Smart Home Tour 2024 — Save Time and Money, Increase Comfort and Security
All the smart home tech that my family and I use every day. Our goal is to use automations to make our home more comfortable and secure, while saving us time and money. My hope is to give you ideas that inspire your own smart home, and everything I show is linked in the video description.
Introduction
I’m going to show you all the smart home tech that my family and I use every day. Whether you use Amazon, Google, Apple, or Home Assistant in your smart home, you’ll probably find ideas here that work for you. Our goal is to use automations to make our home more comfortable and secure, while saving us time and money. My hope is to give you ideas that inspire your own smart home, and I’ll link to everything I describe.
Main Points
Kitchen
Smart Home Control Panel: Let’s start in the Kitchen. We have a Samsung Galaxy A7 tablet using Fully Kiosk software to always display our custom smart home dashboard. This allows us to just tap to turn something on or off, or to see information at a glance, like if the garage door is open, a door is unlocked, or the thermostat is off. The tablet sits in a wall mount case. I use to have the tablet automatically turn on as we approached it, but this was a battery hog and I don’t keep our tablet plugged in to avoid seeing wires. Having it turn on automatically also made my kids more interested in it, and that wasn’t my goal.
Lighting: Above the tablet we have the Lutron Aurora smart dimmer switch. This allows us to easily control Philips Hue smart lights above the kitchen counter, but usually these lights are controlled by an automation that turns them on and off so we don’t have to think about it. We have Philips Hue smart bulbs in nearly every room of the house, and all of them use Adaptive Lighting. This means the lights automatically adjust their brightness and color temperature based on the sun’s position in the sky. I love this because it creates the perfect ambiance any time of the day, and I don’t have to spend time fiddling with an app.
Lock: The door into our kitchen has the Yale Assure SL smart lock with the Connect by August WiFi module. I like the all-glass, keyless design of the keypad. I have an automation that auto-unlocks this door when we return home based on not only our proximity to the house using a geofence zone, but also on a condition that my phone must be connected to our home’s WiFi network. This way, the lock only auto-unlocks when I’m physically on my property, and it will send me a notification to my phone when it was unlocked for added peace of mind. The lock also auto-locks itself every evening, and will even re-lock itself if someone opens the door after it was locked for the night, so the door cannot be left unlocked overnight.
Alarm: We’re using Ring Alarm for our home’s security. The base station has cellular backup in case the power goes out, and we have 24/7 professional monitoring. Recently, we were on vacation and the alarm went off, and I got an instant phone call from a real person, which was super helpful and reassuring — after I calmed down a bit that my alarm was going off.
Sensors: With Ring Alarm, I’m using Ring Contact Sensors on every door and window in the home. This is both for security and for automations. If or a door or window is opened, it will pause our heating and air-conditioning so we don’t waste energy. With the Ring Contact Sensor on this back door, it automatically turns on the porch lights when it’s dark outside and the door is opened to go outside. In other places of the home, we have Ring Motion Sensors to detect any indoor movement if the alarm is armed in away mode.
Living Room
Sensors: In the living room, I’m using the Everything Presence One sensor to automate the lighting across both the living room and kitchen. It uses motion to turn the lights on when someone enters, and mmWave for presence detection to turn the lights off when no one is in the room.
Vacuum: We also have the iRobot Roomba i7+ hiding behind one of our armchairs. With two young kids who dump most of their food on the floor, this robot vacuum stays busy. In fact, the most used voice command in our house is definitely, “Alexa, vacuum the kitchen.”
Front Door
Lock: At the front door, I’m using a Yale Assure 2 smart lock with Z-Wave. I love the reliability of Z-Wave on this smart lock — it has never failed me. This lock has physical buttons which are easier to press, but maintains the clean aesthetic of a keyless design. Like the door off the kitchen, this one also automatically locks itself.
Video Doorbell: Next to the front door, we have the UniFi G4 Doorbell. When a person is detected at the front door, my wife and I get notifications on our phones with an image of the person, and with one click we can go right to the live camera stream. If someone rings the doorbell, it will make an audible noise on a Ring Chime in our living room, and make an announcement on our Amazon Echo smart speakers across each floor of the house that someone is at the front door. Even better, it only makes this announcement when no one is sleeping.
Dining Room
Lights: In the dining room, we have a chandelier with Philips Hue bulbs for creating the perfect ambiance no matter the occasion.
