If you are looking to use a home server as your home automation and security platform, there are factors to consider in order to implement an effective system. If you really go all out with your smart home, your home server could be used to log data from some smart devices, such as a rain sensor attached to the outside of your home. This could include storing the audio and video, which as you now know can get to be quite big, from a baby monitor or home security camera for example. In addition, a home server is excellent for monitoring purposes. Regardless of whether your devices are controlled with a physical remote, an app, or are even completely automated, having it all configured and managed from a home server makes for a convenient way of managing your smart home. Similarly to storing your media files on a home server, using it for home automation provides a central place of controlling all our smart devices, be it lighting systems, heating, and cooling, or even outdoor watering systems. Provides a Platform for Home Automation and SecurityĪ home server can be considered the perfect platform for a home automation system. Instead, use your home server and let that do all of the work required to playback the video, leaving your main workstation’s resources ready and available for the other work you wish to throw its way. Not really ideal when you want to perform some productive work at the same time. Trying to play a movie on your main computer will result in it becoming less response, and possibly even overworked depending on its specification. Playing these large video files will usually consume a lot of the processing power of your device and require continuous use of the hard disk. Let’s continue with the example of wanting to watch a movie. That is, of course, unless you choose to power down your home server. The benefit of having a home server is that it is always powered on and available for immediate action there will be no waiting for that long boot and start sequence to finish. If it cannot be done quickly, many of us will lose patience and just not bother. We’ve all experienced the frustration of having to wait when we just want to jump in and start something. Then you find it having to run multiple anti-virus scans, and just before you think you can hit play, you are told that updates need to be installed. You power on your device and wait for it to boot. I’m sure you’ve experienced powering up your PC or laptop just wanting to jump into watching a movie or playing a game.