Do you love entertaining? Did you know technology can help amp up your parties and make them go more smoothly? Now with home automation, your home itself can be the life of the party. Between apps and individual automated devices, you can control various aspects of your home entertainment experience from anywhere in your home or even from the car or office.
Here are five ways to set up home automation and create your home entertainment haven.
1. Set the mood lighting.
One of the most popular home automation settings is light control. With this feature, you can adjust your light settings right from your home. You’ll enjoy being able to have your lights on when you get home after a long day at work or turn the lights on and off when you’re on vacation to ensure your home looks lived in. Many home automation systems enable you to control your lighting remotely, no matter what room you’re in or if you’re home at all. You can also create settings that automatically turn on, off, or dim lights, based on certain times or when other conditions are triggered.
2. Set or adjust the thermostat.
Are more guests arriving to your party, bumping up the temperature in your living room while you’re entertaining outside? Did you leave the AC or heater off all day, but you want to walk into a comfortable home to relax? Automated thermostats can run based on the settings you program and trigger with your mobile device. It can also run on automated settings it “learns” from your behaviors. For example, it may turn on or off based on whether or not you are usually home at that hour.
3. Turn on or change the music or TV.
Want the music or TV blaring when you walk in the door? With automated media systems, you can schedule your home entertainment settings to turn on right at the time you normally return from work, or you can control them to turn on as your guests arrive at your home. Or, while you’re in the other room, you can change the TV channel, music station, or song, and if your devices are hooked up to a cloud system, you can access all of your media across any device in your home.
4. Trigger locks and other home security functions.
Keep your party secure from uninvited guests! Some home security providers offer their own apps for controlling your system, even when you’re not at home, using your computer or mobile device. Vivint Sky is one of these great apps, which you can see from these product videos. ADT Pulse, XFINITY Home, Protect America, and SimpliSafe all also offer their own apps. To find the right one for you, it helps to read reviews and compare the best systems available before you make your decision.
These apps give you the power to monitor and control your system from anywhere and receive alerts concerning the security of your home. You can create settings that turn your security system on and off, based on certain parameters, like the time of day. During a get-together, you can monitor different parts of your home where your guests congregate without appearing like you’re hovering.
If hooked up to your door locks, these apps may also enable you to control when your doors lock and unlock. For example, if you’re arriving home, you can open your locks while driving up the street so you won’t have to fiddle with your keys while you have grocery bags of party food in either arm. While the party is going on, you can lock and unlock doors for your guests even while you are in the other room or outside.
5. Brew a pot of coffee for the next morning.
Had a long night hosting your all-hours party? You can wake up to a freshly brewed pot of coffee waiting for you when you walk to the kitchen rather than having to set it up and wait for it to brew after you wake up. If you need a few extra minutes in bed after heavy entertaining, an automatic coffee brewer you can control from your smartphone or set up to start automatically at a certain time is key.
With these tips, spend less time sweating the small stuff and more time enjoying time with your guests!
