In today’s fast-paced digital world, homeowners are transforming their homes with smart technology to automate their everyday lives. Home automation can offer convenience, comfort and greater efficiency that can enhance your home living experience. Automation can feasibly be added to just about any part of your home. From controlling your TV with voice activation, to automatic bathroom fresheners and motion-activated lighting. Read on to discover some of our ideas for how you can transform your home automation.
Home Automation Ideas
Home Automation Ideas
What is Home Automation?
Home automation is the use of advanced technology to remotely control or automatically carry out various household tasks. Automation has transformed the way we live in our homes, by allowing technology to control our everyday systems and appliances with minimal human interaction.
Your lighting fixtures, home entertainment system or security and power are just some of the household functions that can be automated. This can benefit homeowners with greater convenience, security and energy efficiency, making even the most straightforward tasks easier.
Home Automation Ideas
Home automation can feasibly be incorporated into almost every part of your home, it would be impossible to list every option available. However, to give you an understanding of some of the automations you could feasibly install, read on to discover some exciting ideas:
Smart Safety Automation
Smart locks
Automation can be a great way to increase your home security level. Smart locks are a convenient alternative to traditional keys, with locks that can be operated remotely from your smartphone, fingertips, or even through voice-activated assistants. This can allow you to unlock or lock your door at any time, and receive notifications about any unusual activity.
Home surveillance cameras
Installing cameras around your home entry points and doorways can give you extra security in knowing who exactly is entering your home. Whenever your surveillance camera detects movement, it can send you an alert remotely via your smartphone. This can be particularly useful for those who want to keep track of their children or other loved ones while they are away.
Entry sensors
Sensors placed on your entry points can allow you to detect any unauthorised entry. Your sensors may also be directly paired with your smart locks, so when an unwanted entry is detected, it can trigger your doors to automatically lock.
Intercom/doorbell security system
For comprehensive protection, you can install a home security unit with built-in intercoms and doorbells. A video doorbell can allow you to see and speak with anyone at your front door. This can be paired with a smart intercom system, in which you can grant or deny access to any visitors. With smart technology, this can all be done remotely with your smartphone, whether you’re at home or not. These security systems can also be integrated with your existing smart locks and entry sensors, for extra protection.
Smart Lighting Automation
Motion sensors to illuminate lighting
You can install lights with motion sensors that automatically turn on when they detect movement, such as someone entering a room. They can also automatically switch off if the room is vacant for a specific period of time to conserve energy that would otherwise be wasted. This can be a smart installation for hallways and stairs, to create a safer passageway.
Connect and program the lights
Programming your lights to behave differently depending upon their location in your home can be a valuable automation. You can choose when the lights are on and how much light to shine, depending on your own preferences. For instance, you could set the brightness within the bathroom to be just enough for someone to use the toilet overnight.
Automatic lighting within the kitchen
A more advanced lighting system can be linked to a sensor beneath your kitchen counter, such as an accelerometer or piezo sensor. When these sensors detect a vibration, such as when you start to make food or clean, it can be programmed to turn on your overhead lights for greater convenience.
Kitchen lighting changes colour when a leak is detected
An example of how you can combine automatic lighting with other technology is by pairing it with your smart leak detector. When these devices detect a potential leak, they can alter the colour of your lighting. For example, you could design this within your kitchen, so whenever there’s a leakage, your lights turn blue as a visual alert.
Smart Cleaning Automation
Automatic robot vacuum
Make cleaning easier by adding a robot vacuum cleaner to your setup that uses sensors to swiftly navigate your home with minimal human interaction. When connected to your smart devices, you can set these devices up to only work at specific times of the day, such as in the morning after you leave for work. You can also pair it up with your chosen voice assistants, so you can control them with just a simple voice command.
Automatic bathroom air freshener
To keep your home spaces smelling fresh, consider adding an automatic air freshener. These devices are designed to release fragrances at regular intervals, such as every 30 minutes. More advanced devices may also use sensors to detect motion, ensuring that a fragrance is only released when the area is being used. These are a great alternative to manually spraying, and can be placed in your living room, kitchen or bathroom.
Smart Thermostat Automation
Enable remote temperature control
Modern thermostats can be linked to your smartphone apps or voice-activated assistants to allow you to control your temperature remotely. This means you can effectively change your temperature, or turn on your system whenever you want, which could be great when you want to arrive home to a cool temperature.
