Consumers are slowly but surely adopting the home automation mindset. Sales continue to rise and manufacturers keep churning out new products. But for so many of us, the big challenge with home automation is seamless integration. Overcoming that challenge is important. Simply put, seamless smart home integration matters more than ever.
What It Means to Be Seamless
The word ‘seamless’ means different things in different industries. In the smart home industry, seamless integration is the concept of connecting all the smart devices in a home – like lights, security systems, appliances, and thermostats – in a unified ecosystem that allows them all to communicate and interact with one another.
A key marker of their truly seamless system is a central hub that ties everything together. The hub can be a smartphone, a tablet, a computer, or even a smart speaker. Its main function is to make the entire system functional and accessible by the consumer without having to use individual apps to control each device.
If individual devices dominate your smart home system with single apps for controlling each one, your system isn’t seamlessly integrated. On the other hand, if you’re running something like a professionally installed home automation system from Vivint, you’re working with an integrated system.
Easily Recognized Features
A fully integrated smart home system is easily recognized by its key features. The first of those features is unified control. In other words, the consumer can access and control every device from a single, unified interface. But that’s not all. There are two more features to consider:
Automation– A seamlessly integrated smart home system offers automation capabilities that can tie multiple devices together. A perfect example is an automation that turns off all the lights, locks the doors, and adjusts the thermostat as the homeowner is climbing into bed.
Personalization– Seamless integration offers personalization capabilities that are hard to achieve with individual apps for each device. Manufacturer apps tend to be limited in what they can do. A fully integrated platform offers a nearly endless menu of possibilities.
Having used both integrated and non-integrated smart home systems, I prefer full integration. Having all of my devices talking to one another and ready to be automated and controlled from a unified interface sure beats playing with multiple apps for each of my devices.
Why Seamless Integration Matters
So why does all this matter? Because the very reason home automation is being developed demands it. Home automation is about convenience, efficiency, and security. Maximizing all three requires full integration. Consider the following:
DeviceVariety – Home automation is exploding, and so are the number of manufacturers getting in on it. Integration is necessary to account for the variety of devices now on the market.
Accessibility– If home automation is to reach its full potential, it must be fully accessible to all. Accessibility is still a challenge for many brands. But if those brands embrace integration, accessibility becomes easier to manage.
Compatibility– Compatibility has long been a pain point with consumers. Overcoming compatibility issues will ultimately be achieved when both consumers and the industry fully embrace seamless integration.
On that last point, it is possible to achieve integration without sacrificing brand identity. The evolution of computers and peripherals has proved that. Industry players do not have to worry about losing their identity by embracing integration. Yet they still do.
At any rate, the future of home automation is clearly pointed toward seamless integration. To the extent that it’s already possible, integration allows for more advanced smart home control. It is going to get better as time goes on.