Smart Homes are becoming increasingly common to find in neighborhoods across the US. And what has facilitated this growth pattern is the fact that smart devices are very easily and readily available to the domestic consumer – that too at affordable prices!
What is it about Smart Homes that homeowners wish to switch to such a lifestyle? For starters, and one of the most obvious of reasons people prefer to make that transition is the automation feature. If there is one thing all smart devices can do, is provide homeowners with access to the device through mobile applications, through voice enabled command or through central hubs. That means wirelessly and remotely controlling these smart devices, along with having the option with some to set schedules or even set to auto control.
That’s not all though. Smart devices can do much more than just automating a home. Each device brings with it a plethora of features that are unique in their own way, but what is also lauded alongside automation is the fact that a lot of these devices are great when it comes down to energy efficiency and home security.
How Does a Smart Home Work?
Given that smart devices can individually be controlled via smartphones and tablets, and even voice assistants, it sounds like too much work even having to control each device if there happen to be multiple smart devices within a home. Because what is a smart home if not like a collection of smart devices?
That is why homeowners tend to install central Hubs within their homes in order to collectively and seamlessly run their smart homes. Here are 2 types of hubs, or call them devices that can help you run your day-to-day with multiple smart home devices.
Devices to Run a Smart Home
- Nest Wi-Fi Router & Point
The Google Nest Wi-Fi is one of the best routers to install in your homes, especially when you have a smart home. But pair it with the Nest Wi-Fi point and you get a ton of more features that make it even easier to run a smart home.
How do they work? When paired together, the Nest Router and Point can blanket a total area of around 3800 square feet, and connect up to 200 devices simultaneously! How great is that? Imagine, uninterrupted connectivity as you walk in from room to room, along with everything else working just fine too.
The Nest Wi-Fi Router on its own is a great smart router that lets homeowners use the Google Home app to control the settings of the device itself. Some of these include selecting which connected devices can have access to the internet, and similarly restricting or adding a schedule for other connected devices too. With that homeowners can for instance prioritize the smart lights or the smart thermostat within their home, and restrict their children’s iPads from connecting to the network after a specific time in the day. And speaking of children, this is a great way to filter out and monitor the content that is accessible to children, as well as managing their screen time.
The Nest Wi-Fi Point on the other hand not only serves as a Wi-Fi extender, but it is essentially a Smart Speaker with a built in Google Assistant that serves all the functions of a voice assistant.
- Samsung SmartThings Hub
Another device that would be great for running a smart home is the Samsung SmartThings Hub. It becomes kind of like the control panel or the brains of your household. All it needs is an Ethernet connection to the Wi-Fi router, while it is powered through an in-wall power adapter.
So how does it work? With the SmartThings App for mobile phones homeowners can essentially control the settings of the device, and add and connect more and more smart devices in their homes. But it is not just with the app, but with Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa too. The SmartThings Hub is compatible with different brands so homeowners aren’t exactly restricted to specific names or even just Samsung’s smart devices. They can connect well with for instance Yale, Honeywell, Bose and Philips Hue devices – and the SmartThings Hub is compatible with ZigBee as well as Z-Wave protocols too.
The SmartThings Hub however, can cover an area between 50 to 100 feet – which is basically anything above 2500 square feet! This makes it one step superior to the Nest Duo we mentioned above because its total area of coverage is quite wide.
Of course there are more hubs and Smart Routers available out there in order to run your smart home smoothly. But the factors that homeowners should watch out for are that firstly, they must find a hub that can provide coverage to the total space of their homes. Other than that, these hubs must also be compatible with different protocols, voice assistants and different brands of smart devices too, otherwise they are basically pointless. What good is a hub that can only connect to brands of its own?
