Why Automate Your Home

By Amir Majidimehr

Have you heard the term “smart home” or “home automation?” If you have, did it make any sense to you? I bet if you are like 99% of the population, you have neither heard the term or if you have, you don’t know what exactly it means. If so, this is the article for you. In it, we will explain how, by adding the right technology, you can increase your enjoyment of your home, make it safer, reduce your energy consumption, and usher in world peace. Well, OK, the last one is a stretch but hopefully you’ll agree with the other benefits by the time we are done :).

Let’s start with the basics. Automation refers to a system that takes one “event” and translates that into one or more actions. Take your refrigerator. It has a sensor that measures the temperature inside your fridge. Should it go above certain level, it turns on the compressor and cools the inside. Likewise, your oven can be set to a set temperature and it will then cycle the heating element/gas valve on and off to maintain that level allowing even cooking of your food. While these are simple examples of control systems, they nevertheless demonstrate how automating repetitious actions can bring a lot of convenience. Imagine turning your fridge on and off manually to maintain its temperature!

The idea of home automation takes the above concept and extends it to multiple devices working together. For example, let’s say you are watching a movie and you hear the phone ringing. Without any form of automation, you would pause the video using the DVD player remote control, and then likely fumble in the dark to the light switch to turn it on and finally answer the phone. Now imagine having an automation system controlling the Audio/Video equipment and lighting. This system will receive the pause “event” from the remote control and instruct the DVD player to pause while telling the lighting system to gently turn up the lights over a couple of seconds to 50% level to allow your eyes to acclimate. While your guests are talking about how cool that bit of magic was, you finish your phone call and then simply hit play on the remote and the system turns the lights smoothly down (perhaps much faster than it did when it brought them up) and starts playing the movie.

There are myriads of ways to accomplish the above goal but one concept is key: a centralized system that is controlling everything. That system could be a smart remote control, a small controller in the audio video component rack, or a full blown automation controller which controls the whole house with this scenario being just one many applications that it handles.

Now let’s take the scenario further. Imagine the movie is finished, everyone leaves the room but the projector is left on. There is no movie playing so the fact that the projector is still on is not noticed. This causes multiple problems. For one, most projectors have limited bulb life with replacement bulbs costing a few hundred dollars. So it is important to not leave the unit on when no one is watching anything. Then there is the issue of power consumption. The projector alone will use several hundred watts of power. Add to that the other A/V gear and lights, and you could be burning through one to two kilowatts of power per hour. That is enough power to light a small home!

The solution is to add an occupancy sensor. This is a device that senses both motion and sound in the room as a means of detecting whether someone is still in the room. In the above situation, once the movie stops and everyone leaves the room, the occupancy sensor signals to the automation controller that the room is unoccupied. The controller in turn turns off the A/V equipment and the lights are gradually lowered (in the off chance someone is still there, this will be their clue that systems are being shut down, giving them time to override the action).

The beauty of this type of automation is that no explicit user action was required for anything to happen. The automation system was able to predict what should logically happen. The result was longer equipment life, and lower power consumption.

Can we get fancier? Sure we can! Say you have a vacation house and when you leave, you like to lower the temperature in the home in winter to save on heating costs and raise it to a comfortable level when you come back. With the automation system, it is very easy to program the system to automatically turn down the temperature when you leave (e.g. as a result of arming the alarm system on your way out). Or if you forgot, to use your phone or remote PC to manually set the temperature back.

But why stop there? Let’s put our propeller hats on and really dig in here. Assume you have a heat pump as the source of heat. What is a heat pump? It is simply a reversible air conditioner. Instead of taking heat out of a house as an air conditioner would, it brings the residual heat from outside in. Even when it is cold outside, there is fair amount of energy stored in the atmosphere which the heat pump captures and releases inside. This type of electric heating system can be three to four times more efficient than simple “resistive” electric furnaces.

Alas, there are some limitations to this type of system. The heat pump is able to only extract so much heat per hour from the outside air. If you ask it to work any harder, it kicks in an ordinary electric heating element to supplement the energy it is extracting from outside air. Unfortunately as soon as you do this, you no longer benefit from the heat pump technology and your electricity usage becomes equal to amount of heat you require. In other words, you use three to four times more energy than if you let your heat pump do its thing slowly.

Yes we know. You didn’t want to learn about HVACs when you clicked on this link but believe it or not, we are still talking about an automation system. Imagine our last scenario. You tell the system to boost the temperature by 10 degrees to make it comfortable in time for when you arrive at your vacation house. If the controller just passed that message to the heat pump, you would hit the above situation with the heating element turning on and losing efficiency. So instead, knowing that it takes you a few hours to get to your home, the control system gradually raises the thermostat, outsmarting the heat pump and allowing it to gradually raise the temperature using its reverse cycle heat system instead of the heating element.

There is another benefit to the above in that the gradual increase in temperature is easier on your furniture and wood floors which do not like to have their environment changed too rapidly. This is important in both directions. Instead of setting back the thermostat instantly by 10 degrees when you leave the house, the control system can gradually lower the temperatures over a 2 to 3 day period, allowing the wood movement to be more gradual, avoiding cracks, and finish/joint failures. Who knew that automation could help make your furniture last longer?

By the way, the same type of remote control enables you to turn on the exterior lights remotely and say, check for storm damage using your security cameras at night. How much peace of mind would that bring? We know, priceless! :)

Let’s go back to basics and cover another useful scenario. Say you are working parents and have a child who is supposed to come home from school before you do. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a confirmation sent to your phone when that happens so that you don’t have to wonder whether your child has safely returned home on time? Well, with an automation system it is pretty easy to do. A door sensor or security alarm code would enable the controller to know that your child arrived home during the set period and send a text message to the parents confirming their safe arrival

The last scenario touches on something important. While we can talk about typical types of automation that many people might find useful, an automation system allows your home to behave like you want! That is the beauty of a control system with software than can program it. In the hands of an expert designer, practically any scenario can be implemented.

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