With the smart home comes terms, phrases or descriptions that you might not be familiar with. So, we wanted to define, in easy-to-understand terms, five of the more common smart home terms you might encounter.

Hub: A smart home hub translates different protocols into a unified language so that all your smart devices can work together.
Geofence: Geofencing uses the GPS, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth in your smartphone to create a virtual boundary around a real world location. It can then be used to trigger something in your smart home to happen - like your lights or air conditioner turning on - as soon as you (and your phone) enter or exit that boundary.
Pairing: Synonymously known as ‘provisioning’ or ‘learning mode,’ this is the process through which your smart devices establish a line of communication with your hub, so that you can monitor and control them through apps like Wink.
Platform: A smart home platform is like the foundation of your house or apartment building. It’s the underlying technology layer upon which different products from different brands are integrated together (usually with the help of a hub) and then controlled through a single app. We at Wink consider ourselves to be a smart home platform first and foremost.
Protocol: A protocol is a set of standards and rules - we like to think of them as languages - that smart devices use to communicate with one another. Among the more popular protocols are Z-Wave, ZigBee, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and Wi-Fi.

Hope this helps! We’ll be adding to this list over time. If there are smart home terms you’d like to better understand, let us know in the comments section!