Home Automation With Security Systems
Shoppers choose security services with home automation for various reasons. Some choose it primarily for enhanced safety. Others get home automation mainly for its energy-saving potential or another benefit. Here are details about some key advantages.
How Does Home Automation Work?
Remember when you used to have to open and close your garage door manually?
With your bare hands and everything?
We’ve come quite a long way since then. Now, we can simultaneously control our home’s lighting, air temperature, security cameras, garage door, and more, from one central source. That’s all thanks to home automation, which works essentially like a chain reaction: When A does this, B will do this. Rinse and repeat as needed.
FYI: In our case, we usually use our phone as the command center for our smart home; but it can also be a smart assistant like a Google Nest Hub or Amazon Echo if we choose.
The two biggest advantages of an automated home, for us at least, are efficiency and convenience. For example, before leaving for a family vacation recently, we checked the 5-day forecast to see how things would look at home. We noticed it was going to get severely, dangerously cold in the next two days, which is a common occurrence for January in Ohio. While we certainly weren’t sorry to miss that, it did remind us to set up an automation, which we completed through the Alexa app on our phone: When we set the smart locks on our front door, our Nest thermostat will then lower the temperature in our home 10 degrees. Neat, right?
This way, we’re not running up our heating bill unnecessarily while we’re away. And for the return trip, we set the opposite automation: The thermostat returned to its normal setting 30 minutes before we pulled into our driveway, so we’d walk into a warm house.
Did You Know? With smart home automation features, you can basically automate everyday tasks for an all-around more convenient life. Smart equipment and automations include everything from smart lights to thermostats, garage door controllers, smart locks, smart cameras, and the list goes on.
Security Benefits
From a home security perspective, the main benefit of home automation is enhanced control over your alarm system: Get centralized and remote control and monitoring of your security system’s door locks, window entry sensors, and other components. And thanks to a huge selection of home security cameras to choose from, you use voice control to pull up video footage on smart speakers or on your smartphone app. A second big benefit of home automation is automated and remote control over lighting and window coverings. Automate lights and blinds when you’re on vacation, for example, and program lights to turn on if the security system is triggered. Third, home automation with voice recognition can make security especially easy. For instance, say “I’m going to sleep” to automatically lock doors and activate your alarm.
General Benefits
Home automation can help homes keep safe while reducing utility costs and saving time. From a safety standpoint, it enables remote control and monitoring of wireless security systems, plus it can remotely control lighting and window coverings for a “We’re home!” appearance. Home automation can also monitor smoke detectors and other environmental safety devices. From an energy-efficiency standpoint, it’s useful for automating lights and making it easy to use thermostats wisely. Most exciting perhaps is the biometric voice control supported by leading security companies. Just speak to activate your alarm, turn on music, adjust lighting, and more. Home automation even lets you set up macros; one command by voice or touchscreen accomplishes many tasks.
Home Automation Installation
Home security systems vary in complexity and size, but all systems must be installed. Professional installation is easier, but DIY installation is cheaper.
Professional
With professional installation, a trained technician from the company of your choice installs the system into your home while you relax. Some companies offer free professional installation, and others require you to pay for it. Professionals by their very name know what they're doing, so you benefit from their experience. The technician who installs your system can ensure that the system is properly set up and teach you about the system specifics and about home security. Companies with professional installation include Vivint, ADT, and Protect America.
DIY
Do-it-yourself installation offers you more control about when, where, and how your home security system is installed, and it's usually free. DIY systems are easy to install, and many are as simple as plug-and-play. DIY systems are also exclusively wireless, so you won't need any tools. Because customers set up the systems, companies with DIY installation tend to offer better-than-average customer service to walk you through the process. A positive and negative for these systems is that no one comes to your home. On the plus side, you won't have to invite a stranger into your home, but at the same time, a technician can teach you about areas of your home that might need more attention to security than others. DIY systems may not qualify for some home discounts that require a certification stating that your system was installed correctly. Companies with DIY installation include Frontpoint, Protect America, and Link Interactive.
Smart Home Equipment
Smart home equipment allows you to automate your home. You can control doors, windows, and appliances around the home with a simple command to either a control panel on the wall, to an app, or to a hand-free voice-controlled device like the Amazon Echo.
Smart Locks
Smart locks integrate into your automated system to allow for keyless entry and are one of the most important parts of an automated system. Smart locks are easy to install, and they allow you to control and monitor who accesses your home. They range in price from $100 to $300. Some look like standard locks and others include keypads. You can even link some smart locks with your doorbell camera. And if you haven’t added smart locks yet, check with our list of the best smart locks of the year to help make your choice. Some of the top doorbell cameras in the market can be paired with home security systems and smart locks, too. If someone suspicious comes to your door while you’re home, for example, you can trigger the doorbell camera to lock the door. Learn more about this and other features in our doorbell camera buyers guide.
Smart Lighting
You can connect lights to smart switches and plugs that give you remote control of the appliance it is connected to. If you want truly smart lighting, smart light bulbs let you control the intensity and color of the light. Smart lighting works with most home automation systems.
