar to repair or manage the bug. You will have to depend on the professionals. Only the company professionals can help you to handle the problems. A professional would be able to take care of the disadvantages of home appliances.
Conclusion With all these pros and cons of smart homes, it will be may be difficult to decide whether you want to install this system in your home or not. Certainly this installation would help you to upgrade your house and increase Your home’s value. To investigate merits, perhaps ask people who have already had a smart system installed. Also research carefully potential vendors, since different companies offer different features. You will need to research your priorities and weight the downsides, before deciding.
For Further Reading Resources for further research into Smart Homes include: • “Advantages of Smart Homes – Disadvantages of Smart Homes”: https://www.rfwireless-world.com/Terminology/Advantages-and-Disadvantages-of-smart-home.html • “Smart Home: Advantages and disadvantages in an expert overview”: http://www.atsmartliving.com/smart-home-advantages-and-disadvantages-in-an-expert-overview/
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