Outfitting your house with the latest smart home technology is a significant investment of time, money and energy. This makes it all the more frustrating when you go to use your new automation system and you find that nothing is working quite as it should. Or perhaps your system is working well enough, but you’re just not getting as much out of it as you thought you would.

Either way, you’re not getting what you paid for, so what do you do? We’ve put together this list of tips and tricks that will help residents from Parksville, British Columbia to Calgary, Alberta, maximize the value of their home automation system. Read on to learn more.

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UPGRADE YOUR HOME NETWORK

Smart home systems depend on a strong network to function properly. The devices in your home need to talk to the network, to each other and to your mobile device or control surface, and none of that can happen without a dependable network.

If you’re experiencing connection issues, spotty service or other glitches, your home network may be to blame. Have a technology automation professional look at your system to see if you have coverage gaps, too much traffic on your network, bandwidth distribution errors or other problems that might be affecting your performance.

AUTOMATED CONTROLS FOR SCHEDULES AND SCENES

Maybe the problem you’re having isn’t that your devices aren’t working properly, but rather that they don’t seem to be making a major impact on your life. If that’s the case, the issue may be how your devices are set to operate.

Let’s use lighting control as an example. Being able to control all your lights from your phone or other control surface is handy, but it only scratches the surface of what lighting control can do.

You can set up schedules to have certain lights turn on or off automatically at certain times of the day, freeing you from having to make painstaking adjustments on every switch. You can also create preset scenes for certain moods or occasions, such as dinner or outdoor entertaining, again saving you precious time. These are simple tricks, but the ultimate goal is to move beyond simple control of your system toward automating as much of it as possible, freeing you up to spend more time doing things you enjoy.

COMBINE AND CONQUER WITH INTEGRATED SMART HOME TECHNOLOGY

Like many things in life, the total power of a home automation system is greater than the sum of its parts. A single device or system may be powerful on its own, but linking multiple systems together through automation produces even greater dividends.

Let’s use lighting control as an example again. Lighting control is an easy system to pair with other automated elements of your home to get greater performance. You can link your lighting control to your A/V system to have the lights dim automatically in your media room or home theater when it’s time to watch a movie.

Or you can combine your lights, your door locks and your security system so that one button press locks your doors, turns on the alarm and turns off all your lights at night. You can even set up a schedule to make any or all of these things happen automatically, further reducing the amount of time you need to spend messing with individual devices or systems.

These are just a few ways to get greater performance from your home automation system. For more information on installing and maintaining home automation systems in the Parksville, BC region, call Insight Automation International at 250-248-5382 or visit our website.