Educate Your House With This Smart Home Tech
Design trends come and go but functionality is always in style. Well-chosen smart home functionality also adds intrinsic value to your home.
Unless you’re one of those folks who’s always getting the latest tech, you’ve probably wondered if it makes sense to invest resources in making your house smart. Sure, smart home devices can save time and money by making your life convenient and your home efficient, but doesn’t tech get outdated at warp speed these days, leaving you with obsolete pieces of equipment quasi-permanently attached to your house? Not necessarily!
The very nature of technology demands innovation, but there’s a key difference between tech of the past and tech of the moment, and that’s wireless…ness (thank you, Hedy Lamarr). Many smart home devices don’t break the bank and require minimal installation, so when technology takes another step forward, you can always upgrade without leaving behind dangling wires or unsightly holes. Let’s dig in.
Smart Doorbell
This device alerts your phone and turns on the camera when someone approaches your door. You can also adjust the settings to see your yard and sidewalk, giving you more time to come up with a smooth line to drop when they get to your front door: “Go ahead, make my day.”
Deliveries always happen as soon as you leave the house, am I right? With one of these, you can ask the Amazon guy to hide your package in the bushes in real time.
You can see the kids coming and going while you’re at work or out to dinner—knowing your kids won’t open the door to a stranger is some real peace of mind.
Smart Locks
Ever spent time wondering if you locked the house before you left? Or stood at your door with your arms full of groceries, trying to get to your keys? Or spent 15 minutes looking for your keys when it’s time to leave a party? That’s all over. Keys are cancelled.
With this device, you can lock or unlock your door with voice or phone. You can even program it to unlock the doors when you’re within a certain range of home. You can give virtual keys to your mother-in-law, the dog sitter or the Amazon guy, and put a limit on how long they’ll work. Smart locks provide peace of mind, convenience, flexibility and coolness.
Smart Mirror
A smart mirror can turn itself on, display information and even perform jobs.
How about a bathroom mirror that displays time, traffic, weather, news, how your stocks are doing and reminders of upcoming appointments? It can control other smart devices in your house too, as well as order you some moisturizer if you’re getting low. Talk to me when it’ll pour me a cup of coffee.
Some common smart mirror features are LED lighting, motion sensors, touchscreen, voice control and facial recognition. The mirror can actually detect who is in the room and customize the content it displays to match each person.
Smart Blinds
Ever wished you could open the blinds to let that bright morning light stream into your room before you get out of bed? Nah, me neither. But now you can!
Adjusting your blinds throughout the day controls the amount of light and heat coming into your house (take that, electricity bill), and it’s especially nice when you travel and want to give the appearance of being home.
Alexa, open the blinds. Siri, close the blinds. Without lifting a finger, you can get your preferred device to adjust your blinds on a preset schedule or by voice command. They come in a slew of styles, including the blackout kind.
Smart Generator
According to Energy Professionals, power outages are on the rise. The number of outages from bad weather has more than doubled in the last 15 years, and aging infrastructure isn’t helping. Generators are having a moment.
Smart generators look like an AC unit and run on propane or natural gas—no refueling every few hours. They kick on automatically when the power goes off and can also be operated from your phone.
Tesla has a super cool one called Powerwall. It stores energy from the grid or the sun, then uses that energy to run your house anytime you want.
Christy Rosen Clement is a Pricing Strategy Advisor®, Seller Representative Specialist®, Military Relocation Professional® and REALTOR® at Palermo Real Estate Professionals in South Tampa
