LET’S TALK

Jessica-Lee van der Walt, Sales & Marketing Manager, Gira UK, has her say on voice control.

As work, study and play continue to blur in today’s busy lifestyles, increasing functionality and connectivity is crucial at home. The latest innovations for home automation are all designed to bring greater ease and luxury to the modern home and more recently, more convenience, thanks to highly intuitive voice control technology.

It is these types of systems that are unlocking even more potential for both home and user, creating a uniquely personalised environment where users can set the mood and link devices at the push of a button or by talking to a digital assistant.

As more and more people embrace smart home life, we are delighted to see so many new features and functions for the UK smart home. For instance, users can now ‘link and synch’ different elements so they can start the day with blinds being raised as favourite music plays on the sound system.

Designed to be user-friendly, voice control solutions make it easy for homeowners to control the smart home with their voice. Most smart home systems will have an integrated skill for Amazon Alexa or manufacturer app giving access to Google Assistant or Google Home.

We are finding that combining functions such as lighting, heating and blinds in control panels as well as new opportunities like voice control, are giving people more freedom to create a comfortable environment with minimum effort – vital if someone in the household has limited mobility or suffers from chronic fatigue.

HUMAN CENTRIC

I think the greater desire for personalised technology into the home means that regardless of age or background, we will want lighting controls which support the way we want to live our lives. For the older market, this might mean an extra emphasis on clearly configured controls, voice commands and call systems, and for a young family – ensuring that controls can be child-proofed would make sense.

The sheer variety of switches and components available is triggering all sorts of ideas in terms of future integration, so the smart home possibilities that we see today are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of having highly individualised interior spaces, which know exactly what we like and when we like it.

Each design line by Gira is able to support more than 300 functions, so flexible indoor lighting can come to life for the end customer with ease and provide an infallible solution for professional electricians, installers and system integrators.