Smart Homes vs Traditional Homes

          Some advantages and disadvantages between traditional homes and a smart home are technologically significant. A smart home is a house connected with devices to automate specific tasks and controlled, monitored and managed remotely through Internet. In a traditional home you need to turn on/off the lights or close/open the windows manually, while in a smart home, you can press only one button and you can have the control over all your home wherever you are with an Internet connection. However, there are pros and cons between these two options of homes. Advantages include energy efficiency and savings; manage and control through Internet, while disadvantages include initial costs, internet reliance and security issues.

          It’s very expensive convert traditional homes into smart homes. The initial cost to transform your traditional home into a smart home result in a strong investment. At the beginning you will need some main devices like switches, hubs, change traditional outlets to smart outlets to automate lighting, climate or some products that currently are not smart yet. You must change the most common appliances to smart appliances that support the new technologies and those might be connected to Internet. Therefore, the new digital and modern appliances and devices will result in a strong investment, and it will necessarily include a new budget for maintenance because new devices are often more sophisticated to repair than common appliances or devices. In contrast with traditional homes where you can fix some issues in your home easily or find someone to fix it, with the smart homes you need to find someone who has the expertise and knowledge about smart things. Many people are not skilled enough in this field yet and how to fix these smart home technologies could not be easy and cheap than stuff in traditional homes. Although smart homes have high costs at the beginning, future savings might absorb associate costs even more than a traditional home.

          Smart home represents more energy-efficient than traditional homes. The technology used and installed in this kind of houses include electronic components and smart appliances with the only goal to work with less amount of energy and to be connected during long periods of time even years, without change a battery. As a result, savings on utilities such as gas, electric and water are reflected in your bills. Moreover, it is not only saving money, you can also diminish the waste of water, gas, electricity because smart devices can avoid, monitor and control excessive use of energy. In contrast savings and the control of heating and air conditioning is totally different in a conventional installation of a traditional home. For example, “The first way in which smart homes save energy is heat monitoring. Old school thermostats are rarely capable of properly keeping track of the heat in your home. Smart homes use multiple sensors to measure the exact temperature and therefore have a better knowledge of how to heat it” (Smart Energy International, 2019, para. 4) with these changes in your home you can approach the energy and save money if you utilize the correct sensors and devices in a practical way. These improvements use the energy more efficiently than a traditional house where you are not able to make improvements or monitoring the consumption in your energy.

          Nowadays, Internet is part of our daily lives thus Internet is essential for smart homes. To enjoy full capabilities in a smart home is imperative to have a good and stable Internet connection. When people have decided to transform and connect traditional homes in smart homes through Internet “The convenience factor here is enormous. Being able to keep all of the technology in your home connected through one interface is a massive step forward for technology and home management” (Bluespeed AV, 2016, para. 6), these open unlimited possibilities to manage your home. However, is not only to have a good connection of Internet, this connection should also be reliable and redundant with maybe another service provider, because a smart home without a reliable Internet connection will not work properly. For instance, if you live in an area where the internet connection is poor, you could experience serious issues because your smart home devices might not respond correctly. Besides if you want to control your home or your devices since your work or another remote place, you will not be able to do it. For these reasons a good and reliable Internet could be a big advantage but also a big obstacle if the place where we want to build or transform a smart home doesn’t have the vital resource to connect it with the world.

          The security is another very important point to take in mind. A new security system is necessary in smart homes to protect the internal network from hackers or malicious people. Whereas a traditional home is secure because the data or the information is not expose, in smart homes are at risk of getting hacked. While more devices are connected to Internet there are more probability to be attacked. The hackers can learn about your routine, stole important data, images, videos, take the control of surveillance cameras, doors, lights, alarms and everything with a connection in the network. On the other hand, in a traditional home, you can be safe for hackers, but you should be careful about thieves who may be attracted by unsecure traditional homes than a surrounded and equipped home with cameras and alarms. Nowadays many older people don´t agree about the idea of a smart home because “Since we often hear about weaknesses of those systems which make it easy for burglars to get into our home, many people may refrain from those smart home technologies and rather rely on their old-school locks, even if those locks are also quite unsafe.” (Joe Gebbia, 2020, para. 3) but unless you have enough expertise or knowledge in programming or hacking you won’t be able to break the security in a smart home.

          Your house represents and express the style of living that you want. The traditional home can be more warmth and reflect a natural lifestyle while a smart home is completely automatized house with everything programable. There are many important advantages to smart homes like the energy efficiency and the savings that you can achieve having a smart home. However, there are also some problems related to smart homes associated with the initial costs, Internet reliance and security problems. Although many traditional homes are being transformed into smart homes to manage the energy efficiently and help the environment with these technologies, we need to be careful improving security in our devices and network having a secure place where we might live. In the end both traditional and smart homes are the perfect place to live, both have pros and cons, the last decision is yours, everything depends in how you prefer to live.

Exercises

Sources

1. Smart Energy International

Author: Smart Energy International

Date: Oct29, 2019

Title: How smart homes save energy

Website: https://www.smart-energy.com/features-analysis/how-smart-homes-save-energy/

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2. Bluespeed AV

Author: Bluespeed AV

Date: Jun14, 2016

Title: The 7 greatest advantages of smart home automation

Website: https://bluespeedav.com/blog/item/7-greatest-advantages-of-smart-home-automation

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3. Environmental-Conscience

Author: Joe Gebbia

Date: 2020

Title: Advantages & Disadvantages of Smart Homes

Some people may not like smart technologies

Website: https://environmental-conscience.com/smart-homes-pros-cons/

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