Home automation is the buzzword of today, the reason being saving energy by doing automation of certain operations of switching on/off, dimming, and scheduling from mobile phones or by using sound like Alexa and Google. Plenty of studies and white papers are published on how you save energy, how you reduce your carbon footprint and how you save money, most of them done by experts involved in promoting solutions or focused on energy independence. Efficient and careful use of energy is the need of the day considering our requirements for energy are increasing exponentially.
I decided to find any study on the health impacts of too much automation. What happens when instead of getting off the couch, going around the house flipping switches: we lose a lot of natural physical and mental exercise opportunity.
Think of how many operations you end up doing, standing, walking, and lifting hands. Wouldn’t it be better if home automation helps us tell what needs attention and we must get up to take care of it? It serves both purposes, enables you to save energy by being aware, and forces you to make physical and mental efforts.
Occasionally when you are out of your house and your automation gang of devices indicates some saving opportunity you can use automation for control. Also, certain areas of the home like walk-in closets and bathrooms may use complete self-automation better. So we divide automation into two parts:
- Being made aware of the opportunity to save
- Using automatic control rarely can give us the best of both worlds. Try turning off scheduling features and get off the couch and away from your smartphone.
