Today, smart home technology is welcomed by many homeowners. Whether it is a few smart appliances or a full smart-home setup, most houses contain some automated tools.
With voice-controlled home automation, you can connect all the smart devices in your home and operate them through voice control. For instance, you can give voice commands to your smart fans to change their speed, or you can adjust the temperature of your thermostat with voice commands.
Home automation works with hardware, electronic interfaces and communication to integrate your smart devices via the Internet. Each of your smart devices contains sensors to operate them through your smartphones or tablets using an app or with voice commands, giving you the freedom to control your smart fans, smart locks, thermostats and other smart devices from any location.
There are three primary components of voice-activated home automation:
Sensors can sense the changes in temperature, daylight or motion. Hence, home automation can adjust their settings based on your preference.
Controllers are devices like your computer, smartphone or tablet through which you can receive or send voice messages.
Actuators are the motors, switches or motorised valves that control the device mechanism. They are programmed to listen to voice commands remotely from a controller.
A smart home ecosystem is a buzzword used to refer to home automation systems put in your home for efficient automation. A smart home ecosystem comprises various smart devices and technologies of multiple brands which can be controlled via voice. Usually, all such smart devices are connected via smart speakers. The commonly used big smart home ecosystems are Google, Amazon and Apple. You can pick any one of them to establish a common connection between all your smart devices.
Let’s know about the primary benefits of voice control smart home:
It becomes easy to operate your devices when all of them are connected with the same control system. To use any of the devices, you only need to give a voice command, adding to your convenience.
As you can adjust your fan speed or thermostat settings with your voice, you can control the energy consumption at a given time. It will save you money in the long run. Usually, you can save upto 20% on your electricity bills through smart devices.
Make your home more secure with smart devices like smart locks or smart cameras. You can check the status of smart locks or smart cameras through your smartphone to know what is happening in your property.
Although automatic speech recognition (ASR) has added convenience to many homeowners’ lives, there are still some challenges which need to be addressed.
Lack of language training is a major hurdle in front of ASR devices. English is not a universal language, and hence, many people may not be proficient in it. Many users hesitate to adopt this technology because of the language barrier.
Noise is another hurdle, and it is everywhere. ASR is not always accurate in recognising the user's voice amid unwanted sounds rendering voice commands inefficient.
Voice-controlled devices can save energy in the long run. In smart fans, there are facilities to reduce its speed by one notch during midnight as per your settings. Such tiny features can make a huge difference in your electricity bills. Through voice control, you can change the settings of smart devices even when you are not at home.
In voice-controlled assistants, no data transfer happens to the cloud to be analysed and sent back. The facility to activate any command lies in the voice assistant itself. It further reduces energy expenditure.
Your wish is what they listen to and follow — like Alexa or Google Assistant. Here is what you should know about the security and privacy after installing voice control devices:
Set a strong password for the online account through which you control your voice assistant. Ensure that the password is at least 12 characters long. Try to avoid reuse of existing passwords of other accounts.
It is convenient for customers to operate their smart devices, like smart fans, smart locks, smart thermostats, etc., with the voice assistant facility. But do you want everyone to change the settings of your smart lock or any other device through voice? If not, then add a PIN or turn off the voice control to restrict others from using such commands. You can also limit your guests’ ability to access the information.
Through multiple authentications, it will become hard for hackers to hack your accounts. You must check the security layer in your account to add an extra protection layer.
Natural language processing: With the advancement in language processing, voice assistants will be able to respond to more complex commands.
Personalised response: Voice assistant can provide personalised responses based on user’s preferences and history.
IoT integration: Many voice-controlled devices are now IoT enabled, thus allowing users to connect multiple devices through voice.
The future of voice-controlled home automation is bright, and users are giving preference to smart homes operated through voice control. Devices like smart locks, smart fans, smart thermostats etc. can add convenience to your life. Also, through such voice control, you can save a lot of energy in the form of electricity bills.
1. What does voice-controlled home automation mean?
Through voice controlled home automation system, you can control all your smart devices like smart locks, fans, thermostats, doors, etc. Such automation also saves a lot of energy in the form of electricity bills.
2. What drives the motivation behind adopting voice-controlled home automation?
For different users, motivation factors to shift to voice-controlled devices may be different. But some of the common reasons are energy efficiency, luxury, convenience and security.
3. What are the drawbacks or disadvantages associated with voice-controlled home automation?
A few drawbacks of voice-controlled devices include errors in speech recognition, privacy concerns and limited language support.
4. What is meant by voice-activated control?
Voice-activated control refers to smart devices or software programs which can follow your voice command. Many smart devices like fans, LEDs, locks, thermostats, etc., are now capable of recognising human voices.
5. Could you provide some examples of voice automation in practical appliances?
There are various appliances like smart fans, locks, thermostats, LEDs, doors, windows, etc., which can work on your voice. These voice controlled home automation system can be connected with Alexa, Google Home or your smartphone to take the voice command.
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