Functions you can do with a smart home system

Let’s look at some things a smart home system can do.

Lighting: Lighting is the most important and most used electrical thing in your home. Now, our lifestyle is such that we spend most of our time at home in the evenings. Because there is not enough natural light in the room, we replace it with artificial light. 

In some rooms at home, it is recommended to use lighting with the possibility of dimming or even changing the lighting temperature (light color).

Such rooms are not just living rooms and bedrooms where you would like to achieve different light scenes but can also be a hallway between the bedroom and bathroom or children's room.

Think about having to visit the toilet at night. In order not to injure yourself or break something, or by accident, step on that sharp toy that your baby forgot in the middle of the hallway; it's a good idea to light up your path. To avoid being blinded by too much light, it is more pleasant if the light in the hallway shines with reduced intensity at night. You also would not like to wake up others.

A similar situation can occur if your child wakes up in the middle of the night due to bad dreams, and you try to calm him (her) down and put him (her) to sleep as quickly as possible. If you turn on the light when entering the child's room, the child may think it is already morning and will be happy as his (her) dad or mom is coming to play in his room.

On the other hand, many children find falling asleep in the pitch dark difficult. The dim light in his (her) room can help you slowly put him (her) to sleep at lower and lower light intensities.

Smart homes usually have lighting outside as well. You can create different scenes and atmospheres in front of your home with various lamps. If you are out, it is advisable to use a remote to switch on and off these lamps. This will allow you to operate the outdoor lights with the remote control (or smartphone) in your pocket without going into the house each time.

With a smart home system, you can control all kinds of lamps in on/off or dimming mode, choosing the best interface suitable for you (a simple pushbutton or a remote interface, for example, using your smartphone or a remote controller). You can decide which lamp or group of lamps to turn on or off. You can set a specific time of the day when you want the lamp to turn on, and you can decide on some “scenes” (the first lamp at 100% of its intensity, the second at 50%, and the third one at 20%) or also some lighting profiles (for 1 hour the lamp is at 70%, then for 25 minutes is at 40%, then for 5 minutes is at 15%...)

You can also use another feature for the same thing, as your home wireless network always knows where you are because you always have your smartphone with you. This way, the driveway to the house will light up as soon as you get close enough to your home without having to turn it on yourself over the phone.

Set the outdoor lighting to auto-off at night so it won't light up all night. It will turn on again if someone invited or uninvited comes to visit. Your smart house will inform you about his arrival by outdoor lighting.

Heating-cooling (depending on your country): heating-cooling is one of the subsystems always present in a dwelling. You can connect your heating-cooling to the smart home system and control the temperature room by room. You can create more zones with actuators connected to the smart home system.

With these devices, you have control over the heating-cooling at home, even via a smartphone. An added value is that it even can save on your heating-cooling bill by heating-cooling only when and where you need it.

Scenes (scenarios): a scene “is used to set a group of commands that acts on their actuators with different values. Typical examples are lighting scenes for different occasions (Party, romantic dinner, TV watching, etc.).

If you have a house with two or three floors, the task of closing or opening all the windows can take a certain amount of time. But if you have a smart home system, at the front door, you can install a switch on the wall, with which you can turn off all the lights in the apartment the moment you leave home with just one push of a button. If this example is insufficient, try to imagine having a small hotel or bed & breakfast with 10 rooms. The possibility of sending a command to several actuators can be handy.

A scene does not have to deal only with lighting. A „cinema scene” could, for example, involve specific management of lights, the rolling shutters of the room all lowered, the video projector on, and the motorized screen activated.

Anti-burglary system: most smart home system producers sell devices that provide antitheft functions, from the lowest level (just presence sensors and a siren) to the highest (connection with the police or with a security service in case the anti-theft system fires).

If a burglar breaks into your home, the smart home system can also trigger the rapid blinking of all the lights in the apartment (like a stroboscopic light) to confuse the burglar as much as possible. Hopefully, a loud alarm and crazy flashing lights will be enough to turn the burglar escaping into the night.

Presence simulation: even the best anti-burglary system in the world will not distract a determined burglar. But there is something the smart home system might be able to do.

