Summary
Smart homes are meant to make life easier for you. Adding devices to your home can give you a boost in so many ways. You can have situations where your home is working for you and you don’t have to move a muscle.
Setting up automations is an easy way to make your home smarter and get the most out of your devices. Many smart home devices give you the option to run their functionalities through a variety of devices. Depending on your connection features and technologies, you can use certain devices or a hub to get your home up and running. I’ve gradually built up my smart home and added automations to the fold. Rather than just relying on a smart speaker to play music with a voice command, I’ve introduced features that my family can enjoy.
Motion sensors come into play
Turning on lights without hitting a switch is ideal
I’m a big proponent of using smart lights in my home. Being able to tell my Amazon Alexa, as I’m walking up the stairs, to turn a light on has been a game changer, especially as I’ve had kids and inevitably have my hands full.
We have smart light bulbs in many rooms in my home, but not in every room. In some of the other rooms, I’ve set up automations with smart sensors. Motion sensors can pick up on movement and send a signal to your smart home hub.
What that signal tells the hub to do is up to you. I’ve had it turn on lights. I’ve had it send a notification to my phone. What I most like doing with motion sensors is using them outside my home.
I have some Govee Outdoor String Lights 2 around my deck, which have made for a nice exterior upgrade for my home. I’ve used a Govee Motion Sensor to trigger the lights to turn on. This makes sitting out on my deck in the summer great because I can just step out of the back door and the lights come on. My family enjoys this because we can set the lights to be different colors.
Try out different motion sensors. Some work great with Matter-enabled devices while some don’t have that capability. Some are fast at picking up a trigger, while others may miss motion or are slower. Find one that works best for you.
My smart washer and dryer send notifications to my TV
It just keeps me updated that they’re done
One of the bigger upgrades that we’ve made since we moved into our house a few years ago was getting a new washer and dryer. We opted for smart Samsung units which have been nothing but great.
I love all the different cycle options and the fact that they are both front-loading units. But another great perk that they offer is that they connect to our smart home. We have a Samsung Frame TV in our main family room, so they both have Samsung SmartThings connectivity options.
I was able to set the SmartThings cross connection between the three devices, so whenever a load of laundry finishes, a notification pops upon the TV to say that it’s done. This is a great reminder that helps me avoid leaving laundry for too long.
Despite the washer and dryer being a different smart home platform than my smart home hubs, which are Amazon Alexa-based, the two systems get along. I set up a smart home automation through my Alexa that makes an announcement any time the load is finished. Through SmartThings in Alexa, I get reminders to change the loads as soon as they end. If you haven’t noticed by now, my family and I really don’t like the smell of musty laundry.
Samsung Smart Front Load Washer
A Samsung Smart Front Load Washer can connect via Samsung SmartThings to work within your smart home. It has multiple settings and can send notifications to other smart home devices when a cycle has finished.
Utilize smart curtains to wake up
This one worked for a while
When my wife and I moved into our house, it was just the two of us. We had set schedules and were able to wake up at a regular time every day. That’s what made smart curtains a great investment.
I had a smart sensor that would pick up when sunrise was occurring and it would trigger the smart curtains to open, illuminating the room. After a while, waking up at sunrise wasn’t really what we wanted, so we just hooked up our smart speaker to it and had the curtains pulled back at a certain time each day.
Being able to automate that part of our day was a true luxury, as we have blackout curtains in our bedroom, so you really don’t know when the sun is already up. Having your day start with some sunlight rather than with a blaring alarm is a great way to wake up.
However, we’ve had to abandon this part of our smart home automation once we had kids. There is no such thing as a normal sleep schedule with two small children, so it didn’t make sense to have curtains open at a time when we were likely already up.
Using smart home automations can make your life easier
I’ve been building up my smart home ever since I moved into my house. Adding more devices has been a fun part of homeowning and seeing how the home automations can fit into our daily routines. I look forward to continuing to see how my smart home devices can automate my life.