Smartphone wars are still going on, but there is a new digital battleground where companies are eager to march their products to the front. And that is our homes. Smart homes are certainly the trend of the future, and homeowners are enjoying the ad hoc obsession of getting smarter versions of their current devices. With voice activation and smartphone controls, our homes can now respond to us in new ways that they couldn’t before.
What kinds of smart home devices are available, and what could you be investing in to make your life a little bit cooler? We’re covering all of that in our list of the top 10 smart home devices for home automation that you should check out. We’ve got favorites on the list, like smart speakers and smart thermostats, but there’s also some extra gadgets to make your house even more interesting.
1. Smart Hub
The smart hub is the Google, Apple, Amazon, or other central device that sits in the middle of your living spaces. It usually has some sort of camera, speaker system, and voice activation. You can yell at it to play different songs, play games, and control most of the other smart devices in your home. Selecting a smart hub can be difficult, because you’ll have to know the kinds of other smart devices that you want before you can make a smart selection on your hub.
Along with smart hubs, it should also be a good place to mention smart speakers. Smart hubs can be hooked up to far more powerful speaker systems which let you play your tunes loud and proud in any room that you’d like.
2. Smart Thermostat
Why get out of bed in the morning to crank up the heat? Why wait until you get home to turn on the AC for the day? With a smart thermostat, you can control your temperature with your voice and directly from the app. It’s the best way to automate one of the most important features of your domain–the temperature.
Some smart thermostats feature a bunch of different temperature sensors to help you control every room. Thermostats like the Google Nest have learning capabilites, which allows your thermostat to learn the way that you like your domain heated and cooled. The smart thermostat can then make adjustments to save money and energy.
3. Smart Home Security
Systems like ADT and Simplisafe offer great security options that can be hooked up to other devices. You can get cameras and sensors which can be controlled directly from your home. The motion sensors can alert you when there is movement in a place that you didn’t expect movement. The cameras keep a record of the people and things that happen in your house. By integrating the smart home security systems with smart doorbells and smart locks, you can get more complete home security systems.
4. Blinds
In addition to temperature, controlling the lighting is one of the ways that you stay on top of your own vibe, mood, and energy. The way that the lighting and blinds function in your house will help you wake up in the morning and cruise to sleep at night. They are worth investing in. With smart blinds, you can have them go up in the morning when your alarm goes off, gently guiding you into your busy day.
5. Light Bulbs and Plugs
With smart lights, you can have everything go on when you come home at night and have everything turned off automatically when you leave for the day. Smart plugs allow you to turn on and off anything through your smartphone or home hub system. With smart plugs, the possibilities are nearly endless. You could turn off and on cooking appliances, lights, record players, phone chargers, string lights, and anything else that you can plug in. With smart plugs, if you can plug it into a wall, you can control it from your phone.
6. Smart Doorbell
The smart doorbell allows you to see who is at your door and answer the door from your phone. If you combine it with smart locks, you can easily let people into your home and lock it when you aren’t there. The smart doorbell is a safe and secure way to answer the door without even getting up from your desk to check who it is.
7. Smart Locks
Smart locks let you secure and unlock your home right from your phone. No more fumbling with keys on the way to the car, and no more using an entire hand to lock the door on the way out. With a smart lock you can carry everything into the car and lock your home door from your car.
8. Smart Cooking
Take a look, specifically, at InstaPot’s new wifi connected product that can be setup to go from anywhere. Where your parents and grandparents may have loved to put up a crockpot to simmer some meat all day, people from this generation can load soup, chicken, or oatmeal into the InstaPot and start the thing without even getting out of bed. Perfect for those days when you want dinner ready right when you get home from work
9. Smart Vacuums
Yes, the little robot vacuums are smart devices that you can use in your homes. These are som eof the earlier smart devices that some of us may remember. They became a punchline for awhile, bumping into walls and terrifying pets in a way that none of us thought vacuums might be able to. But smart vacuums have gotten more sophisticated over the years, better at learning the way that your house works and cleaning it from there.
10. Lawn Mowers
Similar to vacuums, but a whole lot more powerful and definitely a bit scarier. Yes, if you didn’t know, smart mowers are now a thing. You can set them up and they run hands free, robotically across your lawn to get things down the inch that you want. With a robotic lawn mower, you’ll spend a lot more time sipping lemonade by the pool and less time cleaning the lawn.
