How Device Integration Makes a Smart Home More Powerful
Smart home tech is capable of amazing things. Just spend a few hours researching smart home news and you will learn about all sorts of device-specific capabilities. It is all great stuff. But for me, the real power in home automation is not found in the individual devices I install. It is found in integrating those devices so that they work together.
Integration starts with finding devices compatible with each other. More often than not, that means choosing a specific ecosystem and then focusing on its devices. Google Home is one example. Amazon Alexa is another. There are others, including those offered by Apple, Samsung, and even Roku.
An Example of What You Could Do
Perhaps an example of what you could do is the best way to drive home the point of integration. So let’s talk about Vivint Home Security and their smart locks. A Vivint smart lock can be tied to other home automation devices for single button control.
Imagine tying your smart lock to your lights, thermostat, and security system. It is the end of the day, and you have just climbed into bed. You grab your phone, open the Vivint app, and tap a button to lock the front door. The lock responds instantly. But so do a number of other devices. All the lights in the house turn off, the temperature on the thermostat is reduced, and your security system is fully armed.
One-touch control to complete so many tasks is not only convenient, but also amazing. And it is all made possible through smart home integration. The more you can get your devices talking to one another, the more you can create automation events involving long lists of tasks.
The Hub Is a Big Part of It
It should be noted that full integration doesn’t happen by chance. It’s also hard to achieve when you’re relying on half-a-dozen mobile apps to control your many devices. Full and complete integration works best when you control everything from a central hub. In fact, the hub is the single most important factor in home automation integration.
As the central command center, a hub offers the software necessary to create customized automations. A hub gives you the power to link devices and tie them to conditions, events, or actions. Without a strong hub, integration is hard to achieve on a grand scale.
Vivint is among those home automation providers whose systems come with a hub. Every device in a Vivint system will work with this hub. Likewise, the company’s mobile app accesses the hub and all its features remotely.
Some hubs are better than others. My personal preference is an open source platform that gives me tons of customization options I can’t find in a proprietary package. My platform supports thousands of devices and allows me to write customized scripts for doing just about anything.
Throw in a Little AI
Getting back to the idea of integration, you can take things to a whole new level by throwing in a little artificial intelligence (AI). The smart thermostat is a perfect illustration. An AI-powered thermostat can analyze data from other devices in a system to artificially learn a homeowner’s routine. Then the thermostat can adjust its own programming.
Device integration literally changes the home automation game. By setting devices up to interact with one another, it is possible to create very complex automations that could never be accomplished by devices acting independently. Integration is where the real power of home automation lies. Master it and you can make your smart home more powerful than ever.