As each day passes it seems more and more that regular connectivity to the Internet and all it has to offer becomes more and more important to each member of a family. From the kids being able to do research for schoolwork to you getting products and services for your home, to looking up recipes, getting music, movies and videos for entertainment for everyone and more, just about every facet of your home life now involves the Internet in some way. This is slowly leading towards what seems to lie in the inevitable future of homes – the connected home where everything and anything in the house has connectivity in order to run and operate.
The Home of the Future is Here Now
It may not seem that long ago that cartoons, movies and television shows you watched as a kid depicted the “Home of the Future” as one that was automated and offered all of the chores and services in the home being handled by machines and technology automatically. While you may not have a robot maid or butler to take of everything for you (this may not be far away either), the houses being constructed today are more and more like what you used to see in these shows. There are already many appliances available on the market today that can do things that are automated, such as refrigerators that can create shopping lists for you so you know what you need for a recipe or are running out of. There are smart hubs being used so that appliances can all be connected to each other to work in tandem to power down when no one is home to save energy. Most appliances coming out today can even be run remotely through applications on your smartphone.
Voice Activation Throughout Your Home
The latest trend coming in the connected home is that all of your appliances can be voice activated to use voice commands for certain operations. This means being able to operate things like your dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, oven, coffeemaker and lighting in your home can all be controlled just with the use of your voice. These appliances are equipped to handle commands that you need to operate them in certain ways and for many of them you do not even need to be home to get them going. All you need is to speak your command through an application on your smartphone and you can do things like start the dishwasher, turn the lights on or off, turn the heating or cooling system on and more.
While the idea of a connected home can be a great boon to everyone, the fact is that while many ideas are now available today, it is still prohibitively expensive for most people, with appliances of this nature running into the thousands of dollars for most models. The promise lies in the technology however and as time progresses these appliances will become more and more of the norm, making the prices come down so that at some point everyone can have the modern conveniences of the connected home that has always been spoken about.