When it comes to choosing that very first smart home device with which to get your feet wet, very few devices are as easy to use as smart light bulbs. I was thinking about this very thing when I suddenly realized that smart light bulbs are also LED bulbs. Then it dawned on me that LED technology is ideal for the smart home philosophy.
Smart homes are designed to be more energy efficient. They are designed to be more convenient and safer. While LED light bulbs are not inherently more secure than their incandescent counterparts, they are more energy efficient. They also have built-in capabilities that make using them more convenient.
Smart Light Bulbs: The Basics
From the standpoint of basic operations, a smart light bulb is pretty similar to a standard bulb. It screws into any light socket as normal. You can turn it on and off with a light switch. Best of all, you get the same long life you would expect from a standard LED.
What makes the smart light bulb smart is its built-in connectivity capabilities. A smart bulb can connect with a centralized smart home hub or a smartphone for both control and access purposes. Use either your central hub or your phone to turn smart lights on or off, program them, or take advantage of their other features.
Vivint Smart Home recommends integrating multiple smart light bulbs into a complete smart home system. Converting all the lights in a house to smart bulbs offers total control of the lighting to maximize efficiency.
What LED Brings to the Table
LED technology is ideally suited for the smart home philosophy for a number of reasons. First and foremost, an LED light bulb isn’t truly a light bulb in the strictest sense of the term. Rather, it is a light emitting diode. Unlike with incandescent bulbs, there is no filament in an LED bulb. Very little heat is generated during normal operation, so the diode’s lifespan is longer.
As for how an LED actually produces light, it is a matter of electrons being excited as they pass through the diode’s semiconductor. This excitement causes them to release energy in the form of light.
4 Key Features
LED light bulbs offer four key features that make them perfectly suited for smart homes. Those four features are as follows:
- Adjustable Intensity – The intensity of the light emitted by an LED bulb can be adjusted simply by increasing or reducing the electric current flowing through it. LED bulbs can be dimmed or intensified on-demand.
- Tunable Color – LED bulbs can be manufactured to emit different colors. This characteristic is known as tunability. The same bulb can emit several different colors as the user prefers.
- Efficiency – LED bulbs are multiple times more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs. They save homeowners a ton of money.
- Long Life – LED bulbs have a much longer lifespan compared to incandescents. A typical LED lasts between 25K and 50K hours. That could translate to a decade or longer depending on how often a bulb is turned on.
Smart home technology now allows us to do some amazing things with the devices in our homes. The concept itself is supported by devices designed to be efficient, easy to use, and controlled remotely. When it comes to smart lighting, nothing works quite as well as the LED bulb. It is perfectly suited to the smart home mindset in every way. If you have been looking to get your feet wet in home automation, why not start with a few smart light bulbs?
