The smart home inspiration series – Convenience

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Smart living is all about convenience, about taking mundane everyday tasks and making them more intuitive, automated and easier to manage in a time-poor world. And each year we see products unveiled aimed specifically at accommodating this need for Smart home Convenience.

From fridges that offer you meal advice to ovens that switch on as you leave work, in this edition of the Smart Home Inspiration series we look at how smart home technology takes the effort out of everyday chores.

Convenience in the kitchen

This year the Consumer Electronics Show highlighted how central the kitchen is in the smart home realm.

New products like fridges that keep track of use-by dates and make suggestions about meals based on available ingredients were among the latest line-up of offerings available.

These products aren’t about convenience in isolation, however. The true art of the Smart home Convenience is having items work together based on an ecosystem that automates daily tasks.

That means the smart kitchen can:

  • Encompass fridges that offer meals suggestions and shopping lists
  • Have appliances communicate (i.e. the fridge tells the oven to warm to 180 degrees for that lasagne its suggested).
  • Offer easy access to recipes and shopping via wireless internet
  • Use cameras and sensors to alert you when an item is cooked
  • Allow you to monitor food cooking via apps on your smartphone
  • Turn on and off appliances remotely
  • Monitor safety in the kitchen (i.e. a pot boils over and kitchen sensors alert you to the danger, integrating with further features like ventilation, appliance shutoff and smoke alarms to mitigate risk.
  • Program your coffee maker to automatically come on as part of a morning scene or tell your oven to pre-warm as part of your coming home routine.

Convenience in the laundry

The laundry is often a hub of any home, where the daily tasks are ongoing, and traditionally the effort is considerable. Not in the smart home.

The smart laundry can:

  • Incorporate products that run at the most energy efficient times
  • Allow washers and dryers to be activated or paused remotely via smartphone
  • Enable notifications about your laundry cycle to be automatically sent to your phone
  • Enable users to keep laundry fresh and wrinkle free after a wash cycle has finished
  • Remotely monitor the energy consumption of laundry appliances

Convenience in the garden

In many ways, the garden was one of the first frontiers of the smart home courtesy of the evolution of automated irrigation and lighting. That trend continues but in a much more advanced manner today.

The smart garden can:

  • Use sensors to monitor conditions of plants and grass
  • Automatically activate watering systems dependent on the weather and conditions.
  • Operate on an automated daily schedule
  • Send push notifications when an area needs attention
  • Keep track of the temperature and weather
  • Encompass robot lawn mowers
  • Include automated garden lighting that can be altered for ambience or security
  • Create scenes where awnings, lights and sprinkler systems work together to achieve a feel or task

A part of an ecosystem

Many of these features work well in isolation but it’s when they come together that the true value of the smart home is revealed. Imagine being able kick start your evening cooking routine from afar, with knowledge of what you need from the shops, the ingredients you already have and the oven pre-warmed to assist.

Imagine the water savings available from only having your sprinkler system turn on when conditions require it? Imagine it would shut down as you approached the house to save you getting wet, or that your garden could transform into a fairy-lit wonderland, complete with music at the push of a smart phone button or via voice command.

All these possibilities are available right now courtesy of the smart home, but it takes an effective ecosystem for these smart products to effortlessly interact.

About Lera

Lera Smart Home Solutions is a leading installer of smart home technology in the greater Sydney region. Our team boasts over 20 years’ experience in IT networking, programming and the electrical industry.

We have sourced the most reliable and cost efficient solutions from around the world to provide the very best in smart home solutions, and work with our clients to understand their needs.

You can learn more about transforming your house into a smart home here, or contact us directly for further advice.

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