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How To Use Your Smartphone to Manage Your Home Automation System and Improve Efficiency

I’ve been in the industry for quite a while. Diy homes are big business here and many of our clients have come to us after they gave up on trying to do it themselves. That was years ago, however, and I think it's fair to say that these days DIY just hasn’t cut it.

A smart home is a home that has smart devices, which control the management and monitoring of home appliances. The smart home can be controlled by remote control systems or mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Smart homes offer many benefits to users including ways to save energy, automate common household tasks like lighting and climate control settings based on occupancy levels.

A home automation system consists of a central hub, an intelligent device (such as a light bulb or thermostat) and smart home devices that are used to control these smart devices.

The main advantage is saving energy by turning off unused lights and appliances at night while you’re asleep or when they aren’t in use. The second important benefit can be applied with climate control settings as well, it allows the user to adjust temperatures for specific times of the day. Smart home applications can also be used to adjust the temperature according to openings and closings of windows, doors and ventilation systems.

Below are a Few Useful Tips for Your Smart Home System

Control Several Devices with One Phone App - If you have more than one device that needs controlling such as lights, a door sensor or thermostat then there’s no point having several apps for these. Instead, why not just have a single smart home control app that can handle multiple applications? Some popular examples are IFTTT (If This Then That), the Wink Hub and SmartThings.

Always Set Your Phone Home to Automate App Launching - If you forget about this step then your smartphone may think it's still in mobile mode when it’s actually connected as an internet router with Wi-Fi turned on. This will result in not being able to connect and “forgetting” smart home devices that you have set up with the app from your phone.

Keep Smart Home Devices Up To Date - It is recommended to always update all of your smart home equipment especially as new apps (such as voice assistants or game controllers), operating systems, firmware and even plug designs are released occasionally by both manufacturers and service providers. If a smart home device isn’t connected to your network or is out of date then it may not perform correctly.

Keep Controller Apps Up To Date - Make sure you update the app when a new version comes along and if possible, upgrade all compatible devices at once so they can be on the same operating system as their controller application. As game controllers are often updated separately from other apps such as smartphones, choosing which type of controller you want to keep on the latest firmware then ensuring that the controller app is also up-to-date makes things easier. Some controllers may have firmware updates that are entirely different from the smartphone app and in these cases, even if you update the controller it's possible that your device will not be compatible with that one.

Make Sure Your Controllers, Wherever You Use Them - There’s nothing more frustrating than being away from home or having a family member forget they left their controller at work then voicemail doesn't recognize its smart or running poorly because they left their phone in the car. This is one of those things that only smart owners can deal with! However you should always check to make sure your controller is working whether it be on an old Android or iOS device, Play Store games console, through a Bluetooth connection and/or Wi-Fi connection.

Keep Expansion Input Open - If you're running apps such as Dice Roller which support expandable controllers then they will show up as an open input. Make sure this is set and unlocked in the app before assuming it's working properly as if on some devices it will still show 0 - nothing connected even when you try to add a controller from your phone or tablet. This also affects Dice Roller for many other games plus certain mobile devices that include expandable controllers including smartphones, tablets, portable game consoles and more featuring QWERTY keyboards like the BlackBerry Priv or HTC First M9+ It was happening before with Dice Roller but I'm glad they have finally actually fixed it.

Don't Unpair - Yes there may be times that you need to prop your device up on its side or simply not use some controllers because of situations so if an app stops working properly after using for a while and then failing perhaps something is wrong with the link between the controller and phone/tablet.

Conclusion

As the number of connected devices grows, the potential for security and privacy threats will increase. Home automation solution that helps you to keep your home safe and secure while also providing you with peace of mind. Do you have any plans to automate your home? What are some of the challenges or concerns that you have regarding your home automation system? Please leave your reply in the comment section below. My sincere thanks go out to all the bloggers who assist me in the production of this blog. I'm one among many other content and video creators so any support you can give back is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!