Lighting automation is one of the most sought-after smart home features, and the benefits are easy to understand. Smart lighting control can save energy, add convenience, and increase your home’s safety. Lighting automation/control systems also add the flexibility to fine-tune one light or many in a variety of ways.
Perhaps the most powerful feature of smart lighting is the ability to create a scene. A scene is a way to program several light fixtures – or several rooms of them – to specific settings at the same time. You can then set the scene with the touch of a button, a tap on a smartphone app, or even using a voice command. Sounds simple, right? Let’s explore some innovative ways of using lighting automation in your Hungarian home.
Sunrise & Sunset
Turning on a set of lights at sunrise and sunset is one of the most popular ways to use lighting automation. This scene is perfect for landscape, path, and entry lighting. For example, at sunset or a few minutes after, you can have your attractive landscape lights, driveway, footpath, and main door entry lights come on and automatically go off at sunrise or later. Furthermore, this scene can be set to run automatically without intervention. Unlike not-so-smart timers from the past, smart lighting control picks up varying times from the internet, so your lights are correctly programmed no matter the season.
Bump in the Night
Consider this a safety scene. What if you hear a loud and unusual noise in the middle of the night? Hit one button on your smartphone or a bedside wall keypad, and you can turn on a variety of lights in the living area of your home as well as backyard spotlights. You can startle a potential intruder, or perhaps the cat causing the ruckus. If you want more automation, strategically located motion or sound sensors can also trigger this safety scene automatically for peace of mind.
Christmas Lights
This is the time of year for holiday lights. As everyone knows, some holiday lighting can contribute significantly to electric bills. Create an automated lighting scene that manages the holiday lights for you. You may want them to shut off at midnight or later and come on only when it’s truly dark. With an automated scene, you can precisely program it any way you want for maximum enjoyment and efficiency and coordinate them to not compete with other outside lighting.
Movie Night
Most people don’t watch movies or shows in total darkness. You want some dim lighting to offset your screen’s brightness or even to find the remote buried in the couch. What you don’t want to do is to go around the room painstakingly dimming several lights for just the right ambiance. With lighting automation, the “Movie Night” scene will do it for you. Better yet, when integrated with your home automation and AV control, one button makes it all happen. Your AV system comes to life, your motorized blinds close, and of course, your lights are choreographed to just the right settings to enjoy the entertainment.
These are but four possibilities out of countless ways to use lighting automation. Animative Smart Home can show you all the lighting control options for your home in our downtown showroom.
