CONTRIBUTED CONTENT: Are your appliances talking to each other?
What are Smart Appliances?
Smart appliances are devices that are connected to the internet and can be monitored, controlled, or automated remotely. Traditional appliances just turn on and off. Smart appliances have sensors, processors and wireless radios that allow them to communicate with your phone, voice activate assistants, and each other. Many homes have at least one of these smart things, and the categories are expanding. Thermostats, refrigerators, ovens, robot vacuums, and more.
What Makes an Appliance “Smart?”
Smart appliances have three capabilities that a traditional one lacks: sensing, acting, and communicating.
Let’s take a look at a smart washing machine. For example, can detect the size of a load and adjust water levels (sensing), change its cycle settings automatically (acting), and send your phone a notification when the laundry is done (communicating). This works with microcontrollers and a wireless connection to your home network. What about window coverings? Smart window coverings can use repeaters to send signals through the communication network to raise and lower. Repeaters can be appliances in your home or an independent device that sends a signal. Window coverings can be on a timer set to raise or lower depending on a clock or tell how many lumens of light are out and have the blind lower or raise depending on how it is set to operate. Example: Bright sunshine can come to the window; the sensor is set at a certain threshold of lumens and the blind lowers to give shade to the window.
How You Control Them
Most smart appliances are controlled through a companion smartphone app provided by the manufacturer. GE, Samsung,
LG all use Apps to operate. Window coverings have their apps for each brand that has smart blinds. Hunter Douglas, Alta, Norman, Graber, and many manufacturers use their apps to control the operation of their blinds. These apps let you start or stop cycles, adjust settings to monitor energy, and receive alerts from anywhere with a cell signal.
Of course, window coverings also have remotes that can override the smart system through radio frequency. If your wi-fi is down, you can use the remote to operate the radio frequency to run the blinds.
Smart appliances and window coverings can go through centralized hubs that pull all their devices into one interface. That is where the term “smart home” takes shape; not just individual connected appliances, but a coordinated system where the thermostat, lights, locks, kitchen appliances and, yes, window coverings can respond to schedules, routines or triggers you set up.
Happy Smart Home Coming!
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This article written by Gerry Yates — Factory Rep Blinds.