We’ve had a smart home for many years and continue to optimize it. It has truly changed our lives and simplified so many areas. These are some of the automations which we use regularly. 

Goodnight Automation

This one is truly a favorite. Each night (if we are home) we don’t have to worry about locking doors, arming the security alarm, turning off lights, adjusting heating and cooling, etc. All we have to do is say “Goodnight” to one of our smart speaker devices and all of that is done for us by our smart home. Or, if we forget to do that, it does it automatically at the scheduled time. Not only that, it will pause and save our spot in what we were watching on TV AND it turns on our bedroom lights and hallway lights so we can make our way safely and easily. After 10 minutes when we are usually in bed ready to sleep the lights all turn off automatically, but we can always just ask the Google Assistant device in our room to do that earlier if desired.

Arrive Home

Our smart home is integrated with all of our family mobile phones and automobiles. It knows if anyone is at home by the location of those devices as well as all of the other motion and occupancy sensors in the house. The latter is key because it covers scenarios where we have guests or house sitters and we want our automations to still work properly. So, if we are arriving home our smart home automatically does all the things we need to make our lives easier and more streamlined. The outside lights turn up (or on) (if after sunset/before sunrise), the security alarm is disabled, the garage door opens specific to each car, the inside lights turn on as well.

Leave Home

This home automation is basically the opposite of Arrive Home. If the last person leaves then our smart home automatically locks the door locks, arms the security alarm, turns off any interior lights or TV’s which were on, and closes the garage doors. It is SO NICE to just leave and not worry about these things. It also gives peace of mind and saves time and energy!

Good Morning

We manage our alarm clock in our calendar. It is so much better than using a dedicated device or even a phone for this purpose! We set a schedule and then ignore holidays or days off, etc. Not only that, our alarms gently turn on the lights in the room as a sunrise effect (if before sunrise) and plays an audible wake up message on the smart speaker. We can even do a snooze function. When we get up we don’t have to wander around in the dark, the lights are on (at the level we prefer) so everything is much easier.

Home Security and Monitoring

We have many smart cameras at our home. These allow us to monitor our home while away and deter potential crime. We don’t like to pay monthly fees to the camera companies and we also don’t like a disjointed experience. So our home automation camera system is not dependent on any Cloud service, it runs locally. We have automations set up for motion detection on each camera which then uses AI to do person detection. Although not perfect, this drastically reduces false alarms and excessive notifications. In other words, if our system sends our phones a notification its very likely because a person is at the door. We also use the latest Generative AI technology to evaluate the captured image of the person on the property and send a short description e.g. “A man in a brown jacket holding a package is walking to your front door”.

In addition to cameras our EffortlessHome has door and window sensors hooked to a security alarm, water sensors in strategic locations which will notify and turn off the water supply on triggering. Also, our smoke detectors and CO2 dectectors are smart and notify us of any alarms no matter where we are in the world.

Summary

Well, that’s it for this article. I hope you can also see the value of this type of system and it inspires you to learn more and explore these exciting technologies or reach out to us here at EffortlessHome.