Smart Home vs Home Automation vs Connected Home

Home Automation, Smart Homes and Connected Homes – Explained

Smart Home vs Home Automation vs Connected Home – With the rise of the Internet of Things more and more people are realising the benefits of an intelligent home. New products from the likes of Google and Apple allow home owners to even control their home by voice commands – adding a wow factor and convenience via technology that would of been thought of as very futuristic even a few years ago. Solutions for a fully smart home vary from easily installed systems suitable for technologically minded home owners through to fully bespoke professionally installed and maintained systems – we specialise in the latter systems.

But what do the various terms mean?

Connected Homes

This is the simplest approach of the three terms and most homes have an element of the technology installed. A connected home simply refers to the infrastructure installed in the home – a simple network to allow solid connectivity of Smart TVs and a good wifi network is a great example of a connected home but the infrastructure can extend to allow media servers, home theater PCs and simple media solutions.

Smart Home

A Smart Home in London

A Smart Home builds on the infrastructure installed in a connected home – media distribution allows any room of the house to enjoy the clients music collection and distributes centralised video sources to any TV of the home. This Multi-Room Audio Video system can be further enhanced by lighting control – allowing mood lighting in either key rooms or throughout the whole house. Automatic actions such as bringing lighting on at dusk or switching audio video off when the alarm is set ensure the house is smart enough to add convenience to your home.

Home Automation

Home Automation builds on the Smart Home principles – whole house audio video and mood lighting systems are enhanced by heating and air conditioning integration – anything electrical in the home can be integrated to add convenience or save energy – often both at once. Automating heating controls within the home can ensure rooms are only heated or cooled when you need them, saving huge amounts of energy. Homes with renewable energies can become truly eco friendly by managing the whole house power consumption – using the home automation system to use energy in the most efficient way possible – for example heating hot water when energy is at its highest or distributing warm air from south facing rooms with solar gain to north facing cooler rooms. Proactively running the home in this way ensures complete client comfort whilst ensuring the lowest possible energy use.

Summary

With the rise of home installed and connected devices it is great to see home owners waking up to and taking the first steps with Smart Homes and Home Automation. The future is convenient. energy efficient and full of easy to access content. Our professionally installed systems are reliable, scalable, efficient and flexible and we often produce designs for home owners looking to install a connected home during a refit or renovation. Once a Connected Home is installed then adding in elements of Smart Home and Home Automation technology is easy with modular elements being added in as required to create the perfect system for a client.