Smart home automation ecosystems in an apartment community can boost the overall level and value of the living and common space residents and property staff use everyday. In the most common ways, smart home automation systems help residents, property staff and more navigate throughout a community with local and remote capabilities. These systems instantly increase property value and create easy ways for property staff to manage their community through Property Management System integrations. Before we get too far in, let’s start with the basics: What is smart home automation?
What is Smart Home Automation?
Smart home automation for apartments consists of smart home hardware and software that work together for resident unit access, common area access, unit climate control and more. These systems all work together through apps and portals for residents to have remote access to their apartment unit, and for property staff to manage certain aspects of their community from any device.
These smart home automation systems work off of a centralized network ecosystem to connect to each other for local and remote use. At Quext, our patented smart home automation system works off of a network called LoRaWAN.
For users, the automation aspect of these systems comes into play through an app. Take an IoT app considering automated climate control in an apartment for example. In an IoT app, residents can create thermostat schedules tailored to their lifestyle. Schedules like turning down the air around bedtime, or turning up the air when they leave their apartment during the day to go to work. A similar automation task can be set up for property managers as well such as when transitioning an apartment from occupied to vacant.
The Benefits of Smart Home Automation
The benefits of a smart home automation system can be broken down into a few different perspectives between owners/operators, property staff and residents. On a larger scale, introducing a smart home automation system does two things for an operator: instantly increase the overall property value, and create general operational efficiencies for on-property operations.
For property staff, smart home systems also offer a variety of operational efficiencies, especially with the integration into different property management softwares. In addition, these systems also create operational efficiencies between keyless entry, guest access, guest credentialing, and even leasing staff-less tours.
For residents, smart home systems create a lifestyle automation ease on a daily basis. As we mentioned on hardware level, the basic hardware introduced to a resident in a smart home system are locks and thermostats. For locks, residents have access to their units through an app on their phone or through local activation. These same keys also work around community access and guest access. On the other hand, smart thermostats allow residents to create thermostat schedules or adjust their thermostats remotely.
Guide to Instituting Smart Home Automations in Multifamily Communities
We’ve made it this far learning about all the whats and whys around smart home automation systems for apartments, now we move on to the how. Instituting smart home automation for one or multiple new build or retrofit apartment communities can be a daunting task. To break down a short check list, there are a few key items to pay attention to: evaluate connection types, evaluate number of devices, evaluate system types for new builds and retrofit properties.
For Quext’s smart home automation system, we use a patented LoRaWAN connection to operate between all our devices. This connection type is more reliable, takes up less physical space, and travels farther than a traditional WiFi solution. Quext IoT also uses an integrated smart hub within the custom thermostat which cuts the amount of needed devices in half in a unit and around a property. In addition, A system with less hardware and easy installation can also work incredibly well in a retrofit scenario, unlike a lot of WiFi driven systems.
Want to learn more about what Quext can offer with smart home automation systems? Check out our website here!
