Smart home automation: Benefits vs. challenges.

We have come a long way since manually controlled home security systems.

17:57 12 December 2017

Manual thermostats, and dial-up connections that take too long to open a single email. With the available of reliable broadband connection, WiFi-connected gadgets, and smartphones that house every app that you need to control just about any device, smart homes are now easier to build.

 

With this technology, you can turn on or off your lights in the house or close the garage door wherever you are in the world. All you need is open an app in your smartphone and click few buttons.

 

Although smart homes offer a number of benefits, they also present challenges. For them to be efficient, it is important that you have a highly reliable internet connection. If your WiFi is down and you need to open the door to grant access to your kids, for example, while you are in the office, they might be sitting on the front lawn for quite sometime. Also, smart homes are vulnerable to hackers who can hack into your gadgets and gather information that they can use to harm or extort money from you.

 

Further, these systems can be extremely expensive and learning how to use them could be a huge challenge, especially for older users who are not tech-savvy.