Smart Home Living
It's been over a year since I hired contractors to gut our forested, Iowa countryside home. As we rebuild, we've taken the opportunity to create a smart home. My wife Lynda and I now stay there on weekends, which gives us a chance to use our iPhones and voice commands to control lighting, heating, and other electronic devices.
Trying out the various smart home apps is like using different remotes to access your TV, DVR, VCR, antenna, and cable service. Each framework, including Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home, wants to be the hub where you can control all your smart home devices. However, because of an incomplete list of partners, we're using a collection of apps and services to control our smart home.
Tried & True: Nest App & Products
Nest (free) is the most sophisticated, comprehensive, and easy-to-use of the apps I've tried. It lets us control the company's products, letting us adjust our boiler thermostat, view video from surveillance cameras, and monitor our smoke detectors. The Nest Learning Thermostat ($249) has been able to learn the heating habits for the different rooms in our house as we come and go. The app automatically creates a schedule, which we can modify. It uses sensors and phone location to know when no one is in the house to optimize the temperature. The app monitors the Nest Protect Smoke and CO Sensor ($119), which works in conjunction with the thermostat. Within the app, we can view live video feeds from our Nest Cam Outdoor Security Cameras ($199 each), which store video history and send alerts when they detect a person or animal. Nest works with Alexa voice commands but not directly with Apple HomeKit.
Luxury Lighting: Lutron System
We've invested in a Lutron lighting system, which lets us use its app to turn on, turn off, and dim our lights; control ceiling fans and shades; turn on and off Wi-Fi; and program light sensors. The app allows us to easily program daily lighting schedules, including scenes such as dimmed lights for movie watching. You can even schedule your lights to turn on randomly to simulate occupancy when on vacation. You can use the Nest app, Alexa, and Apple HomeKit to control and activate Lutron lights. We use the Alexa app (free) to control our lighting. For example, I say “Alexa, good night” to my Amazon Echo or the iPhone Alexa app to turn out all the lights and “Alexa, good morning” to turn lighting on.
Open Your Garage: Chamberlain Smart Garage Hub
The myQ Garage & Access Control app (free) connects with a simple-to-set-up Chamberlain Smart Garage Hub ($39.98) that works with most garage door openers made after 1993. With it, we can open and close the garage door from anywhere using our iPhones. The app and garage hub both support Amazon Key (part of a Prime membership but not yet available in my area), a service where an Amazon driver can open your garage door and leave the package in a secure place.
Rounding Out Your Smart Home
I use other smart home devices and apps, too. I depend on an Amazon Fire TV Cube ($99.99) and Alexa voice commands to stream content and Amazon Fire TV Recast ($229.99) to record local channels. We vacuum the house with the iRobot Roomba Robot (starting at $299.99) and app. When summer comes, we will control our Bryant Air Conditioner (starting at $1,200) temperature with its app.
By the time I write my next column, I will be more familiar with our smart devices. I will discuss further findings and share how I integrated Siri and Alexa voice commands. So, are you smart enough for a smart home? Of course, you are—you must just be willing to invest the time to become its master. Hal Goldstein founded iPhone Life’s original publishing company, Thaddeus Computing, in 1985. You can contact him by email at hal@thaddeus.com or @halgoldstein on Twitter. You can find the print, digital, and audio versions of his book Meditating Entrepreneurs- Creating Success from the Stillness Within at Amazon.