7 Smart Home Trends We Expect To See This Year

When the Inter­net and dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty first came out, they were lim­it­ed to desk­top com­put­ers. You had your one-home con­nec­tion, and that was it. Then lap­tops and lat­er smart­phones put the Inter­net in our hands wher­ev­er we went. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy was get­ting small­er and more mobile every year. Smart Home automa­tion has arrived.

For the last few years, dig­i­tal and Inter­net tech­nol­o­gy has been expand­ing into a new fron­tier. Or, rather, an old fron­tier: Back into the home! Only this time, it’s not just your per­son­al home com­put­er.

More and more house­hold devices and ser­vices are being upgrad­ed to take advan­tage of smart tech­nolo­gies and inter­net access.

• • Mobile apps that help secure your home

One of the biggest trends we’re look­ing for­ward to in 2015 is a high­er amount of home secu­ri­ty. and smart home automa­tion. Many com­pa­nies now have mobile mon­i­tor­ing avail­able where you can wire­less­ly con­nect with your home’s secu­ri­ty sys­tem to watch a real-time feed of your home. That way, whether you’re across the street or across the coun­try, you’ll have peace of mind that your home is secure.

• • Clear­er home secu­ri­ty videos

Many home mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems don’t include video sur­veil­lance and those that do often pro­duce low-qual­i­ty videos. Thanks to recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances, home mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems are becom­ing more pro­gres­sive, offer­ing clear­er videos of your home.

• • Voice com­mand

Smart­phones have had voice con­trol soft­ware like Siri and Google Now for a few years now. So it should be no sur­prise that home mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems will like­ly be able to under­stand voice com­mands in the upcom­ing year.

• • Blue­tooth con­trol

Blue­tooth-enabled smart home mon­i­tor­ing con­trol means that installing new secu­ri­ty con­fig­u­ra­tions will be a breeze. Instead of hav­ing to tear out the dry­wall to install a hard­wired sys­tem, you’ll be able to stick a Blue­tooth sys­tem any­where you want sim­ply.

• • Low-pow­er devices that can con­nect to Wi-Fi®

Low-pow­er devices like smoke detec­tors used not to have enough ener­gy to take advan­tage of Wi-Fi con­nec­tiv­i­ty. With new low-pow­er Wi-Fi, this will no longer be the case. Although fires aren’t as big of a con­cern in unoc­cu­pied homes as thieves are, this will still give you peace of mind that your belong­ings are safe and sound. This tech­nol­o­gy is also promis­ing for bat­tery-pow­ered wire­less secu­ri­ty cam­eras.

• • Smart pow­er out­lets

From detect­ing unused devices and shut­ting them off to only pow­er­ing on when an actu­al plug is insert­ed (as opposed to a child’s fin­ger or a uten­sil), there are sev­er­al ways that smart out­lets can improve the effi­cien­cy and safe­ty of your home’s pow­er con­sump­tion, as well as the safe­ty of the fam­i­ly mem­bers in the house.

While advanced tech­nol­o­gy seems allur­ing to most peo­ple, the best pro­tec­tion for your home and your fam­i­ly is to equip your house with a trust­ed secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny. Places like PROTECTION PLUS ® will allow you to keep your home safe and sound, even with­out all the bells and whis­tles that 2015 may bring.