11 Supercool Things You can Do With Home Automation

by Abhi Bavishi | Mar 27, 2017 | Blog | 0 comments

Wouldn’t it be great if you could automate various devices on your home to do some tasks at your command, or even better… have the connected devices figure out what you want, without you even lifting a finger? That might sound like a sci-fi movie thing, but with home automation, it could be your every-day reality. 

While we have covered all home automation use-cases in pretty detail, here are some super-cool things you can do with home automation:

1. Multi-room audio

Like Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Without music, life would be a mistake.”

Music is what makes this dull life colourful.

And home automation takes that a step further with multi-room audio. Instead of having a decentralised library, you can centralise all your favourite songs using a NAS (Network Access Storage) device, and listen your favourite music from anywhere around your house.

Not only that, you can play different music in each room wirelessly from your smartphone.

2. Mood Lighting

Mood lighting has to be probably the coolest thing you can do with home automation. You can adjust the lighting based on your mood, environment or even the ambience levels. For example, say, it’s raining outside, you can change the colour, intensity or brightness fitting in your mood. Flash red when Arsenal scores a goal. Light up Crimson, if it’s valentine’s day and your date comes over. Dim the light when you go to bed and turn it off after you’re asleep (no need to remember turning it off before going to bed). Let your imagination run wild.

                                                                                      3. Save energy

The more energy is wasted, the more global warming increases. And a lot of energy gets consumed when you forget to turn off the light or air conditioner while leaving your house. Having a smart home allows you to automatically turn those devices off after you get out of your home.

This way you conserve a lot of energy and cut out a chunk off the electric bill.

4. Set advanced pro-active security.

Setting up security camera around places to identify trespassers is too mainstream. Move a step ahead by scaring thieves off your property. Automated motion sensors can trigger a voice playback as soon as it tracks some movement when you’re not at home. Plus, your home automation system can randomly light up different rooms while you’re away for a long time (giving them an illusion that you are at home).

                                                                                      5. Have a great sleep.

Getting a good sleep in the night is the key to having a better day at work.

With a smart home, you can turn the night mode on when you go to bed. You can listen to soothing music while you fall asleep and automatically put it out afterward. It will gently wake you up at a preset time by gradually opening the window shades along with playing a song of your choice. 

You can even have your coffee ready by the time you wake up. How cool is that?

6. Have your home ready for you… in minutes.

It’s really frustrating when you come back from work, and your home is not just at the right temperature. You have to wait for at least a few minutes to cool things up, so that you can relax. But what if you could have your home ready for you with a single command? 

Don’t believe that’s possible? Check out this video from Fibaro:

7. Enjoy movie theatre at home.

Home automation can turn your regular movie watching experience to a special one. With automatic lighting adjustments, home won’t feel like home anymore. Lights will fade away as the film starts, change colours at various scenes and fade in once the movie is over. No need to agonise over a ton of remotes for multiple devices. Control the sound, lighting, TV and all other multimedia devices with a single universal remote.

8. Relax your lazy afternoons!

Put your home automation to work and relax those lazy afternoons. Sit on the couch and control the whole house.

Wanna turn on the TV? Want to the temperature down? Friends knocking at the door? Chill, everything’s possible at the click of a button.

You can set up complex scenes and schedules to automate boring activities like… turning down the shades when it’s too sunny, or automatically turning off the TV, if you fall asleep.

9. Enjoy a smarter social media.

Are you pretty active on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? A smart home can make your social media life more amazing. Won’t it feel awesome, if a blue light blinks when you receive a message on Facebook? Or makes you remember your Umbrella when you’re walking down the stairs? Welcome to a truly connected smart-home experience.

While these are some of the endless possibilities, there’s always more you can do with a smart home. All you have to do is keep experimenting and find more ways to make your life easier.

Smart home is the future, and you can live it now. To know more about all the things you can do with home automation, subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Smartify Automation – Why We Do What We Do?

by Abhi Bavishi | Aug 3, 2016 | Blog | 0 comments

Finally, we’re LIVE. I can’t count how many hours we have put into designing, developing and testing our platform. Not to mention, we also had a rough time testing all the smart home devices that we procured, and figuring out how all the pieces can be put together. From asking for critical feedback from friends to recording amateur smart home videos, we have been on our toes.

But it’s time to settle everything in, and begin the next leg of the journey– building functional homes. ???? So, in this post, I’m going to answer a few basic questions about why we built Smartify Automation, what we intend to do, and how we are going to achieve our goals.

Why home automation?

We believe automation is going to change the future and make our lives 10x better. Smartify is a platform for bridging the knowledge-execution gap, and onboarding people on this new technological revolution, we call, IoT (Internet of Things).

Alright, but what’s the need for a web shop? Don’t we have a lot of them, already? 

That’s true. We already have a lot of E-commerce shops on the Internet already, not to mention we have the likes of Amazon competing against us. But, the way I see it, home automation is not a product, but an experience. Our focus is on building a platform where we empower the early-adopters to take a chance, and handle the installation-integration part for them.

Okay, but aren’t there companies already doing home automation? Why reinvent the wheel? 

That’s true. A lot of companies are already doing home automation, but almost all of them are providing expensive, outdated solutions that require high initial investment costs, in terms of internal wiring, and low flexibility (you cannot upgrade without burning a hole in your pocket).

Using open, standardized protocols from the most reputed automation companies of the world and following a Lego-block setup, we have managed to cut down the cost by at least 50-60%, with zero compromise on the experience.

Plus, our automation system is infinitely scalable, requires no internal wiring, and is future-proof, which means it will work with every new automation gadget/device that comes to the market.

What’s our USP?

Apart from cutting down costs, we also offer premium lifetime customer support. In case you get the installation done from us, you don’t have to pay anything extra if things go wrong. For people who are just looking to buy directly, we are building an extensive knowledgebase that will help them installation, configuration and testing of smart home devices.

We’re also build a community for logging queries on all automation devices sold through our store.

How are we going to deliver value to customers?

Here’s a short and crisp version:

1. Reducing the knowledge gap.
2. Using network effects to reduce the base price
3. Providing a safety net for experimentation (lifetime support)

How do we plan on empowering early adopters/influencers?

If you’re interested in starting your own home automation business or an enthusiast, do get in touch with us and we’ll hook you up at minimal investment. Although we are in early stages, we rank high on Google, and get lots of queries for home automation from different parts of India.

But, again, please contact us if you’re actually passionate about smart home technology. We don’t want to deal with companies or system integrators who want to milk customers, push boxes or don’t want to provide after-sales service.

What are our future plans? 

Soon, we’re planning to expand our automation segment into categories like hotel, hospital, industrial and more. We also intend to have multiple workshops across India to reach out influencers and onboard them on the journey. Lastly, we’re also actively getting in touch with real-estate developers, architects, builders and interior designers for adopting the new technology in homes.

So far, it’s been an exciting journey, and from what we have seen so far… it looks like it’s going to be one hell of a ride.