How To Automate a Living Room

How To Automate a Living Room

Assembling a smart home may be a challenging task. You can either buy a set of smart home systems that can be easily interconnected, or get lost trying to integrate devices that speak different protocols, send data in different formats, and in average can’t interconnect for a proper synergy.

Picking the second choice is also a case, despite its complexity. You can turn to custom IoT software development services to create a custom gateway that will receive data from all the different devices, transform it into a common format, and send the result to a joint server. This is a challenge, but the one that can be won – developing a custom solution for a centralized smart devices management is a solvable task for seasoned developers.

But if you want to start from something simpler, a set of devices that are friendly to each other and a user is a solution. In this article, I will review a basic set of smart devices that will help you automate the heart of your home, the living room, all by yourself.

Management hub

Amazon Echo Plus is the heart of your smart home. This smart assistant is a core automation device that will help you manage smart appliances from one hub. You can either preset all the activities you need your devices to do on a daily basis, or manage them via voice commands. Its intelligent “personality” Alexa is learning to understand more commands and now can already operate a significant amount of smart devices. As a standalone device Echo can play music, read news for you, remind you about important appointments, and more.

Connected lights

Philips remains at the forefront of smart lighting technology with it’s Hue products.A starter lighting kit consists of bulbs and a bridge that connects to your router. If you have Amazon Echo, then it will work as a bridge. You can choose from white bulbs and ones that have millions of colors. Turn off the lights from your smartphone if you forgot to, set a schedule for Hue to turn on a gentle light to simulate sunlight and wake up more naturally.

Safety devices

Nest Protect Smoke and CO Alarm boasts sleek design and will be barely noticeable on your ceiling. This smart sensor can tell smoke from steam and alerts you with a spoken warning instead of unpleasant sounds. It also alerts all the connected phones when there is smoke or too much CO and when the battery is low on energy. In addition, there is a sensor inside that will track your movement and turn on the light at night.

Automated temperature control

Nest Learning Thermostat saves money on future heating bills by adjusting temperatures to your daily schedule and personal preferences. Nest has an app for smartphones that tracks when you leave home, when you return from work, what appointments you have during this week outside the home. Nest is also connected to the “world” – if the temperature drops unexpectedly in the middle of an always warm season, the thermostat will adapt to this.

Security with IoT

August Smart Lock is attached to the deadbolt of your door on the inside – the installation is very simple. Pair the lock with your smartphone via Bluetooth and connect it to your Echo – now you are ready to control it remotely. August allows you to enter your home without keys, track activity at your door, make one-time virtual keys for guests.

To sum up, the option described above is a good solution if it caters your need – to automate a living room on your own. Whether you need a simple still rich smart home system, the one with Amazon Echo or any other compatible hub is a perfect fit. You can install and adjust the whole system by yourself.

But if you have a bunch of smart hardware from different producers that do not connect with each other easily, you need a custom smart home solution. It will integrate all the smart appliances with each other, and  provide gateways that will receive, process, and send the data to one server. For centralized and handy remote control you will need a custom mobile app too.