What is home automation?

Home automation is the process of integrating home electronic devices and appliances with the internet to enable you to have automatic control. For example, switching your bulbs on and off with simply a word or a clap is a typical example of an automated home.

The role of IoT in home automation

IoT intends to make automation effortless. Innovative industries automate repetitive processes, allowing employees to invest their time and effort into other critical tasks. As IoT constantly evolves, its core principles remain the same: To improve users' operational efficiency and productivity whilst creating personalised systems to help make users' lives more enjoyable. With the right set of IoT products, machines can communicate with each other, providing higher production rates, more efficient use of materials, better product quality, improved safety and reduced production lead times. Another main advantage of IoT is cost saving. Managing an individual or business's energy consumption can hold significant monetary value down the line. Even small changes in managing our air conditioning and light usage can have notable financial gains. Home automation also makes users' lives easier with automated curtains, appliances, lights, and so much more in the house, saving you time and allowing you the serenity to enjoy a fully automated living space.

The benefits of IoT smart homes

The implementation of interactive technologies like Google Home, Apples HomePod and Amazons Alexa into households has led many homeowners to invest in home automation and intelligent IoT devices, completely revamping their home appliances to remotely control them from anywhere inside and outside of the house. These inspiring technologies have made their way into ceiling lights, televisions, curtains, doorbell cameras, and so much more.  IoT has played a pivotal role in advancing traditional home features ranging from security options, monitoring, audio and voice control features.

1. Advanced security options

An essential advantage of any Smart Home IoT is surveillance. Many homes are used to big, intrusive, cable heavy solutions that offer mediocre video quality and little storage space. Monitoring homes remotely from anywhere in the world was made impossible with these legacy technologies. With IoT, surveillance has become worthy of sci-fiction. Users are granted the ability to view live feeds of their video cameras from a device anywhere in the world. These innovative surveillance solutions offer high-quality recording, night vision, ample data storage, Wi-Fi connectivity, two-way communication, real-time alerts and more. MiRO’s portfolio of doorbells and floodlight cameras are compatible with any innovative home layout and is one of the best solutions you could get your hands on.

2. Indoor and outdoor monitoring

MiRO’s smart home and agricultural IoT solutions are ideal for any home or business looking to monitor and maintain critical components of their building or farm. Milesight and Aqara are two brands that offer you premium quality devices to monitor temperatures, humidity, motion, contact and light statuses, both indoors and outdoors. This is made possible by a diverse range of sensors, hubs and controllers. Users can easily control these elements from any location to fit desired conditions.

3. Smart audio streaming

Thanks to broadband internet, home audio systems have seen tremendous innovation, capability changes, and style improvements. Users can now stream from their phone, tablet or PC directly to their speakers from a music application. You can now remotely control your music playlist from your couch, using only your phone while allowing other users to connect and play their playlists in separate rooms. Everyone connected can enjoy premium sound quality, easy connectivity, and ample coverage, no matter what zone they fall under. MiRO distributes TruAudio speakers and VSSL amplifiers to accommodate this new and exciting feature of smart homes.

4. Voice control features

VSSL provides users with voice control capabilities that support your trusted music apps, all due to built-in features such as Airplay2, Spotify Connect, Chromecast and Alexa Cast. Collectively, VSSL and Aqara’s, through their integration with home assistants like Google Assistant, can turn any home into a personalised space, offering users the ability to use voice commands to perform almost any task on any connected device.

5. LoRaWAN

LoRaWAN is a low power IoT protocol that comprises the LoRa radio technology, allowing for an open, reliable and economical network deployment. By contrast, NB-IoT is a licensed LTE radio technology offering low latency and robust security at a steeper price point. A low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) like LoRAWAN is a wireless telecommunication vast area network designed to allow long-range communications at a low bit rate, such as sensors operated on a battery.

The MikroTik and Milesight LoRaWAN controllers were created to offer you the capacity to reliably monitor basic information across large areas without access to electrical grids, such as farms, factories and mines. Alternative networks can also manage and monitor devices, but they lack LoRaWAN’s core advantages of lower power consumption and long-range capabilities. These capabilities make LoRaWAN easier, quicker, and more cost-effective to deploy. With LoraWAN, you can quickly deploy hundreds of battery-powered sensors, which can last up to a couple of years, and monitor them wirelessly from a distance of up to 10km.

LoRaWAN is a global standard, which means it allows for multiple devices to interoperate seamlessly on the same protocols and eliminate the need for proprietary devices from a single vendor. Milesight has invested heavily to use the LoRaWAN IoT ISM band. Milesight is a professional IoT company that leverages the top trending technologies to simplify the process of data collection, storage and retrieval to connect "things" to the Cloud. They have an array of exciting devices for any use case – Agriculture, Smart City, Smart Energy, Smart Retail, Transportation, Medical, Automation and Outdoor Office. They have a solution for every application. They are also a Member of the LoRa Alliance and are always at the forefront of technology, industry regulations, and new developments.