Smart home technology has made it possible to add features to your home that once cost thousands of dollars. Now you can recreate many of these features for very little money, or even for free if you already have the right smart home technology.
Adaptive lighting
This is one of the easiest ways to upgrade your smart home without spending anything at all. Adaptive lighting automatically adjusts the brightness and warmth of your smart bulbs throughout the day to more closely mimic the natural light you experience outdoors. For example, at midday you get brighter, cooler colors, and at sunset you slowly transition to warmer colors.
A number of smart home systems include adaptive lighting options. If you use Philips Hue smart bulbs, there's a Natural Light scene that automatically adjusts the lighting throughout the day. Apple Home has adjusting adaptive lighting which you can activate for any supported smart bulbs, which will automatically adjust color temperature throughout the day.
If you use Home Assistant, adaptive lighting integration is available via Community store “Home Helper” (HAKS). You can use this to apply adaptive lighting to all your smart bulbs, even if they are from different brands.
Multi-room audio
It used to be an expensive proposition to have music playing throughout your home. You will need a multi-room audio switcher, a multi-channel amplifier, and you will have to connect it to speakers throughout the house. Setting up multi-room audio can cost thousands of dollars.
Today you can create multi-room audio for under $100. For example, you can buy a pair of Amazon Echo Dot speakers, place them in different rooms, and play audio on both devices in sync. Add more speakers and you can stream music throughout your home.
Echo Dots don't provide great sound, but they do many other options. Sonos offers high-quality speakers that can be used to reproduce sound across multiple rooms or use excellent Music Assistant software with Home Assistant to create speaker groups from your current speakers.
Motion activated lighting
Nothing makes your home more expensive than what happens like magic. Motion activated lighting is a perfect example; when you enter a room the light turns on automatically and when you leave it turns off again.
Eat many different ways to achieve this. One of the easiest ways is to use a cheap motion sensor; you can create an automation so that when motion is detected by the sensor, the light turns on. This works well for turning on lights, but the motion sensor isn't ideal for determining whether you're in the room.
presence sensors, e.g. mmWave sensormay work better. These sensors work like tiny radars and can detect the slightest movement that indicates you are still in the room. They can give you much more accurate information so that the lights don't suddenly turn off while you're sitting watching TV.
Automatic garage door opener
IN 1989 Tim Burton film. BatmanAs Batman drives towards the cliff at high speed, a secret entrance automatically opens for the Batmobile to enter. You don't have to be a crime-fighting billionaire to achieve the same effect.
If you already have a power garage door opener, you can make it smart by adding a relatively cheap wireless relay switch, such as Shelley 1. This allows you to control your garage door remotely.
Then you can use the method for example, geofences to determine when you've entered your “home” zone and the automation will open your garage door without having to look for the remote that ended up on the floor of your car. This is a relatively simple automation, but it will really make you feel like a superhero.
Whole House Wake Up Routine
Before the advent of smart alternatives, powered curtains that opened automatically in the morning could cost four figures per window or more. Today you can achieve the same results for much less. using smart blindsand even upgrade your current blinds or drapes using smart blinds tilt or curtain robots.
Automatic opening of curtains is just one way to make your home feel precious when you wake up. You can create a whole house smart home morning routine which can perform several actions that will help you start your day easier.
You can add activities to your daily routine, such as gradually increasing the brightness of the lights over a long period of time, to make it easier for you to wake up. You can automatically turn on the coffee machine so your coffee is ready as soon as you get out of bed, and play a relaxing playlist in the bedroom to make getting up less painful.
With a motion sensor, you can have your smart speaker play a greeting when you first enter the kitchen, keeping you up to date with what's happening on your calendar for the day, while the bathroom heater keeps the room nice and toasty, ready for your morning shower.
None of the above smart home procedures and automation systems require extremely expensive smart home technologies, but they can make your home feel incredibly luxurious. Features that were once only available to the wealthy can now be recreated for relatively little money, making your smart home feel expensive without spending a fortune.
