Controller is Best For Smart Home
A Smart Home Controller is the hub of your entire Smart Home system, providing you with a central place to control and automate your devices. It can be either a hardware device like the Fibaro Home Center 3 or Hubitat Elevation or software based as found in many smart plugs.
Choosing the best smart home controller for you will come down to what your Smart Home is going to be used for and how technically minded you are. For example a system of Smart lighting will only require a basic Hardware Controller but if you want to create Automation scenes and logic then a more advanced Controller will be needed.
Some smart home controller manufacturers offer a range of hardware Controllers with varying specifications, allowing you to start off small and upgrade as your system grows. This is important if you know that you will be adding lots of Plugins to your system as they can require more storage, memory and processing power to function.
Which Controller is Best For Smart Home?
It’s also worth ensuring that your chosen Smart Home Controller can run on your WiFi network as this will allow you to access it via your existing home broadband connection (typically using a web browser on your PC or Mac). Some hardware Controllers such as the Fibaro Home Center 3 and Hubitat Elevation are available with 2GB RAM so they are well equipped for running multiple Plugins and delivering a smooth experience.
Most Smart Home Controllers will offer you a simple web based user interface for system configuration and setup alongside a smartphone and tablet App to give you day to day control of the system. Some will even offer “Widgets” that will allow you to control your devices and scenes directly from a shortcut on your home screen.
A growing trend is for smart home controllers to have built in support for voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Homekit – this can help to simplify the system by allowing you to control it using a single voice command. Whilst this is an excellent feature to have it is important to remember that you will still need to use your Smart Home Controller for most tasks if you want to create automated scenarios such as “turn on the party lights at 6pm and turn off the security system at 10pm”
In addition to offering you a central way to control your devices, Smart Home Controllers provide the core of your entire Smart Home Automation system by creating the Automation Scenes and Logic that will bring your home to life. Whether you want the party lights to turn on and off automatically using motion sensors, set up an automatic coffee maker at a time of your choice or ensure that your alarm is armed in away mode every night at sunset, these are the types of automations that only a Smart Home Controller can do. For the best results it’s worth investing in a quality Controller that will deliver this level of functionality.
