Smart gadgets might seem like a middle-class way to throw money around, but it often goes underappreciated just how much more economical they can make a home. Whether it’s saving you time or money, investment in smart gadgets can transform the way you live in your home. Making chores easier, saving electricity, or making your home more secure. Below are a few of the top gadgets to consider to create your smart home.
Tablet or iPad
The reason why this is first on the list is that it’s the place we will use as the central hub for our smart home. If we lose our phone, the tablet is always there, lying on the coffee table to control the lights or see who is knocking on the door.
A tablet also has a wider screen, making it better for entertainment and browsing than a phone. Many online gamblers, for example, love a tablet because it’s remote enough to take around for accessible gaming, but it’s large enough to get an immersive experience. You can sit and browse slot machine terms or poker strategies in front of the fire while simultaneously controlling your home’s elements on the same device. You have a casino tournament saved in your calendar, and when the event begins, the lights in the home trigger casino colors.
Smart Thermostat
The most useful smart gadget around at the moment is the smart thermostat. In a time of high inflation and an energy crisis, we need to use as little gas and electricity as possible in our homes. That starts by getting the temperature right.
A smart thermostat can use AI to understand the patterns of your heating. When you come home from work, you will begin to learn how the outside temperature affects the inside temperature, and so on. Soon, you won’t have to mess with the thermostat yourself, and it will automatically maintain the optimal temperature for you.
Smart Fridge
A smart fridge is a seemingly expensive thing to purchase for a home; it may cost two or three times more than a regular fridge. However, a smart fridge can be an investment that pays off in many different ways. First and foremost, they can make your grocery shopping easier. Through the cameras inside the fridge, you can see what is in the fridge in real time from your phone. Some fridges can even detect what products you’re running out of and order them for you.
But newer fridges are also more economical, which saves you energy and money in the long run, particularly with energy bills on the rise.
Philips hue
Architects will often tell you about the importance of light within a home. It’s crucial to set the tone, make the space appear bigger, and complement your interior design. Philips hue is an ecosystem of smart lights that plug into your walls or lightbulbs and can be controlled centrally.
The LED lights can change to custom colors and brightnesses to set the perfect ambiance. However, they can also be controlled via an app or via other smart devices like Alexa. This means there’s also an element of time control, such as upping the light’s brightness to help you awake at 7 am or automatically turning lights off at 11 pm when you go to bed.
Smart doorbells
Smart doorbells are becoming an increasingly helpful tool for local police forces because more people now have footage of the crimes committed on their property.
A smart doorbell is a Wi-Fi-connected doorbell with a camera on it. They allow us to see who is at the door from our phones on a live feed before we answer. However, many can record continuously even into the night, meaning they double as security cameras.
Community Facebook pages in the past few years give the impression that crime is on the rise. Whether it is or isn’t will depend on the area, but what is likely happening is that we simply have more evidence than before. We can see people open our car door to see if anything is in there. And, when we share it online, communities can help better examine the crime and criminals in their local area.
Raspberry Pi to customize
Many gadgets do what they say they will do – and they do it well. But what if you want more freedom or customization? Building your own can be a cost-effective way to get better customization, but it just takes a little elbow grease and technical skill.
For example, smart mirrors are popular to build. You place a monitor behind some reflective material to create a mirror, and you have a dashboard that you can see and reflect on. The program can be run from a raspberry pi, and if you connect some speakers, a microphone, and Alexa to it, you have an all-in-one system that can play music, remind you of emails, and even play YouTube videos.
Equally, you could use a raspberry pi to create an automated plant watering system or an automated cooling system for brewing beer.