Smart Thermostats
Smart thermostats let you control your home's temperature whether you're across the world or across the room. Many smart thermostats include proximity sensors and machine-learning to customize your home's temperature by learning your preferences.
Smart Speakers
Smart speakers are the newest additions to home automation systems that allow you to control your home using only the sound of your voice. They can set timers, lock and unlock windows or doors, play music, and answer questions. While smart speakers can make your life easier, you will have to choose which voice-assistance platform you want. Only smart speakers on the same platform will communicate with one another, and they will only work with specific devices. In the top tier of voice assistants are Google Home and the Amazon Echo.
Google Home
Google's voice-assistance platform is Home, and the voice assistant is called Google Assistant. This platform includes Google Home, Google Home Mini, and Google Home Max. Google Home is fully voice-controlled, so there is no screen. If you'd like to control it with a screen, then you can use your phone or a connected TV. Google Home is an audio device that allows you to connect it to other speakers for a higher-quality sound that can be placed in multiple rooms.
Amazon Echo
Amazon's voice-assistance platform is Echo, and the voice assistant is called Alexa. This platform includes the Amazon Echo, the Echo Plus, the Echo Spot, the Echo Dot, and the Echo Show. Some of the Echo products (Spot and Show) have screens, while the others are fully voice-controlled. Amazon Echo is an audio device that allows you to connect it to voice-enabled speakers for better sound quality that can be played in multiple rooms. Vivint, ADT, and Protect America all use the Echo platform to control their automated systems. Beyond that, if you’re an Alexa superfan, consider securing your home with Ring. We found that Ring’s home automation is pre-programmed to pair with Alexa devices, since it, too, is owned by Amazon. Learn more in our full review of Ring Alarm.
How Much are Smart Lights?
Generally, smart LED lighting pays for itself over time, because the bulbs last much longer than standard light bulbs. But beyond the individual bulbs, we also consider the long-term cost advantages of controlling our lighting remotely.
In almost all cases, you should expect to pay more per bulb than traditional light bulbs. For instance, we can add a few $10 Philips Dimmable A19 bulbs to our home and control them with our Amazon Echo Show, or Phillips’ own smartphone app. We’d consider this a low-cost option, but again, if you’re needing 20 of these trusty bulbs … we’ll let you do the math there.
On the flip side, if you’re planning a lighting switch-out throughout your home, we’ll warn you: It won’t be a cheap endeavor. A smart lighting package from Insteon that contains five bulbs and a remote control dimmer switch fetches around $260. (A switch by itself costs only $50, just FYI.) We’d consider that on the lower end pricing-wise and a solid pick for entry-level homeowners.
How do Smart Light Bulbs Work?
In breaking down the technology behind our smart home, it’s important to remember that these are more than light bulbs; they are smart home devices in and of themselves. Like our cameras and our smart locks, our smart light bulbs can be connected to one of many digital assistants: Amazon, Google, IFTTT, Samsung SmartThings, and more.
Did You Know? Each smart light bulb has built-in software that allows it to pair with a multitude of devices. From the hub of our choice (an Echo Show, in our case), we can automate the ordinary goings-on of our day, or intervene at any point to make real-time adjustments.
How to Install a Smart Light Switch
We’re not going to sit here and tell you that installing a smart light switch is easy for everyone. It’s not; especially if you don’t have electrical skills.
In typical smart light switches we’ve worked with, the first thing we do before we even get the thing set up is to cut the power to the electrical circuit our lights belong to. We never want to be installing electrical equipment while the power is on; this is a major safety hazard and could cause electrocution.
Electrocution? OK, let’s pause for a moment. If all of this sounds way too complex (and potentially dangerous) for you, do not hesitate to hire an electrician! Trust us: We’ve had enough installation mishaps to tell you that it’s OK to admit when you’re in over your head. We won’t judge.
Can Home Security Systems Be Hacked?
No matter how sophisticated your technology is, the cold, hard truth about home security systems is that if they’re connected to the Internet, they’re vulnerable to hacking.
You might have heard about one relatively recent high-profile case involving hackers speaking to homeowners through their Ring security camera’s two-way talk feature. Indeed, this was not the most reassuring news for us; while the brand investigated the issue and determined it was user error, the breach still laid bare the many vulnerabilities of wireless technology.
As users, we do have some control over how “secure” our security equipment will be. For one, we always use our own microSD cards to store our security cameras’ footage. This way, we’re not storing our videos to the cloud, where hackers could potentially attempt to access them.
Brand reputation matters here, too; we recommend sticking with major brands you’ve heard of, as they tend to update their firmware more frequently and add better safeguards. And — we can’t stress this enough — always use strong account passwords. For more tips and advice, visit our full guide to securing and protecting your home.
Features of Home Automation Security Systems
How will you automate your home? Here are basics about home automation for wireless home security and other home systems.
Updated May 22, 2023
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