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The term Smart Lighting system for Home Automation came into the spotlight after the analog lighting systems that we use in our homes turn into Digital lighting systems.
While building a smart home, the smart lighting system should be on top of your to-do list. The first smart home device and appliance was Lighting.
For small houses, smart lights aren't very useful & effective. But in case you have a big home or office, and you want to automate your entire home or office with minimal effort.
The Smart lighting system will probably be a much-needed and time-saving practice you can implement in your home.
Mode of connectivity
Before setting Smart lights in your home just make sure that which type of connectivity you will be going to use.
You have different options like Bluetooth, Wifi, or Zigbee. You guys know Bluetooth and wifi. But what is Zigbee?
Zigbee is a mesh network of protocols that connects your smart home devices with a centralized hub or smart mobile devices.
It is specially used to monitor and control other devices like in our case Smart home devices. We can use Zigbee to integrate with our Smart lighting system.
Which type of device to choose Devices?
With a Hub:
These types of Smart bulbs will connect all the bulbs with your smart device using a centralized Hub. Some companies manufacturers like Philips Hue make this kind of starter pack.
These starter packs usually contain 2-5 Smart bulbs and one Hub to connect them to your Smart assistant device.
Without a Hub:
There are some Smart Bulbs that directly connect with your assistant device. They don't need any Hub device to connect with the assistant platform.
Advantages of smart lighting systems
Saves time & effort - When we install the Smart lighting system in our home. It turns traditional Home Lighting systems into Modern, Smart, and More convenient. So it saves our time and effort.
Energy efficiency - The Smart Home lighting system has some awesome features like light Geo-fencing which the smart lighting system turns on and off according to our presence. So the lights will get turned off when not required.
Control smart lights as you want
You can control all of your light bulbs just by using your voice on your Smart voice assistant platforms. Different voice assistant platforms like Google Home, Amazon Alexa Dot, and Apple Homepod devices provide those features.
Smart light manufacturers also develop Lighting device compatible app that gives control to your hand.
The mobile app provides different functionalities like Routines, out-of-home control, etc for Smart Home lighting.
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Routines are one of the beneficial features for those who don't have time to switch on and off the lights. They can set routines & timers for that specific day and Smart lights will work accordingly.
Then what kind of routines & timers you can set? you can set routines to turn the bedroom light when you wake up in the morning, and routines to shut off the lights after you go to sleep.
even you can control smart lights with Voice assistants on your smartphone. E.g. Just give the voice command "Shut off the light in Kitchen" and it will turn off the lights for you.
There is one more feature called 'Geofencing'. It will turn on the lights when you are present in a specific area and turn off the lights when you are out.
Use smart bulbs or a smart switch
The Popular main manufacturers of Smart bulbs and switches are Philips Hue, IKEA, General Electric, etc.
Smart light bulbs are those LED bulbs that are controlled by using Voice, or mobile applications in an Internet-enabled environment.
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| Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash |
Types of smart bulbs
There 3 main types of Smart LED Bulbs White, Dimmer, & Multicolor. Most of us use White bulbs at home in our day-to-day use. Now you can customize it to using the Smart Lighting system.
Dimmer bulbs are White LED Bulbs that smartly turn down from Bright Light to harsh and warm light at Night.
Dimmer bulbs glow like a bright white light in daylight and Dim themselves at night.
Multicolor Bulbs are the Bulbs that change their color according to the command that we give through a smart device. It has RGB Colors which are used to create different color patterns.
We can connect those bulbs to Hub and then Smart Assistant or can connect directly to the Smart Assistant as well.
Smart light switches
Smart light switches are the mediators between Controller Smart devices(Smartphones or assistants) and smart lights.
We just need to connect the Controller device with a switch and switch with Smart lights.
After connecting the Controller device smart switches instead of traditional switches, you can control the Home lighting system using Smartphone apps or Smart assistants like Alexa, or Google assistants.
You can connect smart switches to Mobile apps or Smart home assistants like Alexa Dot, and Google Home devices using the Wifi network.
And then control your apps from anywhere in the world.
Smart switches also support Sensors. So you can also make a combination of Smart lights and Smart sensors to fully automate the Home lighting system.
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