Smart lighting is one of the easiest home automation products to get and yet provides a wealth of features and benefits for its owner.
Smart lighting has evolved from being a smart appliance to one that allows you to use your own bulbs. For instance, the Melec Stitchy Kit lets you keep your lights and existing switches while allowing them to be controlled by Alexa, the Apple HomeKit and Google Home. There’s no need to replace anything- in less than a minute, you can easily add your lights to your smart home infrastructure.
We’ll tackle smart lighting and the possibilities it can create for your home’s safety and convenience.
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What are Smart Lights?
Smart lights are like your everyday light bulb except for one thing- they can be controlled with an app, by sound or voice command.
Smart bulbs will usually have different color LEDs and brightness levels, which can be set when you open the product’s app or integrate it within your existing smart home devices.
With this kind of setup the applications are endless. You can create a variety of lighting options depending on the situation, mood or time of day. For instance, you can dim the lights in evenings, activate night light when reading and working or turn it into a strobe for parties.
How to Set Up Smart Lighting
Smart bulbs usually work with Apple HomeKit or Google Home Hub via mesh networking, a technology where the product is connected with others like it. The hub handles them and in turn communicates with your smart home’s Wi-Fi router.
Some can work even when you’re away from home through the use of a smartphone that’s connected to the internet. If you keep worrying about whether you’ve left the lights on at the front porch, simply whip out your mobile and set it ‘off’- problem solved!
Get an Apple HomeKit and you can set up a complex network of smart products that you can customize depending on what you want. For example, you can tell your smart lighting to turn on and off quickly when your smart home camera picks up unauthorized motion.
Using Digital Assistants
Google Home, Amazon Echo and HomeKits will allow you to use just your voice to control your smart lighting and just about any connected device. Setting it up only takes a few minutes; then you can tell the digital assistant to turn off the lights or change to mood lighting without having to take out your smartphone.
Smart Lighting Benefits
In general, having a smart house brings greater convenience to one that requires manual input.
Smart lights utilize LED technology, which means they don’t consume more power than a traditional LED bulb. You can opt for a 10W bulb, which is roughly equivalent to a 60W incandescent bulb. They have warm, cool and multi-colored options and some have brightness settings too.
You can get greater power savings as you can shut them off as needed, e.g., in certain times of the day, whenever you go out or on command. The technology pays for itself over time, which makes it a worthy consideration for every home.
