One of the best parts of the holiday season is decorating. Whether it’s lights, music, mistletoe, or holiday family pictures, everything just seems more cheerful this time of year. However, getting everything to work together can be difficult. That’s where smart home tech can help.
Why You Might Want to Use Smart Home Tech
People have been automating Christmas for almost as long as they’ve been decorating for it. You’ll find plenty of timers (both indoor and out), Radio Frequency (RF) controllers, and more that work without Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, or other wireless protocols.
So, why bother with smart home tech instead? Because it gives you consistency. With classic timers and remotes, you might need to relearn how each device works when you buy new units to replace one that failed or supplement what you have. Even after you learn how they work, syncing them is difficult, at best.
Outdoor timers are a great example; you usually plug in the unit, set the time, and then program on and off sequences. However, you have to repeat the process for every timer, and, sooner or later, you’ll have them set for slightly different times, and they’ll drift further apart.
I’m speaking from experience. I abandoned timers in frustration when I realized those outside were as much as two hours apart, thanks to drift and other imperfections. RF remotes aren’t much better.
Unless you’re careful, you can end up with multiple remotes that send different signals and aren’t compatible with each other. Smart Home tech bypasses all these problems because it uses a common interface and shares one clock.
You’ll see this right away when you automate your Christmas lights.
Automate Your Lights
Do you hang Christmas lights on your home or a Christmas tree? Do you go the extra mile and add them to other places, too, like the mantle? Then you should consider automating them.
For outdoor lights, you need an outdoor plug, like the iClever. It’s Wi-Fi-capable and has two smart outlets (an improvement over GE’s Z-Wave option, as it has only one smart outlet).
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from How-To Geek https://ift.tt/2OgQyrc
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