It’s the holiday season – a time for joy, shopping, and…cold. Bitter, arctic cold. While I do enjoy a chilly night on the couch wrapped in a blanket, I don’t like a bitterly cold night ever. Thankfully, smart home technology and automation are here to save the day.
There was a time, believe it or not, that people had to heat their homes using only fire. Hard to believe when you look around at all the technology that is available for the home today. First, we got heaters (yaaaaay!), and there were even portable space heaters so no one had to go cold. Those heaters could turn on and off and get your home to a certain temperature. Today, you can set automatic controls to always keep your house at a specific temperature that is comfortable for you and your family. The best news, though, is that there are now even more techy ways that you can control the temperature in your home or office all winter long.
Smart Heaters
A smart heater will give you control over a heater in a similar way to how smart thermostats work. Just download the corresponding app on your phone, connect to your heater, and control away. You can turn the unit on and off remotely – great if you are using one at work so that you can turn it on when you leave for work and have a nice warm work area when you arrive – and change the heat settings at any time. If you have your heater set to turn on at a specific time but then get caught in traffic or (more likely if you are me) get detoured at happy hour, you can easily adjust that start time so that you don’t have the heater running for no one. If you don’t trust your kids or spouse, you can always check in on the heater’s status on your phone.
Smart Switches
While a smart heater is great, it only allows you to control that heater. A smart switch gives you expanded control over any device that you plug into it. You just plug the unit into your existing wall socket, then use an app to set it up. You’ll give the device a reference name and get it connected to your home WiFi network, and then you are ready to use it. Once it is set up, you can plug in anything you want to control to help keep your home or office from being an ice cave.
Smart Window Treatments
While sunlight is a rare phenomenon in winter, it does occasionally occur. Smart window treatments are perfect for helping you let those rare rays into your space. You can program your window treatments to open and close with the sun, or just control them remotely if the sun happens to come out. Any sunlight will help in the winter.
How do you use home automation to help survive the arctic blasts of winter? Leave me a comment.
