The Five Essential Tech Upgrades for a Smart Home

There are a lot of fantastic technological innovations on the market, and there’s also a huge amount of junk. If you aren’t already an expert on smart home technology, it can be a challenge to figure out what’s truly essential versus what is just fluff. Read on if you’d appreciate having some insights on five tech upgrades that are truly useful and essential ones.  

1. An Ultra-Secure Router

Without a proactive security strategy in place, your smart home devices are easily hackable and nearly impossible to protect. Your router will have to play a significant role in safeguarding your entire smart system from being compromised by hackers.

You’ll want to choose a router that offers the most updated security features, one of which is encryption capability. The most up-to-date Wi-Fi encryption protocol to look for is known as “Wi-Fi Protected Access 3” (WPA3) encryption.

2. Outlets With Built-In USB Charging Ports

The more USB devices you own, the more cluttered with bulky AC adapters your wall outlets tend to get. If you want to ditch all those unsightly adapters, there’s a streamlined solution you could consider: outlets with built-in USB charging ports.

This solution has another advantage beyond the tidier, less cluttered appearance. These outlets also give your devices a faster charge.

3. A Whole-House Audio Setup

The least expensive option requires an amplifier or receiver, plus speakers, TV screens and a handheld remote. For some easy steps on building a home theater, check here.

There are countless different video/audio distribution solutions you could consider when you design your smart home. One possible approach is to configure an amplifier or receiver to create a whole-house audio system. 

There are different ways this could be achieved. The simplest method is to split the output from a single amplifier or receiver between multiple rooms in your home. You can choose to use either a centralized volume controller or individual volume controls for each room. This sort of system also requires the use of an impedance matching system.

4. A Robotic Vacuum Cleaner (Robovac)

A robovac is an automated vacuum cleaner that will clean your floor without you having to push it around yourself. The current generation of robovacs is far more impressive than what you might remember from the earlier models released in past decades. This time around, it’s possible to find a robovac that will clean your engineered wood flooring just as well as it will clean your carpets. This is accomplished using spinning brushes and mopping features.

5. Smart Sprinkler Controllers

It’s all too easy to forget to water the grass, plants and trees in your lawn. If you want to avoid that brown, scraggly, starved-for-water aesthetic on your property, smart sprinkler controls would be a sensible investment to consider.

There are different ways these devices can work. Many of them use data from your local weather reports to determine how much water will be needed to keep your plants thriving. That way, you won’t be paying for your sprinklers to come on during a week of thunderstorms.

This particular smart-home upgrade has the potential to save you from using as much as 8,000 gallons of excess water in a year’s time. Think of the cost savings on your future water bills – particularly if you live in an area where water is scarce and expensive.

There are many other convenient smart home innovations beyond just these. However, these 5 smart home upgrades are some of the most useful ones you’ll want to consider implementing.

About The Author: Philip Piletic – Marketing consultant and a guest author at a number of authority websites. Worked with several clients from real estate and home improvement industries, helping them reach new markets and take their business to the next level. You can reach him over LinkedIn.

Photo by Gabriel Beaudry on Unsplash