Mastering Your Smart Home - Best Smart Home Controller of 2023

We all dreamt of a smart home to recognize our daily needs and perform simple tasks at our commands. But with a smart home automation system, it’s not a pipe dream anymore.

Waking up to a hot cup of coffee brewing in the coffee machine, or the thermostat at a pleasant temperature to help welcome the new day warmly, all these are possible now with smart home controllers or smart home hubs.

Being a fairly latest innovation, many of us still need clarification about what a smart home controller is and how it appeals to us. Fortunately, we are here to teach you everything about how you can become the master of your home with your smart home hub.

• Growing Popularity Of Smart Homes And The Need For A Smart Home Controller
• Understanding the Role of a Smart Home Controller
• Best Smart Home Controller of 2023
• Mastering Control: Managing and Automating Smart Home Devices
• Enhancing Security and Privacy in Smart Homes
• Future of Smart Home Controllers

Growing Popularity Of Smart Homes And The Need For A Smart Home Controller

Before we start questioning the soaring popularity and demand for smart home controllers, we need to understand “what is a smart home controller?”

Briefly saying, if we consider the smart home system as a body, the smart home controller is its brain. In other words, it’s what controls a smart home. And, just like the human brain, it works as a center point that connects all the smart devices.

A smart home controller creates a network between the devices for them to communicate with each other. The lighting in your home, thermostat, TV, speaker, fan, doorbell, CCTV camera, and every other smart appliance are connected to this network.

Smart home controllers are getting the hype because it makes juggling smart appliances much easier. Instead of switching from one app to another, you can now access them all through a common point.

These controllers are also known as hubs, and there are many types. Different hubs offer different features, but they all create a singular interface where all the devices are seamlessly connected and communicated.

So to have an effortless and convenient life, a smart home controller is the trendiest solution.

Understanding the Role of a Smart Home Controller

To create a smart living lifestyle, it’s important to understand a smart home controller's role.

While it acts as a central point to control the smart devices at your home, that’s not its only function. The smart home controller has impressive features and abilities that make them all the more fascinating.

Let's see some of the major capabilities a good smart home controller should have,

Provides Ordered And Consistent Connection Between Devices

As we’ve already said, your smart home controller should be able to maintain a consistent connection among the devices. An orderly connection ensures that your command is communicated properly to the devices and thus helps control them properly on an everyday level.

A Comprehensive Interface

All smart home controllers have an interface where you can see all the functions of the smart home system. An orderly and comprehensive interface helps perform the tasks more smoothly.

Sometimes, they also let you draw your own interface, so you can organize them more accustomed to your routine. You can use a smartphone or tablet to access these interfaces.

Saves Time And Effort

A smart home controller acts as the main point of your smart home control. And since you don’t have to constantly jump from one app to another, it saves your time and effort a significant amount. Anyone who has to juggle between apps to make sure everything is in order knows what a convenience this is.

Most smart home hubs have a voice control feature as well that lets you control the devices just through your voice.

Energy Efficient

And most importantly, a smart home controller helps save energy. Since you can see all your devices in the interface, you can see the right way if anything is on unnecessarily and turn them off.

Most smart home automation controllers support scheduling to help micromanage energy consumption.

Best Smart Home Controller of 2023

Let’s look at some of the best smart home controllers of 2023 in our opinion.

1. EVVR Center Lite

EVVR Center Lite is a new smart home controller product that has all the exciting features of a harmonious smart home control system. This center hub can be connected via both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, Zigbee 3.0, and Sub-1 GHz Proprietary Protocol.

What we like

• Stores data locally
• Comprehensive interface with the EVVR App
• Ability to create drivers for Zigbee 3.0, Z-Wave Plus devices with EVVR Console
• The multifunctional plug-in provides compatibility with multiple protocols

2. Amazon Echo Show 10

Amazon Echo has some of the best smart home controller hubs on the market right now and our pick is the Echo Show 10. Unlike their older models, this one has a motorized rotating screen for better visuality and acoustics.

Plus the rotation system is smooth enough to not make any sounds at all.

This super comprehensive home hub has an excellent set of features.

What we like

• 3 speakers for excellent audio quality
• Smooth responsive touchscreen
• Privacy feature to turn off the camera easily
• User friendly
• Can be used as a temporary security camera

What we don't like

• No youtube skill support
• A bit large
• Expensive

Mastering Control: Managing and Automating Smart Home Devices

One of the fascinating things about smart home controllers is that you can create custom automation routines to smoothly perform your everyday tasks. For example,

• A Pleasant Morning Routine To Start Your Day Smoothly

You can set a routine to open your electric window blinds and start the coffee machine around the time you wake up. Or maybe adjust the temperature for a nice start to the day.

• Night-Time Routine

Similarly, you can also create an automatic routine for the nighttime. For example, turning off the light, setting the temperature to your comfort, turning off unnecessary devices like the TV, electric door, speaker, setting up alarms for the morning, etc.

• Create An Away Routine

An automatic routine for when you’re not at home can ensure the security of your home. An away routine will automatically lock all the doors after you leave, and turn on the CCTV cameras and burglar alarms.

You can even program it to turn on the light in a different room for a short while to mimic occupancy to scare away thieves and burglars

• Go Energy Efficient

Such routines can help you save energy as well. For example, turning off any lights that are not being used, adjusting the thermostats, monitoring energy consumption in real-time, etc..

Enhancing Security and Privacy in Smart Homes

Security concerns in smart homes are an important issue since smart devices are more vulnerable to hacking and online illegal trespassing. But at the same time, you can use smart home controllers to enhance the security and privacy of your home.

Some examples are,

• 2-step Verification

The 2 step verification process will send you a code to your smartphone when someone tries to access specific appliances.

• Encryption Protocols

Placing encryption protocols on the smart home network warrants a secure connection between the devices. Thus less chance of stealing data from your system.

• Local Storage

You can also choose to store all the home control data locally to prevent hacking into the system.

These are some of the most common ways to ensure your smart home system is safe. There are plenty of other ways you can utilize smart home controllers to create a guarded smart home control system.

Future of Smart Home Controllers

With the growing popularity of smart home controllers, it’s realistic to say they are going to be around for a while. Even more, if we consider the recent developments and trends that are visible around us.

One of the most important of them is the full integration of AI in home automation. Even though there are some scattered examples of using AI in smart homes, the developers are trying to equip it to read and predict users’ behavioral patterns.

Additionally, it will also be able to use algorithms to operate routine tasks by itself.

Another work in progress with the smart controllers is their ability to read and recognize gestures and emotions. Once it’s achieved, we can control our smart appliance not only with our voice but also gestures and facial expressions.

Already some of the brands have a gesture or hand swipe feature in place that lets you change the song, or turn on/off the light with movement of your hands.

But the most important factor regarding the expansion of smart home systems is the privacy and security of user data. Since being connected online makes the devices vulnerable to hacking, appropriate security measures should be in place to protect the privacy of the users.

Final Thoughts

The possibility and potential of smart home controllers in our lives is ever increasing and limitless. From lights to TV, speaker, doorbell, coffee machine, vacuums, thermostats, humidifiers, doors, windows, and blinds, anything can now be operated with a tap of your finger, anytime and from anywhere.

Hopefully, this article satisfied all your curiosity about smart home controllers and why you need one. To learn more about it, kindly reach out to us!