Five for Friday – May 14th
May 14, 2021
We hope your week is going well! Here is this week’s ‘Five for Friday’, and today is all about the smart home. Dave Truss (Operation Manager for Forget Me Not Ministries) shares a bit about his love for gadgets and some of his top choices!
I am a gadget guy, and in the past 7-8 years the idea of a smart home has exploded in the tech world. It has been my dream to convert everything in my home to be smart, and to have all major functions of my life respond to commands from my phone…I still have a long way to go, but below I have listed 5 starter ideas that helped me get started on my smart home journey.
1. Philips Hue
I love the Philips Hue range, they come in many forms but at their heart, they are light bulbs that are controlled by your phone, tablet or computer. They are a great way to get started on making your home smart, as they have good starter packages and you can add bulbs over time and slowly convert all your existing lights into smart lights.
The Philips Hue app controls the lights, and if you choose the color bulbs, you can decide from 16 million colors/shades in your home! You can control brightness, schedules for lights to come on and off, actions (i.e. all lights switch on when you walk in from work).
My favorite feature is that you can take a photo of a light/room (perhaps the homely setting of the restaurant you loved on vacation, or your favorite cafe) and the Hue app will sample and recreate this exact color and brightness etc on your light bulbs so you can enjoy the same colors and ambiance at home!
There are hundreds of Hue bulbs, light fixtures and even exterior lights, but I have listed here the starter package I started with, which gives you the Hue Bridge (like the ‘brain’ that controls all the lights), a smart button for when you want a physical switch, and 3 light bulbs to get you going. Click here to grab your starter package!
2. Eve Home Plugs
For your home to be truly smart, you need some smart plugs. These are a little unit that you plug your appliances into, that can then be controlled via an app on your phone. They are fairly inexpensive, and the configuration options are pretty much endless!
In the summer I have a couple of fans plugged into my smart plugs, and use them to be able to switch those fans on and off via the app (very useful if you wake up hot at night and don’t want to have to get up!), and I also have them set on a schedule to come on 30 mins before I wake so that things are cooler. I plug side lights into them, and even my coffee machine.
There are hundreds of options when it comes to buying smart plugs, ranging from $5 to $100, but the ones I have used personally and have never had an issue with, are the Eve Energy Plugs. They have recently updated these, with a smart meter that gives you insights on your electricity consumption and helps you save on your bills, which also helps your home to be greener.
3. Viper
Have you ever unlocked your car, and thought ‘I wish I was doing this from my phone?’ Well of course that was my first thought too, which is where the Viper Smart start comes in!
I have had this unit on my car, for about 8 years now, it started as a security requirement with constant break-in’s related to our work here. With this unit you can lock and unlock your car from your phone, start it anywhere in the world, and be alerted to breakin’s, or even get low battery warnings. Or like me, you can set it to start the engine for 30 mins whenever the battery gets too low. It also has a GPS tracker so you can see where your car is at any point, and be alerted if it is moving. I have mine set to unlock my car automatically with my watch, so you can have handsfree operation.
This is a useful part of making your life ‘smart’ and lets be honest, it makes you feel like James Bond when you start your car from halfway across the world!
There are various versions of this unit to choose from, I have the security system with a separate fob for controlling everything, but I have linked the basic version that gives you full features and access from your phone.
4. Eve Room
Not all smart devices are for controlling something, some also feedback information and data to you. My favorite smart sensor, is the Eve Room. This little device, can go in any room or area, and monitors the quality of the air, humidity, and temperature etc.
I really like all the info it can give you on your phone, while just a glance at the device itself can tell you about the quality of the air you’re breathing. It helped me in my previous apartment that had mould issues, to know when mould had reappeared and needed to be dealt with.
They are a little more expensive than other smart sensors but are reliable, give a great deal of data and information on the quality of air and temperatures etc, is small and looks good. They also cover a wide area so a few of these will cover a whole house. They can also be configured to work with other smart devices like your heating/cooling or (de)humidifiers, to start and stop based on data reporting from the sensor (i.e. switch on my dehumidifier when the humidity in the air hits x). You can check out the Eve Room here!
5. Smart Thermostat
This is the most expensive smart device on my list, and is the only one I have not personally used yet. However these thermostats are amazing devices, that you can have a professional install in place of your current thermostat. You can then control the temperature of your home (or rooms if you invest in multiple) from an app on your phone. If you have an Alexa or apple HomePod you can even control it by voice. It is useful to be able to monitor the temperature from your phone, but also you can switch on the heating from work, if you want to arrive home to a nice warm house. You can setup smart schedules, and if you are traveling you can switch on the heating from the airport so that you walk into a welcoming warm house!
These thermostats are renowned for helping save on heating bills and the relatively high cost of investment in buying the unit and having it installed should be recouped pretty quickly.
If you install multiple units in individual rooms to allow for heating control of each room in your home, you can setup guest access/mode, which allows your visiting guests (once Covid is long gone and forgotten) to install the app for control on their phone, and have access to the temperature in their room without having access to the whole house temperature.
Here are 2 well known and reviewed smart thermostats:
Bonus tip: You can control these smart accessories with your android devices too, but I personally use Apple Homekit. This is software that comes with all iPhones, iPads and Macs, that controls compatible HomeKit devices. All of the devices I have listed here can work on HomeKit, which means you can control everything you have in your home, from one app on your phone or iPad etc. It’s a great way to unify your smart devices and really makes a smart home a possibility. If you have an old iPad hanging around, you can consider dedicating to HomeKit, and mount it somewhere easily accessible in your home, as a control hub for all your smart home devices.
Disclaimer:
Some of these devices (the thermostats and Viper Smart Start) MUST be installed by an authorized professional. Please do not attempt to install these devices yourself, any attempt to install them yourself is very dangerous and could result in injury or death.
Hope these bless your week! We are thankful for you!
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