A Smart Home – Gadgets, Technology & Robots
Recent years have seen exponential advancement in home automation technology. Robots, gadgets, and interactive devices can be found throughout homes carrying out a number of tasks from turning lights on and off to feeding and caring for pets and plants. 2015 may be the year to make your home smarter, as the technology becomes better, more affordable and more available.
Hundreds of home automation products are readily available to help build your home’s brain. By utilizing simple apps that can be downloaded onto your smart phone, you can connect to specialized devices that allow you to monitor and interact with your home’s HVAC system, security system, home theatre, lights, door locks or essentially anything that can be plugged in. There are even products available that can analyze your behaviour and will respond accordingly to help reduce your energy consumption. Do you want to turn on your slow cooker from the office? Or sneak a peek to see what your pets are doing while you are at work? It may be wise to use this technology sparingly, you could end up distracted with watching and tweaking your home’s every function.
Household robots have also become so popular recently that they can be found in virtually every retailer that carries home appliances. Whether you want to vacuum or wash your floors, clean your gutters, mow your lawn or clean your pool, there is a robot available for you. This technology is not everybody’s cup of tea however; for instance, it takes at least twice as long to vacuum a room with a robotic cleaner versus doing it manually, and the cleaning job isn’t always top notch. However, if you want to step away from your chores, you don’t even have to be in your house for the robot version to take on the work. The price point is similar to buying a compatible manual vacuum cleaner, with models available for as low as $100 and working their way up to $500 – $600 at the top end. As prices come down and the technology improves, it is certain that these little helper bots, and home automation gadgets will be making their way into more and more homes in the coming years.