Some of you may be asking what even is a smart home? Well, these gadgets are made to make your existence more convenient by connecting elements of your home to one source of control, so you can live comfortably.
Making your home smarter and upgrading to modern essentials is always a good idea. You get new possibilities to make convenience the norm, with dimming the lights without having to get up from the couch or bed or turn on your air conditioning before even getting home with an app.
Smart devices can even make your wallet less empty in the long run, since they can have better energy usage and work more efficiently at doing their job, for example, robot vacuums can reach under the bed and other nooks and crannies your standard vacuum might not reach.
The biggest part of upgrading your home to smart devices is that you become in control without having to be there, in control. You can program schedules into your devices and not even have to pay attention for them to work, even allowing full control from your smartphone.
There are many brands to choose from depending on what tasks you need your house to do for you, namely Google Assistant supported devices, Amazon Alexa home pods, Apple HomeKits, and some other less-known brands.
The following products will be organized by room to keep all the devices organized and allow us to assess how to keep that American work-life balance stable, as well as help you decide what devices you will truly need for your home.
Outdoor Home Security
With today’s technological advancements modern smart security is the way to go since you can get alerts on your phone as well. With installing outdoor home security you can be met with smart home gadgets before even entering the space.
To begin, illuminating your outdoor space when arriving home is the first step to comfort and safety, so smart lights that are safe for outdoors may be something you would want to own.
A well-known brand for outdoor smart lights is the Ring Smart Lighting System. The devices from this brand allow you to add motion security to your abode all connected in a network. You can get a variety of lights, including floodlights, step lights, and pathway lights among many others.
Unfortunately, most of Ring’s devices are powered by a battery and you have to connect them through the Ring Bridge to make them smart lights. Apart from these additions, you can control the lights using Alexa voice commands or the Ring app.
You can even connect smart cameras like the Stickup Cam Battery to record whenever the lights are activated, allowing for proper protection from intruders from your home.
Another useful addition to outdoor smart security is a camera doorbell to view who might be at the door without leaving the couch. Apart from securing the unlikelihood of home invasion, these types of doorbells also save you from property theft and porch pirates alike.
In addition, these doorbells sometimes allow you to speak to anyone at your door and also view who is there even when you’re not home since they record video footage continuously.
Lastly, for outdoor smart gadgets, we have smart locks, which make it easier for you to come and go as you please, whilst monitoring who enters your home while you are away.
Living Room, Office, and Bedroom
The most obvious and useful device you could buy for your living room is a smart speaker. These speakers tend to serve as a central command center for your smart home rather than to just play music hands-free.
You have the choice between three different voice assistants for your home. Your decision will most likely depend on the other devices you may want to or already own. You can either choose Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri, all three of which support most smart home devices.
For Alexa, you may want to choose Echo Studio or Amazon’s fourth-generation Echo. For Google Assistant, your best bet is Nest Audio and Sonos One (which can also be Alexa compatible), and lastly, for Siri, you will need the HomePod mini.
Smart light bulbs could easily replace all the lights in your home if you can afford to since they make for a more affordable upgrade towards a smart home. These bulbs are connected to your phone and your smart speaker, meaning they support voice control.
These bulbs use less energy, last longer, and you can get color-changing versions as well, depending on whether you like cool-toned or warm-toned lighting, as well as colorful shades for your home. You can even dim these lights, for movie nights or to wind down before bed.
Connected thermostats do the same, they allow you to control the indoor weather with your phone or smart speaker. These thermostats will lower your heating bill thanks to the efficient way they work and turn down or off the heating whenever you say so.
Lastly, smart plugs or sockets will also lower your electricity bill, and they allow your average appliances to become “smart”. The plugs connect to your central command device of choice and you can schedule them and control them to your liking.
Kitchen and Laundry
One useful tool that can facilitate your tired and grumpy mornings are smart coffee makers. Not only can you control these from your phone or using your voice, but also program them to make coffee on a schedule at the same time every day.
Robot mops take Roombas one step further by supporting different cleaning solutions to make your floors squeaky clean before you get home in the evening.
And if you want to make turning devices off an afterthought, Vont smart plugs can do that for you. When you connect any device to the smart plug, you can automatically control it on your phone and see a daily breakdown of your energy use.
Bathroom
Whenever the toilet seat being left up makes you blow your top, remember you can upgrade your bathroom, most importantly your toilet. Smart toilets would probably be a solution to all your needs.
Smart toilets have voice command functions with which you can tell it to lift and lower the seat, some are self-cleaning using UV light to disinfect, night light to see in the dark, an automatic deodorizer, and even an emergency mode, allowing you to flush up to 100 times during a power outage.
All these gadgets can make you feel more productive and clean in your own home, making the home one of the happiest places to work in thanks to the comfort this new tech yields. More information find here.
