Having permanent smart lights in place is the dream for tech-savvy homeowners. There are a ton of small, but notable benefits from having permanent lights you can control using an app on your phone. Using our smart outdoor lights, you can make life easier for everyone in your family.
Gemstone Lights allow you full control over your home lighting, whether you’ve chosen track lights, flood lights, or a combination of both. The app unlocks a ton of new opportunities for tech-driven convenience, so let’s go through some of the hidden benefits you may not have imagined before.
The Hidden Benefits of Permanent Smart Lights
Strategic Timing
The good thing about technology is that it can automate small tasks to make your whole day run more smoothly. The best tech can be set up and allowed to run alone, with no need to play around with it from day to day (unless you want to). It sounds a little silly, but these small tasks can add to the mental load and decrease your general feeling of well-being.
With the Gemstone Lights Hub2 app, you can set your lights to switch on and off on a timer. Other outdoor lights offer this, too, but with our app, you can take the control up to the next level, which can really simplify your life.
You can select specific patterns to come on at particular times, rather than a simple on/off function. For example, you can set a solid color to come on at a particular time, choose a specific pattern, or choose custom presets you’ve already set up for your home.
You can also set up weekly, monthly, or yearly timers, too. So if you want different lights on the weekends, it’ll do that automatically without you having to change it each time. You can even set up holiday lights in advance if you want, making holiday decorating even easier.
Our Hub2 app also supports sunrise and sunset settings with adjustable offsets. Even if you’re offline, these timers work beautifully, and your lights will adapt to daylight changes for the best performance possible.
All of this control gives you a greater peace of mind. If you’ve got a busy family life with people coming and going at different times of the day, you’ll know that they’ll feel safe because you can set the lights to come on when the earliest worker leaves the house and to stay on until the last person arrives home safely. Which, when you have teenage kids starting to gain their own independence, is pretty soothing.
Natural Lighting
Did you know that warm white lighting has some real advantages over cool lighting? Everything from reducing eye strain to reducing stress, in fact. According to one study, mixing white with cooler colors like blue or purple can reduce the relaxing properties of white lighting. Many of us are busy and prone to stress anyway; choosing the right lighting can actually make a difference.
Our RGBWW lights have a distinct advantage. The ‘WW’ stands for ‘Warm White.’ Without going into the technical details too deeply, this means that we have a greater range of whites to choose from, giving you a true warm white, as opposed to a less natural cool white.
In terms of outdoor lighting, this means that you can create a warm, cozy, welcoming ambiance by using warmer whites for your outdoor spaces. So, if you want to extend your evening by hanging out on the porch or the patio but don’t want harsh overhead lighting making everything feel clinical, our warm white can create the mood you’re looking for.
And because the app is easy to use, you can quickly find warm white options to create that cozy atmosphere, while still giving enough light for everyone to see clearly. Which is a huge win for outdoor entertaining, especially in the fall and winter months when the days are shorter.
We’re particularly proud of our warm white lights because we think they do make a big difference in how your home feels. It’s amazing the difference they can make!
Smart Devices
You can also link your Gemstone Lights to an Amazon Alexa or Google Home device. Especially with the Hub2 app, which has improved connections and commands with smart devices. All you need to say, for example, is ‘Alexa/Google – switch on Gemstone Lights’ and they’ll flick on without you needing to do anything.
You can also change the colors and intensity of the lights using voice commands. While we think the app is fun to play around with, other family members might not be as tech-savvy as you, and the voice control allows them to use the lights to their full potential without having to ask you to do it, which is obviously much more convenient for you!
(Of course, you may not want to make this known to the youngest members of the family – otherwise, your neighbors may have to put up with unconventional lighting patterns popping up every now and then …)
Light Grouping
Rather than having a pattern playing across your whole property, instead, you can group lights to do different things. So if you want to light up a doorway, you can do it using the app.
This sounds complex, but it really isn’t – you’ll be able to map the lights to see which ones you need to stand out and then control those lights specifically. For tech-savvy homeowners, this is a fun way to maximize the efficiency of your outdoor lights in terms of making the home feel safe, welcoming, and easy to navigate for everyone.
You can then go ahead and switch up the pattern in the remaining lights, meaning that you can still enjoy fun lights for different occasions while keeping the entry or exits to your home well-lit.
You can also control your flood lights and track lights separately. These can be switched on using a timer, too, and you can set the patterns and colors depending on the time of year, the holiday you’re celebrating, etc.
Full Control of Your Smart LED Lights, Wherever You Are
Leaving home for extended periods of time is nice for a break, but it can actually feel kind of anxiety-inducing to leave your home (and all your belongings) behind for a while.
You can still control your permanent smart lights no matter where you are, which means you can check in at home and make sure everything is working the way it should: if nighttime lighting gives you peace of mind, it’s nice to know you can switch them on and off at will, and this combined with other smart tech like Ring doorbells work really well.
This is a huge bonus if you have family members staying back home. Got teenagers or young adults in the house? You can still make them feel safe by controlling your smart LED lights from where you are. Super easy, but a bit of reassurance for you as a parent.
With our new Hub2 app, the app lets you know what pattern is currently playing. So if your kids are messing around with the lights back home, believe us, you’ll know about it. No more worrying about annoying the neighbors while you’re gone because if the lights are set to a crazy pattern in the middle of the night, you can switch them back with ease.
Cloud Syncing
The Hub2 app also has cloud syncing, which means that your folders and patterns are synced with the cloud. That means you can use any device to control your lights and access your saved patterns. So you’ll have easy access no matter which device you use.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question: Can I control lights from the same app if I own multiple properties?
Answer: Yes, you can. You can set up Gemstone Lights around different buildings – for example, business owners can control lights in different locations using the same app.
This is also the case if you have, for example, a pool house or a guesthouse. You can control these lights separately, but within the same app, and you can set up timers for these too. This means once you’ve gone through the setup process, the lighting in these areas will run themselves, so you don’t need to think about it at all.
Question: Can I set the brightness for each pattern?
Answer: Yes. You can set the brightness for different patterns. You can have softer lights to wake up to in the morning, for example, and move on to brighter lights in the early evenings if you like to welcome everyone home.
Question: Can I download new patterns onto the app?
Answer: Yes. You can download patterns we at Gemstone Lights have created for you – they are organized into folders, so you can easily find them again later.
This is particularly useful if you’re looking for something specific, for example, lights that work really well for Halloween or Thanksgiving: they’re also pretty fun to browse through and test out on your own home.
Question: Can I create my own patterns?
Answer: Yes. You can easily create your own patterns, including color choices (using the color picker, you can choose from millions of color options!), brightness, and more. You can then save these patterns, give them a name, and set them on a timer if you like.
You can save your patterns in a specific folder, too, making them really easy to find later. So if you’ve just dreamed up the perfect Christmas lighting, you can save it for later, so you won’t have to remember how you did it last year!
Final Thought
Permanent smart lights can help your life to run more smoothly. When you live in a busy household, running your home and keeping your property the way you want it to look can feel like a full-time job in itself. Using the app to control our lights can help to check some tasks off your list so you don’t have to think about them anymore. If you’re interested, contact one of our Authorized Dealers – they’ll be able to give you a price quote for your property.