Smart home technology is no longer a luxury reserved for the wealthy or tech-savvy, and the industry has responded with ever sophisticated solutions. Many people think of smart home technology as gadgets like Google’s Nest or Amazon’s Echo, but the term encompasses many other solutions for your house. This includes everything from remote-controlled lighting and heating to CCTV, home security systems, doorbells and smart locks. Some allow you to monitor your elderly relatives, pets, or children and even track your children.

Integration is the main ingredient in a good smart home system. This is why the most effective products are those that integrate with other devices and systems to make your home more intelligent. A smart light bulb, for instance can communicate with an central hub to schedule your lights on a specific schedule or shut them off when leaving the home. A doorbell with video could alert you to unexpected visitors, and your alarm system could notify the police or fire departments. Once you’ve learned IFTTT (If This Then That), you can use services such as Stringify to automate your devices in more complicated ways.

Of course, bringing new smart devices to the home has its own concerns. That’s why CNET strives to know the policies of companies, to www.bizcrisis.net/5-rare-jobs-to-work-from-home/ highlight privacy issues and respond directly to the businesses concerned.