Set up temperature schedules
You can program your thermostat to automatically adjust its temperature depending on the time of day. This can allow you to program your thermostat to turn off when you leave home, and to automatically turn on when you return to ensure you are always enjoying a comfortable temperature while saving on your energy bills. These can be automated to match your daily work and school routines, or your regular weekend activities.
Integrate with weather data
Homeowners can link their thermostat to online weather services. This means it can automatically adjust the inside temperature depending upon the weather outside, such as increasing warmth during the winter months. It can also be programmed to turn off automatically when the weather outside is pleasant, to avoid using needless amounts of energy.
Smart heat pumps
A practical and cost-effective home automation is connecting your smartphone directly to your heat pump and hot water service. This allows you to control when your heat pump operates, helping you prioritise off-peak electricity periods when energy rates are low. Over time, this can make a significant difference to your energy bills.
This technology can be particularly beneficial for Victorians, with the recent Victorian Midday Power Saver giving homeowners three hours of free electricity in the middle of the day. By programming your heat pump to run during these hours with smart technology, you can ensure your energy bills stay low.
Automated Water Systems
Sensor taps
A simple and easy automation that can quickly save you time is adding an infrared sensor to the front of your tap that can detect your hands and start flowing water. These sensors are usually designed to detect only within the handwashing area, so once you remove your hands, the water switches off. This can be a great way to avoid touching the tap when cooking, particularly if you’re handling certain foods like raw meat.
Program your sprinkler system
A popular backyard automation, homeowners can program their sprinkler systems to only spray at certain times. This has been around for years, with more recent developments incorporating in-ground sensors. This lets your sprinklers know exactly how much your grass has been saturated and whether it needs to increase or decrease its schedule. It can also be smartly linked to weather systems, meaning it can disable itself on a day in which it’s already rained considerably.
Leak detection
Automation is not just designed for convenience; it can keep parts of your home safe from any issues. An example of this is an automatic water leak detection system, which uses sensors to keep track of water flow and immediately shuts off when a leak is detected. This gives you peace of mind that devices within your home are actively protecting you from costly damage without any human input.
Smart Entertainment
Use voice-activated AI
Your smart TV or streaming service can be connected to a voice-activated assistant for hands-free entertainment. Using voice commands, you could ask your assistant to pause your tv show, suggest a movie to watch, or switch to your favourite channel. This can also be especially useful when you accidentally lose your TV remote.
Create the perfect movie setting with automatic presets
Enjoying your favourite movie or TV show is all about immersion, with a living room setup that creates the perfect level of ambience. Using automated technology, you may apply presets for lighting, blinds and curtains or even your sound system. This means when it’s time to watch a film, your lights could dim, your blinds and curtains close, and your sound system automatically turns on, for the perfect viewing experience.
Have the channel automatically change at a certain time
We all have our favourite shows or channels. Luckily, modern entertainment systems and smart TVs allow you to schedule reminders or automatically change channels, so you never miss out on your favourite content.
TV welcome home
What better way to enter your home than being greeted by your favourite channel or TV show. Using home automation, you can feasibly link your TV to the rest of your smart home system, so when it detects you entering, your TV automatically switches on.
Voice Assistant Automations
Voice assistants
At the centre of modern home automation are voice-activated assistants. There are a variety of different options that can be utilised, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or even Apple’s Siri.
As we’ve previously mentioned, they can be useful to all parts of your home automation. By simply giving a voice command, they can manage your home lighting system, thermostat or entertainment areas. Their hands-free operation is also incredibly convenient and accessible. For example, you could say “Alexa, good morning,” and this could trigger a sequence that kick-starts your entire routine, with lights turned on and blinds opened.
Many of these assistants aren’t perfect, with some homeowners reporting frustrations when they are misunderstood or not heard correctly. However, they are constantly being improved with cutting-edge technology, allowing them to take on new responsibilities and offer more benefits to everyday homeowners.
Smart Blinds & Curtains Automation
Program them to open and close at specific times
For the ultimate convenience, you can even automate your blinds and curtains. This can help you better manage your home temperature and lighting, with just a tap of a button. Depending on your style, automatic blinds and curtains are usually powered by an electric motor to open and close.
You can link these automations to an app or your voice assistant, so when it comes time to start a movie, you can create the proper ambience without ever leaving your couch. Like some of our other home automation ideas, your smart blinds can also be programmed to open and close at set times in the day. For instance, you may prefer to keep them closed during the day to protect your home from the sun.
These are just some of the many automation ideas you could add to your home. These can upgrade your property’s security, while offering greater convenience in cleaning, lighting, and entertainment.
