What Is Home Automation?
Home automation is a technology that lets users create and trigger automatic functions for home devices. That may be through schedules, rules, or scenes. With scheduled automations, for example, you can make lights turn on at a certain time. Using rules, you can make your devices respond to certain actions of yours or scenarios (e.g. turn on lights when a door is opened). And with scenes, you can group together home devices so each of them perform a specific action whenever you trigger the scene. That means you can control multiple devices with just a touch of a button.
Home automation makes life more convenient and can even save you money on heating, cooling and electricity bills. Home automation can also lead to greater safety with Internet of Things devices like security cameras and systems.
Internet of Things vs. Home Automation
From a broader perspective, an Internet of Things or IoT device is any device that connects to the internet, allowing it to communicate with other devices. Normally, that’s your laptop, smartphone, or tablet. But in smart homes, IoT devices come in myriads of forms. For example, your smart TV is an IoT. So are your smart bulbs, smart lock, smart thermostat, and so on. Basically, any device that connects to the internet and communicates with other devices is considered an IoT device.
In contrast, home automation is the process of automating a home device. Even a good ol’ programmable thermostat is a home automation device because you can automate it by setting schedules. Anything that you can automate is a home automation device.
There’s a lot of overlap between home automation and IoT devices. Most home automation devices are also IoT devices, but that doesn’t mean all of them are. For example, there are Bluetooth smart locks that connect to your smartphone and can be controlled with an app – just like IoT smart locks – but since they aren’t internet-connected, they are not home automation devices.
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