Set Up Your Smart Home with Laptop as Central Hub: Beginning your smart home journey is exciting, yet an exhausting task as you don’t know where to start. With the wide availability of smart home devices in the market, selecting the right one requires a thorough analysis of your fundamental requirements.
From smart thermostats to robot vacuums, you can automate your daily chores to make your work easier. Well, you can automate every single task but there are a few products that you will need to label your house as a smart home.
In this article, we will discuss what a smart home looks like, how to set up a central hub on a laptop that controls the devices in your smart home and is home automation worth it.
What Is a Smart Home?
A smart home is any setup where you can control the devices and appliances automatically from anywhere using a mobile device called a central hub. All the devices in the house are interconnected via the internet. These devices allow you to control the temperature, access security features, turn on the home theater system remotely, and much more.
Setting up a smart home can be expensive, but it provides homeowners with cost savings and convenience in the long run. You can either use a smartphone, a tablet, a game console, or a laptop as a central hub that allows you to control the devices and appliances remotely.
How Do You Set Up Your Laptop as a Central Hub?
If you want to use your laptop as a central hub, it’s important that you know the basic functionality. You must learn how to use Cortana, how to add a smart device to the home network on a laptop, or how to copy and paste on a MacBook Pro, for example, so that you can keep the commands and instructions on the device for future reference.
In the digital era, you carry your laptops everywhere you go. You can set up your laptop as a central hub to control all the smart devices in your home when away. You can check what’s going on in your home, control the temperature, turn off the TV, or turn on your lights from anywhere via an internet connection.
On your laptop, you will need to link Cortana to your account for controlling the devices. To do this, follow the instructions given below.
- Open Cortana, select Notebook and then tap Connected Home.
- Now turn on the toggle button under Enable Connected Home and sign in to your Microsoft account that you use with Cortana.
- Select the service and then provide your account information.
Now, when you want to command the appliances in your smart home to turn on or turn off, you will have to say it to Cortana on your laptop.
For example, to turn the lights on, say “Turn on all the lights”, or to adjust the brightness of the lights, you should say “Set the lights to 50%”.
This way, you can control the smart home devices and appliances by setting up the laptop as a central hub.
Is Smart Home Important?
Similar to any other digital smart device, smart homes come with a set of advantages and drawbacks. They are important because they allow the homeowner to become relatively more energy efficient. Plus, they allow you to control your devices inside the house from any remote location.
A smart home empowers you to save time and handle household chores more efficiently. The setup gives you convenience over traditional methods to perform the tasks. However, there are a few things that you should keep in mind when setting up your smart home.
Since home automation systems work on live internet connectivity, it is prone to hacking attempts.
Make sure your house equips appropriate security protocol. Do not share any sensitive log-in information to prevent external threats. Most home appliances in your smart home would need a password or a security code to function. Anyone with all the passwords and other sensitive data can easily hack your alarm system or other equipment.
Is a Smart Home Setup Worth It?
In simple terms, setting up a smart home requires a cost-benefit analysis. Your smart home setup is equipped with devices that demand an upfront investment. Moreover, after setting up your smart home, you would need to train yourself to become competent in using these products properly.
The time and cost-saving benefits, along with the convenience advantage that smart homes bring, make your home worth it. It could be cost-intensive in the beginning, but it will turn out to be a cost-effective setup in the long run. Overall, home automation is a dynamic technology that allows you to take advantage of digitization to the full extent.
So, you must try to turn your home into a smart home to enjoy the convenience of operating the devices as well as to have an energy-efficient infrastructure.