First steps with a smart home. Where to start?

Commercial message: When you leave the office, one voice command will turn off the lights, close the blinds and turn off the aroma diffuser. While you're sitting in your car on your way home from work, a smart thermostat turns on the boiler in your home to heat the rooms to your favorite temperature, the driveway gate and garage door open just before you arrive, the front door lets you in after verifying your fingerprint or entering a code, and in a warm in the living room you will be greeted by romantic ambient lighting along with pleasant music wafting from the speakers.

There are many options and systems on the market with which you can achieve a similar idyll. However, the questions of how to actually start and what are the basic stones of the path to an affordable and simple smart home are appearing more and more often?

Homekit Household? Just own an iPhone

The natural solution for Apple users is to look for devices with the "Works with Apple Homekit" sticker and control everything directly through the Home application, where you simply combine multiple smart devices from various manufacturers. They usually also have their own application, through which you can also control the gadgets. You simply need an iPhone to control it. If you are not satisfied with the control in the premises of the home network, however, it is necessary to have a center located at home. Through it, you will communicate with your appliances from anywhere in the world - that is, wherever you connect to the Internet. The mentioned base can be Homepod, Apple TV, or possibly an iPad switched to home center mode will suffice. You can add your new smart gadgets to the Home by simply scanning the QR code. After that, all you have to do is give an instruction (in English) to the Siri assistant, or set up your own automations in the individual daily scenes of the Household.

Androidists have a choice

For those who for some reason do not like Apple devices, there are other options for anchoring their remotely controlled smart home. The two most widespread are Amazon Echo and Google Assistant, and their voice assistants. To use them, you need to own a central "speaker" through which the household communicates with your smartphone. The principle of adding and managing smart appliances in the system is very similar to Apple Home, only with different nomenclature.

With or without a gate?

There are many brands of smart home devices on the market, and more are being added. Some brands such as VOCOlinc, Netatmo or Yeelight, integrate WiFi modules directly into their appliances. For their full functioning, you do not need any central office and communication takes place only through a classic WiFi network (mostly 2,4GHz).

The second option is to reach for smart gadgets that communicate through their own central office (gateway), which must be purchased and placed in the apartment. Such solutions are offered, for example, by Philips Hue, Nuki, Ikea, Aquara and many others. Logically, it is then worthwhile to cover the household with only one selected brand, whose gate you purchase and you are somewhat limited precisely by its range.

However, not all brands support all of the mentioned assistants, before purchasing, make sure that the product on the box or in the description really bears the label Works with Apple Homekit, Amazon Echo, or Google Assistant.

Which products to start with

There is no universal guide on how to equip the perfect smart home. First, try to imagine your own apartment and set the target state that you want to achieve. And most importantly - which everyday routine tasks do you want to turn into fun and automation.

We recommend starting with a smart socket, into which you plug and automate any existing appliance or system in your home. You can then time it as you like or add it directly to the scene in your smart ecosystem. For example Vocolinc smart socket it will also measure the consumption of the connected appliance.

“Hey Siri, turn on the lights in the second floor”

If you are a fan of effective lighting of all kinds and an endless spectrum of colors, they will come in handy smart light bulbs a LED strips.

However, crazy disco effects probably won't be your everyday use. Above all, you can add lighting to individual day scenes. At the stroke of seven in the morning, you will be gently woken up by the gradually lighting up ambient LED strip in the shade of light rays, in the evening, on the other hand, you can induce romance with the effect of a candle alternating the tones of your favorite colors, or tune in green to watch football. You can also control effects, colors, on and off with voice commands, without having to go to the switch.

Check security from the other side of the world, for example

A popular and finally practical use of a smart home for some are security features that allow you to have control over your home whether you are at work or on the other side of the world. Among the most popular smart security brands are Netatmo or Nuki currently available for all the above-mentioned assistants.

With an intelligent lock, you not only have to worry about whether you accidentally forgot to lock it and whether your children arrived home on time, it is also a practical solution if you rent your apartment for a short period of time or you need to give one-time access to your neighbors. The system will generate a unique and time-limited security code for you.

You can go even further with the purchase of security sensors that inform you about the frequency of opening windows and doors, as well as about the temperature or the presence of smoke.

If you want to invest a little more in security and have an overview of what is happening around the castle and the whole house, don't forget an outdoor security camera, ideally together with a built-in IR light. In the manufacturer's application, you can observe the events around the house non-stop, or view saved records. In addition, smart cameras recognize a car, a person and an animal and, if you want, notify you of their presence.

Don't forget lifestyle accessories

And finally, a gadget that you probably don't need until you learn about it. You can supplement your smart home with smart aroma diffuser, the VOCOlinc brand currently offers the only one compatible with Apple Homekit (however, it also works with Alexa and Google Assistant). You can spice up your evening scene when you come home with your favorite scent, which you drop into the diffuser.

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Jablíčkář magazine bears no responsibility for the text above. This is a commercial article supplied (in full with links) by the advertiser.