Using nothing but the sound of your voice, you can enjoy the benefits of a smart home! But why make your home a smart home?
There is little doubt that having a fully connected home is the future of home safety, entertainment, and real-time information. Additionally, many home insurers are providing significant discounts for having a connected smart home. Other companies may also provide financial incentives for having a smart home.
In general, having a connected home gives you control over almost every aspect of how your house operates. A fully set up smart home provides benefits in safety, accessibility management, efficiency, savings in energy and upkeep dollars. You’ll also enjoy increased entertainment pleasure with real-time information like news and weather, and personal organizational tools. All with integration to your smartphone or tablet.
The following list shows some of the benefits.
- Access information from the internet from anywhere in your home without a smartphone or tablet.
- Remotely control your lights, appliances, and check up on family members in the blink of an eye.
- Centralize functionality– buy fewer devices like cable boxes, satellite receivers and VCRs, and cut costs on access to certain telecommunications services.
- Save money on energy efficiency.
At this point, you are probably seeing dollar signs, and that’s true enough. But, if you start slowly and purchase add-ons as you go, you can make improvements with little financial pain, and long-term financial gain.
Wondering how to begin setting up your smart home without taking a big bite out of your budget?
- Dip your toes in the water before jumping all the way in. The Amazon Echo and Google Home products are good, fun places to start.
- First, utilizing Wi-Fi and the cloud, both smart home products provide voice-controlled commands, and include in-house and third-party services. Some in-house services you’ll enjoy are music playback, streaming shows and podcasts, calendars, to-do lists, alarms, real-time weather, and news.
- Second, when you’re ready to dive in, turn your house into the smart home of your dreams by tapping into the third-party services available. You’ll find compatibility with such products as Nest, Philips Hue, SmartThings, and Belkin Wemo, among others.
Finally, transitioning to a smart home over time can help ease the initial outlay. Then, you and your home will be on the forefront of technological innovation. Also, Amazon and Google provide smaller versions of their voice-controlled personal assistants. Price points vary from $50 to $130 before tax.