For years here at Zeus Integrated we have been installing custom motorized shade solutions for our clients. Motorized shades are a great way to add privacy to your home as you smarten it up.

Scientists at William & Mary identified a flaw in smart home security that have smart home owners worried, and rightly so. One simple hack -- taking advantage of something most people use at some point -- can give bad actors access to your entire smart home.

But you can lower your risk of being hacked with a simple technique.

While it seems like something out of a futuristic movie, smart home technology is here to stay. Innovative smart devices are being released and refined, making it even easier than ever for home owners to embrace the technology.

In this article, we’ll delve into some of the most on-the-rise trends that you can expect to see in 2019 and beyond.

With 2019 just around the corner (can you believe that?) we have been giving a lot of thought to what the year ahead has in store for smart home technology. While we are not clairvoyant, we do have our finger on the pulse of industry trends. We have five predictions to share with you about what's in store for the smart home industry in 2019.

"I'm worried about the connection" is something we hear about a lot from current and prospective clients.

Wifi is amazing, but it's not 100% foolproof yet, and if you have a poor wifi connection, your smart home won't work as well as it should. When your connection drops, devices stop talking to each other (and your control panel) and it can be an exercise in frustration to try to bring it all back up online. 

Here are some quick tips to help you keep your smart home connected.

You’ve heard the term smart home or home automation, and perhaps you’ve seen a demonstration or commercial for a smart home automation system. Yes, smart home automation is transformational. It can change the whole feel of your home or office. You still have questions, though, and this article will aim to give you a foundation of smart home automation knowledge.

One of the things we keep hearing about lately is "What exactly IS a smart home?" 

Being in our little bubble inside the industry it's easy to forget that not everybody knows what a smart home is and what's so cool about it. 

This infographic from Vivint.com breaks down what a smart home is and what kinds of things a smart home can do.

This is by no means comprehensive as new technologies are emerging all the time to help turn your home into a smart home, but we hope it will help clear away some misconceptions.

Home automation is on the rise, with more and more consumers slated to create smart homes over the next four years. In fact, by 2022, more than half of the homes in the United States will have implemented some form of automation. If you’re planning your smart home, we’ve got a short list of things to consider.

You’ve got your heart set on home automation, but you want to work with a reliable smart home installer.

Now, you just need to know how to find a trustworthy smart home installer to transform your house into your dream home.

If that sounds familiar, you’re on the right track. In this article, we’ll show you a blueprint for finding a trusted local smart home installer.

Here are five ways you’ll know if a smart home installer is trustworthy:

Contractors across the country have noticed a change: more and more of their clients are using smart home automation in some form.

The smart home market is anticipated to hit $19.8 million by the end of 2018. By 2022, that number is expected to double, and more than half of the homes in the United States are projected to be using home automation.

It’s no secret: smart home automation is becoming a normal part of households.

If you are trying to choose a smart home system, then you’ve undoubtedly been researching automation systems from companies such as ADT, MONI, and Vivint.

If you’ve reached this article, then you’re likely looking for something a little more unique and perhaps luxurious. Savant is a highly rated smart home system, and in this article, we’ll discuss everything you need to know before installing a Savant system in your home.

As the smart home trend is sweeping the nation, owning a smart home is on the bucket list of so many New Yorkers, but the trend hasn’t yet taken off.

The NYC housing market is complex with stringent building codes, housing regulations, high cost, and relatively low turnover.

Just the act of finding somewhere to call home in NYC can take years.

Once a homeowner finds the NYC apartment, townhome, or penthouse they’re going to stay in for the next several years, their dreams of turning it into a smart home continually face problems.

Diagnosing networking problems is often difficult.  If your computer is slow, it could be something related to hardware or software. If your smartphone or tablet is slow, it could also be related to the device itself or the software it’s running. 

Perhaps a website you’re accessing is slow for a period, and it’s not any of your devices.  If you’re trying to watch a Netflix movie on your TV, is the quality something less than HD (high definition)?  Perhaps your internet signal slowed down temporarily.  There’s always the possibility that it’s not your signal or any device. 

Your network installation may be the culprit in a multitude of connectivity sins.  And in Manhattan, we often live in buildings with tens or hundreds of other networks, which can create issues with crowded airwaves. How do we figure out if our problems are network related? 

We’ll cover some ways to narrow it down.  Just keep reading. 

Going around turning lights on and off can be tedious.  Perhaps it’s a first world problem, but here in Manhattan, with all the tall buildings densely packed together, light is essential, whether natural or manmade. 

You want your New York City home to have the right amount of light. Chances are you have invested in extra lighting for your place – perhaps lighting in built-ins that artfully draws attention to your first book collection, sconces adding soft light to your dining room, and LED spot lighting for your carefully curated artwork. 

You want to be able to control all that lighting easily, and not be reaching everywhere for switches to turn things on and off.  With a home lighting control system, you’ll have lots of choices for doing that.  Read on to learn more.

You love the idea of your window treatments going up or down by themselves.  You may want the clean cordless look of shades that don’t have those cords making you wonder which direction you pull. 

You might be wondering if automated shades can help you save energy – and money.  Perhaps they can help you do your part to preserve the planet. 

But you have questions.  Don’t we all?  We’ve put together some questions here about motorized shades that we often get from our clients.  And since we’re professionals, we’ve got answers.  Read on to find out more.