The True Power of Home Automation

While there are many products on the market today that consumers can buy that add simple home automation capabilities to their homes, it is not always easy to do much more than turn things on and off or perhaps adjust the dimmer on a light or volume on a speaker.   But if you want anything more sophisticated than that, you run into limits quickly.  

Where home automation really gets interesting is when you can link several different things together and then take the right action based on rules that match the policies you'd like for your home to follow.  Or it can combine several steps into a single step to simplify otherwise complex or confusing steps.

For example, most guests just want to turn on the spa tub at a house but many manufacturers do not build control panels designed for vacation rentals where you can limit the available functions to just those needed by your guests.  And how do you make this simple when the control pad requires several steps to perform this one task:  switch the pool/spa pump valve, turn on the heater, turn on the bubbles, turn on the lights and so on?  Automation can easily combine all these steps into a simple, one button step that turns on the spa (and likewise turns it all off when pressed again).

Another powerful example is what we call "staging the home".  You probably have a way you want your home to be set up before your guests arrive and also what it should be like after they depart.  This can include which lighting is on/off, which fans are on, air conditioning and potentially many other details in your house.  When your guests arrive wouldn't it be great for it to not only be clean and arranged just as you like it but that all the lights, fans, cooling and other important features are set up just as you like them to provide the most visual appeal?  Better yet, rather than have to physically go there and walk through the house setting things as you like them, wouldn't it be great to just hit a button on your phone and have it all happen?  And when your guests leave, another button puts the house into energy-saving mode until the next guest is about to arrive.  Not only does this save time and money for your property manager but it also assures that your vacation rental will always be presented as you want it to be whenever a new guest arrives and expensive AC and other systems are not accidentally left running when no one is staying.

Most of the products for home automation you can buy today at local stores are perfectly fine but they simply don't provide the tools that give you the power that true home automation systems can.  They can be used on their own but when you try to integrate them with something else, that's where you find the limitations.  If you already have home automation tech in your house, we will do our best to make use of it vs. requiring replacement.  You may even find that those existing systems can do far more than you thought once we integrate them with our platform.