How to automate your house

Now control the air-conditioning in your room from office or pull the drapes while returning from work. The author lists the gadgets that make your house a smart home

Smart watches, smart phones and now smart homes - "smartness" seems to be the flavour of the season. Contrary to popular perception, smartening up your home might not cost a bomb. For all you know, you might have already taken the first step in making your home smart. You probably have a broadband connection at home (and a Wi-Fi router). If so, the basic setup is already there. The router shares the Internet connection with your phone, tablet and smart TV. And if your router has a USB port, get hold of a portable hard drive, dump your favourite songs and photos on it, connect it to the router and share it with the devices.

Let's take it a notch higher: invest in a dual-band broadband router, preferably with a USB 3.0 port. There are many options available, including from ASUS, Netgear, Cisco, Edimax and TP-Link, some of which I have used.

But what if one could turn on the air-conditioning from office? Or control the lights and drapes in the house while on vacation? All that is possible, albeit at a price, from Lutron. Not only would that make life comfortable, but would also save energy.

"Your budget is the only real limit to what you can do to make your house a smart home," says Manjul Trehan, India head and director (sales), Lutron Electronics Inc. "For an average household, you can save up to 60 per cent of your lighting energy and 10-30 per cent of your heating and cooling costs by adopting various strategies such as occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, personal dimming control, automated shading, plug load control and time scheduling." Trehan believes that dimming your lights by 25 per cent can save 20 per cent energy. Automated shades can help block harmful UV and solar heat gain, thus lowering energy consumption by airconditioners."

An occupancy sensor costs about Rs 8,500. Solutions to control lighting and drapes are also available from Legrand. So you see, making your home smart is no big deal.

PC with voice software
Price: Rs 6,995 onwards
Software like Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking Home 13 Indian English edition types out spoken words
 

Dynamic keypad and iPad app
Price: Rs 45,000 upwards
Systems, such as from Lutron, can be controlled by a keypad and an app
 

Wireless hard drive
Price: Rs 10,999 for 1TB
With Seagate's wireless hard drive, one can take media along and stream to portable devices
 

Dual-band router
Price: Rs 18,600
Routers, like this from from ASUS, can stream HD videos without lag
 

Home media server
Price: Rs 12,562 for 4TB
Servers like the one from Seagate can act as a repository for all your media
 

Occupancy sensor
Price: Rs 8,500
This device from Lutron can detect if someone is in a room and can turn lights on/off