What is Home Automation?

Remember what TV was like before the remote control? Getting up each time you wanted to change the channel or volume. That was no fun.

Being able to control your TV and even your entire home theatre while lying on the couch has become a way of life. Now imagine being able to control lighting, entertainment, doors and windows, cameras, heating and cooling, sprinklers, communications and appliances in your home, from any room in your house, from overseas and even automatically. That is home automation.

Think of your car and how it has little computers automatically controlling the doors, windows, engine, air conditioning, lighting, windscreen wipers, headlights. All this to make it easy and convenient to control your car from a single point rather than having to lean over and wind the window up or get out and unlock the boot for your partner. That technology has been around for a long time and now we have it for your home.

Broadband Internet access, complex home networks, and the digitization of entertainment as well as the concern with using energy and water are sparking new interest in ways to tie together all of the systems within your home and make life more convenient and enjoyable and efficient.

As well as making control of entertainment systems simple and easy to use, your house will know when you are not at home and make the house look lived in, it will monitor inside and outside temperatures to allow the house to cool in summer and stay warm in winter, it will send out an alarm if things are not working properly

Put simply, home automation is anything that gives you remote or automatic control of devices around the home and the options are continually increasing as they become more affordable.