Welcome to the Future. Youve probably heard of the Nest thermostat that learns your habits so it can intelligently manage your home temperature. Perhaps youve seen commercials with people asking Alexa, whats the weather forecast or Alexa, search for plumbers in my area. Nest and Alexa are part of the growing Internet of Things or IoT, which is a broad term encompassing various devices that can connect to the internet and/or each other. CRT Labs predicts that by 2020 there will be between 26 and 200 billion IoT devices in use.
One of the best features of these smart home device is the scale of use. You can jump in with both feet or wade in slowly. To dip a toe in the IoT waters, install a smart thermostat to save money and energy. That may take only 15-30 minutes. For a slow wade, maybe you own a second home several hours away and want to keep an eye on things. You can install a smart camera and have it notify you if the motion sensor activates and a smart smoke and CO2 detector to contact you and the fire department if it senses anything amiss. For guests; install smart locks and issue a temporary code for the duration of their stay. You can even lock and unlock the door from any internet-connected device.
To dive off the diving board into IoT, you can install all the items above, plus smart light bulbs, outlets, a voice controlled hub, speaker system, smart toaster oven, tea kettle, and coffee pot, among others. At night, just say Im going to bed, set wake up time for 6 AM. The smart hub turns off your lights, turns down the thermostat, locks the doors, and turns off all your smart outlets and devices. In the morning, it turns your lights on gradually to ease you awake, some light music as an alarm, the toaster oven to warm your scones, puts on coffee for your partner, and hot water for your tea, all before your feet hit the floor.
Sounds great, right? But is a smart house for you? Tune in next week for a weigh-in on the pros and cons. Future blog posts discuss hub choices and other connectible IoT devices.
*Image from Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/juliette-kayyem/can-...
#smarthometechnology #iottrends #christinemccarronrealtor #bostonreguru
