Although it may seem otherwise, home automation has been with us for many decades, even if it was not until the rise of personal assistants that it did not reach the general public. There are houses prepared from the moment they are built to be able to be controlled remotely, or by voice, but the vast majority of Spanish houses do not reach these levels of comfort.
That doesn’t mean they can’t be condition existing houses to a minimum to have a cooler environment, especially with the heat waves that we are going through in Europe in these summer months. For this, smart devices can be used, others that make smart devices already present in homes and voice assistants.
In this article, three types of devices have been selected, always giving priority to their cost and looking for turn a house into a smart climate shelter without spending huge amounts of money.
smart fans
One of the star devices of the summers is undoubtedly the fan.
Between the features to consider These are the electricity consumption, the size of the device, the level of noise they can generate or if they are able to work without being connected to the current, with a battery. One of the brands that has invested the most in this type of device is Xiaomi, for which we published a buying guide for its smart fans a few days ago.
One of the best uses of this type of home appliance is to link it to Xiaomi temperature and presence sensors, or whatever brand it is, to activate them automatically depending on the heat and the presence of someone in the room.
smart plugs
If we already have a fan but it does not have advanced functions to turn it on and we don’t want to change it because it works well, we can always put a smart plug in it. In this way we will leave it permanently connected, by pressing the necessary buttons, and we will be able to turn it on or off remotely.
This, yes, It is important to check that the model that is at home does not have buttons that must be pressed every time it is unplugged
infrared receiver
But even in the case that we have just mentioned there are possibilities of automation. The cheapest is usually the Wifi-infrared controller, which makes it possible to transform this device into a universal remote control, also linked to the mobile. A few years ago, in EL ESPAÑOL – El Androide Libre, the Broadlink RM3 Mini, one of the models of this manufacturer, was analyzed.
With it it was possible to control air conditioning, television, vacuum cleaner… There are models that also use radio frequency, which means we can control ceiling fans that exists in many homes whose remote controls do not use infrared.
[Trucos caseros para enfriar las habitaciones de casa sin tocar el aire acondicionado]
Xiaomi also has such a device which is also a smartwatch and a speaker. And the price it usually offers is so low that it cannot be a bad buy in any way. Even at its original price it’s a good buy if you’re also looking for a voice assistant and a bluetooth speaker.
voice assistants
All of these products have applications for their use. We’ll be able to control power on and off and in some cases also power, oscillation, etc.. But the best thing is that in combination with voice assistants, both Google and Amazon, routines can be established.
For example, if we have a temperature sensor we can turn on the air conditioning when the temperature is higher than the set temperature and we go home. We can also use voice commands to activate them in one room before going to another, or from our mobile when we return home.
This also applies to Amazon Echo Auto or Android Auto, which may use these car assistant commands so that when we get home, our house is heated. And if you have a watch with Alexa or Wear OS, commands can be placed from it too.
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