Providing value in Home automation

With the advancement of technology, simplification and management of life chores, personal and professional, has been one of the most important boons to us. Technology has now seeped into all aspects of our life and created a well networked ecosystem that allows us to be connected with people, events and happenings at real time through our smartphones. Though technology has helped us to save time, energy and effort from mundane activities, another aspect that is seldom highlighted is the role it plays in building a smart home.

Apart from providing ease of remote management of home appliances and other devices, technology goes beyond these aspects to provide home security and energy savings in the long run.

Newer app-based home automation products are now being designed and developed to provide end users value, ease and safety. Home automation products can now provide remote control of devices like fans, lights, air conditioners, televisions, water heaters, video security appliances and motion sensor devices amongst other services. These home automation products can be placed on timer through the app-control panel for selective usage and post configuration, the products switch off operations as per the feed.

These products can also be configured along with motion sensor devices to switch off automatically in absence of people in a room. Newer technology, especially incase of water heaters, also provides a warning system that informs on product malfunction. Technology has now evolved to create functions like energy savings, live monitoring and warning features that provide end users a complete saving and safety solution.

Technology developers in the home automation segment are focused towards building a robust software, hardware and integrated platform to manage energy resources where it matters the most, the affordable home segment.  Unlike the old technology, the newer home automation products are wi-fi based and do not require any wiring for device operations or control. These products can be fixed independently for single device control or for multiple device control and are now available for a fraction of the cost compared to the wired home automation products.

The real estate sector, especially the affordable home segment developers, is actively looking at energy-saving home automation products that provide additional value to the homebuyers. Many leading developers have already integrated the deployment of this technology across their projects and, hopefully, soon home automation products will become a standard feature in product delivery across the sector.

The home automation segment has witnessed a surge in sales in the last few years with mobilisation strongly across metro locations and Tier-1 cities. With the growth of technology, the value proposition of integrating home automation products will only add to the existing delivery across product lines.

[The writer is the founder of Picostone Technologies, a startup innovating in the field of home automation.)