Your typical Ancient Egyptian crash pad was not what you’d call a smart home. To get comfortable you sat on an oblong slab of mud and straw. For security, you slept with a dagger under your pillow and for entertainment, well … you looked out the window.
We’ve come a long way. A smart home is a simple idea with endless applications and possibilities. At heart, it’s a home where a computer helps you manage everything you need to feel comfortable, entertained and secure. We’ve been imagining smart homes since the Jetsons but these days the idea is far from science fiction. All kinds of technologies are available to integrate smart technology into your home and they’re surprisingly inexpensive.
The real issue is knowing what’s out there and deciding how to implement it. This is where Nerds On Call can help. We offer a smart home consultation where we’ll sit down with you and walk you through all the ways you can transform your home life from Ancient Egyptian to The Jetsons. To get started, just call us at 1-800-919-6373 or fill out our contact form.
This article will give you a quick overview of some of the amazing smart home options that are available and some information about how we can help make it a reality.
What exactly is a smart home?
Getting comfortable
The obvious feature to describe here is a smart thermostat. Your typical nonsmart home (sounds more polite than saying a dumb home) has a keypad on the wall controlling temperature. If you get too hot or cold you have to get up, mess with the thing and repeat until comfortable. It often becomes a horrible game of hot and cold if you have multiple climate control zones in your house.
A smart home turns this on its head. With a smart home, your thermostat learns you rather than you learning it! Zones talk to each other too, so you’re not constantly dealing with dueling climate control systems. The upshot is not only that you can be a lot more comfortable. You can also save serious money on your climate bill.
Lighting is another great option to look at. Right now your nonsmart home will have light globes. The sum total of your typical configuration options will be on and … wait for it … off. If you’re lucky you may have a manual dial to mess with dimming. The controller (of course) will be you or your family members, doomed to stumbling about in the dark to find that annoying little switchy thing.
Imagine voice or smartphone activated lighting. Better yet, imagine walking into your front door with that special someone and instructing your house to activate mood lighting. Instantly the room is suffused with a gentle orange glow (and if you have music set up, the alluring music of Star Wars gently begins, but that’s another story). With smart home controlled lighting, the possibilities are endless with thousands of colors and dimming levels configurable via any interface you like, from your smartphone to Alexa. You can even switch your lights on before you get home, via an app.
Are you not entertained?
Smart homes are also fantastic for coordinating your entertainment options and making them easier to access. Let’s assume you’re like the typical household and have a few entertainment technologies installed in your house. Maybe you have an Amazon Fire unit, a DVD player, Internet and a HiFi system. In a home not set up with smart technology, that’s going to mean two things: firstly, you’ll have cables and boxes everywhere. Secondly, you’ll probably have more remotes on your coffee table than you can poke a stick at!
Smart homes can sync all of that for you so that you can manage them all from one control device. You can also benefit from all those cables and fussy boxes being managed far more efficiently. It’s not just about efficiency though. Imagine music playing throughout your entire house with no annoying lag. Smart homes can make that happen deliciously easily. While there are all kinds of smart music technology, we love the Sonos ecosystem of speakers. These units operate over WiFi and are designed to communicate with one another seamlessly, creating that perfect music experience.
While we’re talking about technology, if you find yourself completely overwhelmed by the sheer variety of music and home cinema entertainment technology available, call us at 1-800-919-6373! We can offer you an impartial nerdish perspective on what will work best for you.
Staying safe
Yes, smart homes are cool and offer amazing ways to keep yourself comfortably entertained. But they’re also great for home security. Take smart locks as the perfect example. These amazing devices allow you to connect door locks throughout your home with a completely secure interface you can access from your smartphone. They offer a safe and versatile way to control who can access your home.
Out of town and having a pet sitter come over to look after your pet iguana? No problem! Just set them up with temporary guest access. Want a phone notification any time someone enters or leaves your house? This is also no issue. Smart locks are a fantastic way to have peace of mind when you’re away from home.
Security cameras are also greatly improved with smart technology. Whereas a typical security camera system simply records everything that happens, a smart home applies a layer of intelligence to camera surveillance. For example, you can have a system set up which notifies you any time there’s movement in your yard or inside your home. Nest cam is one great product which has motion sensors you can configure at any level of sensitivity. Worried your pet iguana is getting up to all kinds of shenanigans while you’re away? Fear not! Smart home security cameras are also great for keeping tabs on pets.
How a Nerds On Call smart home consultation works
We come to your home
First of all (and this is really important), we will actually come to your home! It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable a home technology salesperson is, if they don’t come to your home and look at its layout, they’re not going to be able to give you good advice.
We’ll work within your budget
While it might be cool in theory to install every possible smart technology, the reality is that most of us have budgets! It’s actually possible to get smart functionality into your home on a small budget, but what you’ll need for that to happen is good advice, not a hard sell. We can help with that. We’ll talk you through pricing and options and we can figure out an affordable, gradual incorporation of smart tech if that’s what you need.
We’ll install it for you!
It’s all very well getting the technology, but at some point, it’s going to need to be carefully installed. We’ve done lots of smart home installations and we know how to do it safely, reliably and with minimal disruption to your home life. We’ll make the process easy for you.
Smart home technology is amazing. If you want a home that actively works to keep you comfortable, entertained and safe we can nerd that into existence for you! You can call us at 1-800-919-6373 or fill out our contact form and we’ll be ready to help.
