Living in the 21st Century With New Technology for Your Home
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We thought it would be fun to break away from the normal real estate topics you might typically see on a real estate blog and share with you some exciting things available for you to place in your home. These are gadgets designed to make your life easier, more fun and allow you the time to focus on the more important things in life – like friends and family.
A Smart Thermostat That Does All the Thinking For You
We have all seen and heard and probably even used programmable thermostats. But let’s be honest. How many people really actually take the time to sit down and program their thermostat to get the maximum use of the thing? The truth is that these thermostats are meant to be used in an effort to conserve energy. A household has certain timings that, if the temperatures are controlled accordingly, can add up to a lot of money saved.
The Nest thermostat is a unique brand of simplicity blended with the latest smart technology allowing the homeowner to “teach” it household heating and cooling patterns. It actually learns from the users and taking the information it has absorbed, the device begins to act naturally based on those patterns. It creates a schedule of how to heat and cool the home without the homeowner ever having to think about it. This ends up in saving you a lot of money while at the same time freeing up some extra time.
Accessible remotely from an iPad or iPhone, you can also adjust the temperature settings from afar depending on your needs at the time. Imagine returning home late from a trip and you end up being several hours or more later than expected. You can tell your Nest thermostat while you are still away to either kick in and be ready for your expected arrival time or not to kick in until a certain time. The cost of these smart thermostat devices is about $250 each – relatively affordable when you factor in the savings you will recover after only a few months of use.
Music and Lights In All Areas of the Home – Sans Wires
While this may not be a necessity for most, though some may consider music an important aspect of living, there is a new gadget that allows for setting up music (and lights) anywhere in the space without the use of wiring. That’s right! You do not need any more of those clunky speaker wires, nor do you need to worry about trailing extension cords to less accessible areas. Now you can plug in a light bulb that doubles up as a speaker and voila!
MusicLites are a small high fidelity speaker that is attached within the light bulb unit and operates wirelessly. You can connect it to any light bulb socket (standard sized), connect to either a laptop or your television and you can have music in areas that might otherwise not be able to have music. This is ideal for places like hallways, outdoor patios or areas within the home (or office) that are not wired for a speaker system. They are not too expensive at anywhere from $220 to $240 a piece. And they are available in most home improvement retailers.
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We’d love to share more of what we’ve learned in our experience of dealing with countless homeowners either moving in, trading up or simply enhancing their current home.
