Smart home technology can provide automation of just about any household chore.
 The smart home has arrived, but many of us remain confused about what one is. That's because the devices and services that make a home "smart" will be different for every individual. In fact, whether you know it or not, chances are that you already have some type of smart home device.
We are way past the days of the Clapper. Simply put, a smart home is one that includes some gadget, system or appliance that is connected either to the Internet and/or to your smartphone. You can typically control and interact with these devices using an app.
Smart home products and services come in all shapes and sizes. Have a security system that taps into your Internet connection for monitoring? You have a smart home. Do you have LED light bulbs that you can dim or turn on using your smartphone? Guess what, you have a smart home. Do you own a webcam installed that monitors your windows or front door, or perhaps the baby's room? You, my friend, have a smart home. Even if you only have a wireless router connected to the Internet with a laptop or a tablet or two connected via Wi-Fi — you have the foundations of a smart, connected home.
In the coming years, you will likely make your home even smarter. Gartner, a leading tech analyst firm, predicts that a typical abode (in a "mature affluent market") could have more than 500 smart home devices by 2022. It's a projection some tech-industry watchers question, but it's one that Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, stands by. 
"The Internet of Things will bring billions of connected Wi-Fi enabled devices to homes," said Dana Knight, TP-Link's director of marketing. 
Still, the automated home is the exception and not the norm. Acuity Group's 2014 study of the Internet of Things adoption (of which smart home tech is a subset) found that smart technology was in about 4 percent of all U.S. homes. What's the biggest barrier to adoption the study discovered? Unfamiliarity with the concepts of the Internet of Things and smart tech.