Key Smart Home Trends to Know About Now

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What do smart homes look like in 2017? The experts at Clipsal guide us through the emerging smart home automation trends, including voice activation, push technology and state-of-the-art security to help us keep one step ahead.

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1. Using Your Voice

Imagine being able to return from work to a home that’s perfectly lit, is at the ideal temperature and is even playing your favourite music – well, this is all possible today and can be integrated with voice-activated technology. “When products like Amazon Alexa and Google Home are paired with an integrated all-in-one solution like Push Controls, the options are truly endless,” says Ben Green, smart home expert and director of SmartSpace. Come in the door and simply say, “Tell house I have arrived,” and your voice activated system will create an entire scene or atmosphere.

It’s already possible to control all the functions in your home from a tablet or smartphone with a Push system, which allows you to switch lights on and off, dim them, regulate heating or work your audiovisual equipment with the press of a button. Voice-activated controls take this a step further, enabling you to make your home work with simple, voice instructions. This is great news for everyone who likes to keep life simple, and could be life-changing for those with a disability and who need some assistance in order to live independently.

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2. Customisation to Create a Dream Home

Our future homes will not only reflect our personalities through design, they’ll also do it through technology. By customising your lighting, heating, cooling and security for example, you can create a house that’s perfectly in tune with your needs. With an integrated system you can connect all your home’s devices such as dimmers, plugs and sensors so they’re merged into one platform and can be customised and automated to create your dream smart home. For example, by choosing a smart blind, you can open and close it from wherever you are in the world, while sensors will enable it to close automatically when there is too much glare coming through the window. Combine this with your lighting and at the touch of a button you’ll be able to create an illuminated, yet secluded home in the evening with closed blinds and lamps on.

The key to including this type of technology in your home is to decide on the level of customisation you want, and what will fit into your budget – you can automate one area at a time and gradually build up how much of your home is customised. And don’t worry if you’re not incorporating it in a full-scale renovation project, as there are wireless solutions available that allow you to automate your home, one switch at a time.

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3. Increased Control of Energy Consumption

It’s no secret that the cost of energy is rising, and with that comes the need to save money by being more energy efficient. It makes sense to have an app to help you. New applications enable you to monitor your home’s energy usage from wherever you are – you can see who is using the most energy in the household, and set a targets to make sure you don’t use too much. Your device will even send you notifications when you go over your target, and will alert you if you unexpectedly lose power.

To make things even more energy efficient, integration will be the key. For example, by connecting the heating-cooling system to other features and installing sensors you can enable all aspects of the room to work according to temperature, including the blinds, radiators and air conditioning.

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4. Protect What Matters to You

We all want to feel safe and secure and smart technology makes this even easier. Green says, “Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen significant growth in the demand for intelligent home security systems with devices such as the smart doorbell, alarms and other motion sensored cameras becoming commonplace in the market.” Now, security devices are becoming ever more clever, incorporating biometric technology to identify faces, voices and fingerprints – and of course you can customise and automate your security systems remotely with Push and Nero technology.

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Which of these smart home technologies do you think you’ll be incorporating in your own home? Share your thoughts in the Comments section.

This story was written by the Sponsored Content Team