Smart Home using Arduino

Appleton Innovations

6 min readJan 6, 2022

A smart home refers to a convenient home setup where appliances and devices can be automatically controlled remotely from anywhere with an internet connection using a mobile or other network device.
Devices in a smart home are interconnected through the internet, allowing the user to control functions such as security access to the home, temperature, lighting, and a home theater remotely.

Advantages:

Convenience
Cost savings
Portability
Controlled Access
Security
Efficiency

Companies which deal in Smart Home:

Philips: The household brand, Philips is quite very popular in India. Although Philips is quite new in the field of home automation space, still gained absolute support and fame in India pretty soon. Philips has provided some great product deals and quality that are very promising and advanced in features and technologies. Philips has come up with a great range of products that includes lighting as well as home appliances. These are widely preferred in almost every home in India. From launching app-controlled devices to providing a wholesome set of home lighting solutions such as LED bulbs, Philips has always been extraordinary and creative with its products.

Xiaomi: The company offers various range of devices for the smart home systems. Some of them are as follows: Mi Control Hub, Mi Motion Sensor, Mi Smart Switch, Mi Window and Door Sensor

Google Smart Home: The platform lets users control your commercially available connected devices through the Google Home appand Google Assistant, which is available on more than 1 billion devices, like smart speakers, phones, cars, TVs, headphones, watches, and more. The benefits to you include deepening user engagement, driving sales of your devices and growing your brand value. The original Google Home speaker was released in 2016 as a voice-activated smart speaker that could set timers, play music, and control the smart home. Its outward appearance hasn’t changed much since then, but Google has given the underlying AI — known as the Google Assistant — a kick, adding the ability to recognize multiple voices and customize responses with your personal information, more smart home integration, and the option to use it as a Bluetooth speaker, among other things.

Schneider Electronics: This is a popular global brand that has gained its presence in India for its sustainable and energy-conserving products. Schneider Electronics has a number of home automation products, including home security devices like lighting controls, light dimmers that are controlled via a mobile application. The company also offers their homeowners a complete package as per their requirement and is installed by Schneider’s engineers.

Legrand: Legrand is considered to be one of the top companies of India and across the world in the home automation category. They own a vast range of brands that acquired to expand their product in the company’s catalog. It is the oldest electrical company that has made a shift to creating sustainable electric infrastructure in the home automation products, such as, smart plugs, smart sockets, video-door phones and motion sensors, UPS, amongst the other products.

Reasons to switch to Smart Home systems:

Technology is advancing with every passing day and owning smart home is becoming a necessity. In the past, smart homes were considered to be part of a luxurious life style but today they have become an important part of our lives. There are some essential features which play an important role in selecting the smart home system which are noted as follows:

Efficiency: With one touch button or mobile phone application, you can control numerous gadgets or systems. With the help of the smart device, you would be able to operate your heating and cooling as well turn on and turn off lights with a single click from anywhere in your house. This is not just an efficient procedure but it will also help you save electricity.

Convenience: Having a smart home permit you to deal with many electronic gadgets and systems from over the house or over the world. Draw the shades, turn on lights, and monitor security. The listed features of the smart home are enough to convince a person to turn their homes smart too.

Comfort: Smart homes make your life comfortable; you do not have to move all over the house to perform various functions. With smart devices, you can perform all household operations through applications while sitting comfortably on the sofa or in bed.

Customization: Smart homes also allow you to have electronic things the way you like to have them. You can have the shades drawn automatically at a certain time, adjust the brightness of indoor as well as outdoor lighting as per your choice. Similarly, you can customize every single electronic item as per your will and furthermore you can also set timings for various choices to be implemented.

Utility Bills: The world is getting expensive day by day and people are very concerned about their utility bills. Smart home ensures you save electricity and reduce your power and water bills. Often it is observed that lights remain on due to the laziness of standing up and turning them off. A smart home will allow you to turn off lights and other electronic items even when you are in bed and going to sleep. It will save you a huge amount of cash.

Life-saving home alarms: Fire and theft are only a couple of events that can annihilate your home or undermine the lives of friends and family. Smart home devices can make you aware of such events through alarms and notifications which can be enough to save your life.

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