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Smart Home Guide: Essentials You Need For Your Smart Home

Smart Home Guide: Essentials You Need For Your Smart Home

Introduction

To create your very own smart home, you need to purchase a lot of devices. This includes sensors, smart lamps, speakers, security cameras, and other more. Once you have everything, you have to connect them all to a hub that enables communication between them and you via your smartphone.

Let’s face it, doing that can take a significant amount of time and money. For some, the effort you need to put into the project is excessive. But if you understand your needs and objectives, you can get the advantages of a high-end smart home with a relatively modest budget through proper planning.

Here are essentials you need to set-up your smart home system.

Video Doorbells and Home Security Cameras

Ring video doorbell attached to white doorframe in between blue door and gray wall
Source: https://ring.com/press

With the aid of a high-quality home security camera, you can keep a close eye on your house when you’re away. Outdoor models can capture prowlers in the act—hopefully deterring criminals from hanging around in the first place—while indoor models can help you keep an eye on your kids and pets.

Several types, like those from Ring, Netatmo, Arlo, and Maximus, come with lights that can help you find your way. The porch can be monitored by cameras built into doorbells, allowing you to engage with guests without having to go to the door or even be present. The most high-end versions can distinguish between people and animals, as well as detect when a package has been placed at your door.

Smart Lighting

An Avea smart light bulb from Elgato
Source: Elgato

Lighting is crucial for those who are interested in residing in a smart home. Most smart lighting systems function effectively without a central hub and remain able to communicate with other smart home components, such as smart speakers and displays like the Google Nest and Amazon Echo. Some smart lights—like the most recent Philips Hue bulbs—communicate through the Bluetooth radio in your smartphone, while others, like smart bulbs from LIFX, Cree, and TP-Link, communicate via Wi-Fi.

Smart Displays and Speakers

Ecobee4 on the wall from an angle showing home screen
Source: Shadowncs on Wikimedia Commons

What could be sweeter than using your smartphone to turn down the lights for a movie night? Dimming the lights is as simple as telling a smart speaker connected to your smart lighting to do so. The leading product lines in this sector are the Google Home and Amazon Echo series. While Amazon has retained the top spot for the past few years because of its larger installed base, wider support, and initial exclusivity of smart speakers with displays, Google is quickly catching up.

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, the two corporations’ digital helpers, are becoming more popular in specialized third-party products. Lenovo was the first company to market with Google Home devices with displays, while Ecobee uses the Echo’s internals in its superb Ecobee SmartThermostat featuring voice control (the Lenovo Smart Display series). Additionally, these smart speakers have gained widespread support from other makers of smart home products, making them de facto hubs in their own right.

Apple is still very much in the smart home game. Because of its HomeKit ecosystem and HomePod tiny smart speaker, which is powered by Siri, the company is starting to compete in this market. In its pitch for smart homes, Apple affirms its dedication to privacy.

Smart Thermostats

QubyDisplay Home smart thermostat installed on wall
Source: Lindalnpijn on Wikimedia Commons

Few smart home appliances can match the cost/energy savings and comfort a smart thermostat can provide. These gadgets do much more than just set up a cooling and heating schedule based on when you plan to be home to take advantage of those advantages. Your HVAC system will only run when necessary since it can tell when you are at home or when you are gone.

On this front, the most recent trend is to outfit thermostats with sensors that you can place in the rooms you use the most often, allowing the thermostat to work depending on where you are in the house rather than initiating cooling and heating cycles based on the thermostat’s position.

Smart Carbon Monoxide and Smoke Detectors

Xiaomi smart home, smart smoke detector and other smart products on shelves
Source: Georg Pik on Wikimedia Commons

Traditional smoke and CO detectors are essentially ineffective safety tools. Even if their sirens may be loud, what use are they if no one is home to hear them? A smart smoke detector can sound a local alarm as well, but if danger is present, it will also send a notification to your smartphone and to anybody else you have added as a contact.

Audio Systems

Sonos Zoneplayer ZP120 Front smart audio system
Source: Robert Wetzlmayr on WIkimedia Commons

Modern multi-room speaker systems from brands like Yamaha (MusicCast), Sonos and Denon (HEOS) are mostly self-contained and allow you to install speakers in multiple rooms of your house so you can stream music from your personal library or from online services like Spotify to all of them simultaneously or to send different tracks to each one. The smart speakers from Google Nest and Amazon Echo can perform the same tricks.

Conclusion

You can transform your humble abode into a smart home with the help of multiple smart home devices. All you need to do is to set your budget and also assure yourself of the commitment that you need for these changes. The convenience that a smart home provides offers essential benefits. You can automate a lot of essential utilities and monitor stuff inside and outside your house via your phone. 

Featured Smart Home Product:

V5 Smart Camera Wifi Doorbell

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Your phone will immediately receive a notification when the doorbell is pressed. Through the app, you may remotely open the door and speak with the other person immediately. A passive infrared sensor embedded into the video doorbell can detect even the smallest movement. It is possible to monitor in real-time. Watch films on your phone whenever you want, wherever you are, without worrying about opening the incorrect door or embarrassingly keeping guests waiting when no one is home. Two-way audio and HD video improve the clarity of your conversations. Four mobile phones can simultaneously share and watch doorbell photographs for a family, but only one person can converse on the walkie-talkie. Suitable with both Android and iOS operating systems.

Package Includes:

1 x WiFi doorbell

4 x screw

4 x mounting accessories

1 x wrench

1 x sticker

1 x user manual

1 x packing box

Get your smart own doorbell here.

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