Setting up a smart home has the potential to give you and your loved ones something invaluable – more quality family time together. The technology available for smart homes can improve efficiency in many areas of your daily life by saving energy, saving time, and helping you feel safe. In this article, we’ll discuss some available smart home tech that will help you turn a smart house into a smart home.

Free up your life for family time

With frantic schedules, it can be challenging to get everyone together for some family time. Smart home technology could free up some of your time, so you can spend it on what you’d rather be doing.

Smart refrigerators like Samsung’s Family Hub™ have built in screens that can display calendars, share memos, help you order groceries and more. It makes for easy communication between family members as the fridge is often considered the heart of a home and a hub of activity. It also saves you time with things like ordering groceries because it enables you to do it online.

Another piece of smart kitchen technology are smart egg holders; they notify your phone when you’re running low on stock. Smart vacuum cleaners are a useful tool for chipping away at an otherwise time-consuming task. They can be remotely controlled, scheduled, or set-up automatically to help clean your house.

Make heating and lighting easy

The benefits of saving energy go beyond simply doing your bit for the environment – they can also make your life easier. Smart heating and smart lighting have internal systems that can make energy conscious decisions which has the added benefit of reducing your power bill.

Smart lighting most often uses LED bulbs which consume less energy than incandescent light bulbs. What makes them smart, however, is the way the lights are controlled. Smart lighting is most often controlled through an app on your smartphone or tablet. Which makes it easier to stay on top of making sure your lights are turned off when you aren’t in the room – kids can be forgetful (parents can be too). Some smart lighting systems have motion sensor technology which means they will turn off when there is no one in the room.

Smart heating can save on your bill and on energy consumption in similar ways to smart lighting. The fact that you can manage turning your heating on and off from your smartphone or tablets, means it’s easier to ensure the heating is only running when it needs to be. Motion sensors and smart internal thermostats enable your smart heating system to automatically adjust the temperature of a room in an energy efficient manner. If your room reaches an optimum temperature, then the heater might reduce its efforts and wait for the room’s temperature to drop before heating up again.

Help to keep your family safe at home

Smart security systems can help to keep your family safe. Smart home security technology is flexible and often DIY-friendly, it also has expanded reach in that most smart home security cameras can be viewed from anywhere with internet access (so if you’re at work, you can stay informed on any unusual activity in your home). Some smart home cameras can send notifications to your smart phone or tablet when people arrive at your door, so you can keep an eye on packages that get delivered, or you can see if the kids get home from school before you.

Smart locks are great to use in conjunction with smart security cameras. Just like all smart home tech, they can be operated from your smart phone or tablet. Without the need of a physical key, you can unlock the door from a distance. So, if we go back to a scenario that we raised earlier (the kids arriving home before you do), you could unlock your smart lock to let them in. Or, send them a unique code to enter into a keypad to unlock the door themselves.

Smart pet cameras also mean you can keep an eye on your adorable four-legged family members – because their safety is important too. Smart pet cameras can notify you when the dog is barking and enables you to pass treats to your pet from anywhere with internet access.