A smart home system can provide a presence simulation feature that is much more advanced. It records your commands during any day, such as:

• when individual lights in the house were turned on and off,

• raised and lowered blinds in each room,

• changed light luminous in rooms,

• changed color of RGB LED lamps ...

When you leave home for a long time, e.g., on holiday, you can activate the presence simulation function by pressing a single key before leaving the house. This one will play all the saved commands to look like you are still physically at home on the outside.

This way, you can record what’s going on for a day, a week, or even a month just to make the playback of the recording look as authentic as possible.

The described operation represents a significant advantage in terms of safety compared to simple timers that turn the lighting on and off every day at the same time. A potential burglar can observe your home before the burglary and find that the blinds go up and down, and the lights turn on and off at completely different times during the day or week. This can already make a difference whether he will break into your home or not.

Alarm clock and room control: if you want to wake up at the right moment, you will surely use an alarm clock.

A smart home system will allow you not only to set more alarm clocks but also to be connected to the children’s room (for example, with a tablet or a smartphone) and at once turn on the lights in the room to the maximum and raise the blinds.

Of course, teenagers can get up and simply turn off the lights and lower the blinds back. With a simple push of a button, you can lock (block) the operation of the switches that operate the lights and blinds in the child's room, thus preventing it.

Weather control: your smart home system can be equipped with a weather module, able to measure data such as rain intensity, humidity, wind speed, and so on. In case you are not at home and suddenly it starts to rain, the system can close the windows, in order not to wet the floor, for example. Or, in case of strong wind, it can raise the awning in order not to damage it.

Automation: when you get home, you can use the remote control or smartphone to turn on the opening of the door before the entrance to the house and the opening of the garage door.

Using electrical motors managed by smart actuators connected to the smart home system, you can automate almost everything: doors, windows, blinds, gates, screens, armchairs, and sofa.

In the same way, you can also control third-party devices that can be integrated into the smart

home system control, like stairlifts, equipment for the disabled, and so on.

Safety: undoubtedly, the safety of those close to us is more important to everyone than money and material goods. Protecting your home is necessary today, as it provides you with compensation in the event of a fire or burglary ... However, you must do everything you can to prevent such accidents.

Various events detected by sensors in the smart home and data on heating, room temperature, light status, ventilation, and so on are processed in real-time. This means the system will notify the user of the event as soon as it occurs. At the same time, all these events can be automatically stored in the event database for the needs of possible later analysis. When you get home, you can watch these events or not and receive the most critical things on your smartphone even when you are not at home.

The smart home system provides a connection between various essential functions of safety. With the alarm system, you can connect the electrical installation and sensors of movement, smoke, CO2, water spill, open windows and doors, and energy consumption measurements. With their help, you can protect your home from damage and reduce side effects due to accidental events.

Energy efficiency: households use energy for various purposes: space and water heating, space cooling, cooking, lighting, electrical appliances, and other end-uses. Most of the time, a user is unaware of the energy consumption required by the used equipment. And in this case, only the opportunity to monitor it could reduce energy waste.

A smart home system can measure and display the energy consumption of all the devices connected to the electrical system, can set a power threshold that must not be exceeded to prevent the general circuit breaker trigger, and can activate an appliance when the energy tariff is more convenient, can turn off light and heating when nobody is in the room. Besides, it can be interfaced with every renewable energy production system.

Smart home systems, with their smart thermostats, presence sensors, and energy monitoring devices, are forging a path to a brighter, greener future – and saving us some cash along the way.

Remote control of your house: inside your home, to control all the devices and functions, you can use switches, push buttons, touchscreens, and even a voice control interface.

But if you are really in a hurry from home and you only remember later on the road or at work that you did not press the "Turn off all lights” button when you left, you can simply log in to your smart home system with your smartphone, tablet or computer and do so. And most of the time, it consists of a web page where you can log in (with your name and password) and check the state of every piece of equipment and every subsystem.

We have listed here the most common and used set of functions a smart home system can perform, but there are endless possibilities for usage. With such a system, you can control the watering system and integrate smart appliances, telemedicine devices, and every type of electrical equipment you may want to use.

See more in other Sections on our webpage.

Many new construction projects are still being built without proper building technology and planning for the future. Maybe together we can change that.