Smart home technology is starting to become part of every day life for many people. From smart lights, to fridges and thermostats, this is your ultimate guide for diving into the smart home lifestyle.
Explore Home Hubs
A smart home hub is a small device that connects all of your smart home devices to own system. This makes your setup much more simple, and easy. When you don’t have a home hub, you’ll most likely end up having loads of different apps on your phone that control different things. With a hub, you can control all of your smart devices within one app/device. Some hubs are simply a small device you hardwire to your router, and is controlled by an app, while other smart hubs are large touch screens that can be mounted to your wall like a thermostat. There are many smart home hubs out there, but we recommend the Samsung SmartThings Hub. This hub is used through the app that you can download on your phone (meaning it is not a physical hub), and is a great choice with an expectional price of $99. If you have an iPhone, you can even use the Home app to control your smart products. While its compatibility with other smart products is more limited than a traditional hub, it’s a great option for starters, or if you just don’t plan to completely deck out on smart products.
What do you plan on using your smart home products for?
Before you start buying smart home products left and right, you’re going to need to decide what exactly you want. Do you want smart lights or something more high tech? Not only will you need to plan what products you’ll buy, but you’ll also need to consider how you are going to use and connect them. Speaking from experience, running out and buying your devices before thinking it through is going to make everything much more difficult than it needs to be. Sometimes integrating smart technology into your home can be stressful because at times it can actually be exceptionally complicated. Basically, just make sure you have a plan, at least to a small extent.
Explore your options for products!
This is the fun part. Now you get to decide what products you’re going to buy, and what you’re going to use them for. There are so many options for smart devices, it’s almost overwhelming, but in the end, it’s well worth it. If you’re just dipping your toes into the smart home universe, you might want to start with something small like a smart plug. Smart plugs are small plu-gins that you can plug your lamp, tv, and much more else into. You can then control your lamp for example from your phone or google home depending on what you connect your plug-in into. If you’d like to do a deep dive, you might want to consider smart lights, or maybe even a smart fridge. Smart lights are probably the most exciting smart home product. We highly recommend trying Philips Hue. There are many different models of Philips Hue lights, some have different variations of white Hues, while others can change to thousands of different colors. When it comes to smart lights there are endless possibilities. You can set scenes, color loops, and you can even make your lights match what’s being displayed on your TV. Smart fridges and TV’s are also an amazing addition to your home. If you’re looking into smart TV’s, we recommend trying a simple TV Plugin such as Apple TV or Roku. If you haven’t heard of these products, they are small devices that plug in to your TV, and instantly transform it into a smart TV within seconds. Apple TV is on the expensive side starting at $130, while Roku has a much lower price tag at $30, going all the way up to $99.
Enjoy your smart home!
Now that you’ve done all your planning, purchased all your products and connected them, you can now enjoy your smart home! If you ever feel the need to add onto your setup, you can! Small additions like light strips, thermostats, or even fridges are easy additions that you can purchase at any time. Thanks for reading, and be sure to follow our instagram for the latest tech news. (@appletld)
