3 minute read
Home Is Where the Smart Is
When you think of what goes into creating a smart home, it’s easy to jump feet first into what kind of gadgets deck out your kitchen or the luxurious way your driveway lights up at the motion of your car. But for all this automation to occur, a thoughtful manual process has to happen first. That’s where ioty comes in.
The Miami-based home automation company connects the dots between smart devices and systems to create a seamless experience from start to finish. From the nitty gritty foundations of prewire and A/V to the final touches on a private home theater, ioty’s dedication to creating reliable and easy smart home solutions has made the company a standout in the industry. But how do you design a system that promises longevity when new home tech is being put out on the market every day? For ioty, it all starts in The Lab.
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The self-described “tech-savvy realists” cut through the fancy marketing and parlor tricks of promising smart gadgets by running them through their paces on the workbench. The ioty lab also maintains a full system so the latest firmware, software, and hardware can be put to work in a real-life environment. The criteria is simple: don’t recommend anything you wouldn’t use yourself. And while their projects vary hugely in scope and design, the refreshing practicality of ioty’s approach extends to every step in the development process. “Finding a balance between cutting edge, performance and reliability is where we specialize,” says Silva, “What good is cutting edge if it isn’t usable and what good is usable if it’s outdated?”
Being the first line of defense on so many emerging technologies has given ioty’s team an informed perspective into the future of smart homes. With touch screens and keypads making up 99% of installations, they can surmise that app-controlled systems aren’t going away anytime soon—unless hologram technology surprises us with major advances. Even then, the real goal is to interact with the technology in our homes less and less while it handles the tasks that are required to provide the experience we want.
“There is a difference between what we think we need and what we really need and use in our homes,” says Silva, “We’ve been in this business long enough to know the difference.” For more information, visit iotypro.com
Getting Started with Home Automation
What questions should you ask yourself when deciding which parts of your home need automation?
The most important questions come down to your lifestyle and the experience you are looking for. Some of the questions we like to ask our clients are:
Which is the most commonly used room in the house? Would you like your technology hidden or visible? Are there any rooms that need more privacy than others? How many people in your household stream movies and music? In which rooms?
What is a simple home automation routine for beginners?
Depending on the system you use, routines are relatively simple to set. Set your desired setting, give it a name, and save it as a scene. Then, at a future date, you can recall the same exact scene with the push of a button.
The most common routines are “Good morning, good night, welcome home, and party time.”
Is there such a thing as too much automation?
Absolutely! In our minds, we can come up with dozens and dozens of diff erent scenes but in real-world usage, most people end up with much fewer, but more helpful and lifestyle-fi tting scenes. When thought out and set up properly, you can spend time enjoying your home with a small amount of input to achieve the technology settings that are required.
REAL ESTATE THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE
It’s no secret that the housing market in South Florida is soaring. Serving 130 miles of coastline, Broward, Palm Beaches & St. Lucie Realtors® has developed an impressive suite of MLS Beaches products that has revolutionized the way agents interact with their clients. Senior Vice President of MLS and Data Integrations, Greg Manship, shares his take on the newest updates to their software and the way technology is rapidly changing the real estate industry as we know it.
