With a few accessories at home and thanks to the Wi-Fi connection at home, more efficient consumption management can be achieved.
The cold has arrived and, with it, the routines at home to maintain a comfortable temperature, such as turning on the heating and the classic common sense advice, such as not over-ventilating the rooms or making sure that the insulation of doors and windows is total. However, in the bulk of homes it is still human action that determines how to manage energy. In other words, the heating turns on when we are cold and turns off when it is hot enough. Why not allow technology to manage household resources more efficiently? The first thing that may come to mind is the word "home automation", but the truth is that this term has almost always been related to expensive facilities within the reach of a few pockets. However, with the emergence of smartphones and different web services, home automation is now within the reach of practically all economies. In fact, with a few accessories at home and thanks to the Wi-Fi connection at home, you can achieve more efficient management of consumption, both electricity and gas. How to get it?
Sign up for IFTTT: Why does the heating at home turn on at the same time every day even when no one is home? Why not turn it on when we return from work so that the home is warm when we arrive? The well-known IFTTT service allows you to create a series of rules that, combined with the mobile phone, allow you to automate processes such as turning on the heating when you arrive at home or turning it off when you leave home. The smartphone will 'report' our position to the service that will execute the order that we have previously created.
Anticipate the cold: this is precisely one of the most used rules on IFTTT, and it consists of receiving an email or SMS the day before a sudden drop in temperatures. Why can it be interesting to anticipate the cold? Because in this way we can anticipate lowering blinds and making sure that nothing is left closed badly.
Control over heating: up to this point, we have only acted as passive elements without directly intervening in heating or windows, but fortunately home automation has been democratized thanks to a company like the Spanish Wattio, which is strongly committed to this field with a complete catalog of kits to automate processes with minimal investment. Thus, the user will be able to replace the thermostat with an intelligent one from the firm and, in this way, create rules in IFTTT such as turning on the heating when arriving home or turning it off if we move away from a radius. In the latest software update of your system, it also allows it to be installed in any type of heating.
Turning off lights and unnecessary connections: much has been said about what is known as vampire consumption, or that produced by all those equipment on standby or waiting to be activated. To date, it was recommended to physically unplug all equipment that was not being used at the time, but in practice this is very inconvenient and not rigorously applied. What if it could be automated? Again, thanks to the creation of IFTTT rules and with wireless switches like the one from WeMo, we can program the general shutdown of all this equipment at night, and of course, when we leave the house. Here the ideal is to acquire a power strip and group the different equipment around a remote switch. Less investment and fewer rules.
Does a window open? The heating is turned off: This is something you have probably seen in some hotels already. Opening the door or window turns off the heating or air conditioning. A gesture that may seem minor but after months can mean savings to be considered on the energy bill. Once again, Wattio offers us an alternative: place sensors on those doors and windows that, when opened, can especially affect the temperature of the home. With them and through rules, it will be possible to prevent, for example, the heating from turning on if we have left a window open.
Heating on when you wake up: the really interesting thing about these solutions is that in addition to being useful, they become a real game for the user who also knows no limits. Thus, if you do not wake up regularly at the same time, you can choose to take advantage of the synergy of the systems by also using a sports bracelet: like this, with a Fitbit bracelet on the wrist that detects the movement of our body when it gradually wakes up to turn on the heating, or if you prefer, prepare a warm coffee.