Smart Speaker: Like most rooms of our house, there is an Amazon Echo smart speaker out-of-sight so voice control is never far away.
Camera: In various rooms, we have the UniFi G3 Instant camera, which connects using WiFi and is hardwired for power. It also act as a motion detector sensor for automations — more on that when we step outside.
Main Floor Bedroom
Lights: This bedroom is one of the few places not using Philips Hue smart bulbs.
Plug: Here, I’m using a TP-Link Kasa smart bulb and smart plug.
Button: Aside from motion-activated automations and voice commands, we control the lights using this physical button, which is the Aqara Wireless Mini Switch. Just tap once to turn the lights on, and twice to turn them off.
Main Floor Bathroom
Sensors: Our bathrooms have a Philips Hue Motion Sensor for automating lights.
Lights: These sensors tells Lutron Caseta smart dimmer switches to turn on. Smart switches like this are especially great for controlling multiple lights at once. Like Philips Hue smart bulbs, Lutron Caseta smart switches are pricey, but they are 100% reliable and worth the cost to me.
Smart Speaker: Even in the bathroom we have an Amazon Echo smart speaker — I told you Alexa voice control was never far away!
Hallway
Thermostat: In the hall, we have the Honeywell T5 WiFi Smart Thermostat. This is how we can pause the heating or air-conditioning when a door or window opens, or when no one is home, or to set the perfect temperature before we arrive home. I also get temperature alerts sent to me if the home’s temperature goes above or below determined thresholds. This is more of a backup mechanism in case an automation is not behaving as planned. As much as you think you’ve created the perfect home automation, there may be edge cases where things don’t go as planned, so having an alert system like this can be very useful.
Kids Bedroom
Sensors: Other bedrooms in our house also use the Everything Presence One for automating lights.
Button: We also have the Aqara Wireless Mini Switch in other rooms, but for different purposes. In the kids bedroom, we can tap the switch once to activate a sleep time automation that turns off all the lights, and turns on a white noise machine and baby monitor. Two taps turns off the white noise and monitor, and turns on a lamp. We can also long press the button to activate a pre-sleep automation, setting the lamp to a cozy purple and playing relaxing sleep music.
Lights: When it’s time for my kids to wake up, the lamp in their room turns green. If no presence is detected after a while, the lamp starts flashing green at them. I also had Amazon’s voice assistant tell the kids it’s time to get up, but turns out that an unexpected, computer-generated voice yelling at them to get up just freaks them out.
Smart Speakers: Also in several rooms, we’re using Sonos speakers. In the kids bedroom, we have a color-changing light next to the Sonos, and with a simple command, the kids have at least an hour of entertainment. “Alexa, start a dance party.”
Games: Sometimes, we need a more calming activity for the kids. Using the Everything Presence One in their room, I created a motion game that if they are still, their lamp is green, but if they move, their lamp turns red. It’s a hard game to win.
Basement
TV: The basement is where we have our Sony 65-inch smart TV. It’s plugged in to a TP-Link Kasa smart plug with energy monitoring. When we’re watching TV, we don’t like to have the light on. I can use the energy data from the smart plug to know when the TV is on, and to set a condition to not turn on the light, even if motion is detected. Behind the Sony is an Apple 4K TV on a wall mount. When someone rings the doorbell, I get a notification and can see who it is right on the TV, or check the live stream of any one of our cameras.
Laundry Room
Sensors: Our laundry room doesn’t have any windows, so when you open the door to the room, the lights automatically come on using a Ring Contact Sensor on the door. I created an automation to send a notification to our phones when the washing machine and dryer complete their cycles. This was done using another TP-Link smart plug with energy monitoring on the washer, and an Aeotec SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor on the dryer for detecting vibration.
Water Heater: The laundry room doubles as a utility room. Our water heater is connected to the Aquanta Water Heater Sensor. This allows us to better control the temperature and amount of hot water. We can give it a boost for a quick heating, or set it to away mode when we’re gone to save energy and money.
Internet Network: This is also the room with all my networking gear. Our home’s internet is powered by Ubiquiti UniFi, with WiFi access points all around our home. This thing is probably overkill, but I love how fast and reliable our internet is with it. All of the cameras outside our home use power-over-ethernet, or PoE, and connect right to this setup, as does various smart home hubs, such as a Raspberry Pi 4 running Home Assistant. My entire smart home setup gets backed up to this Synology NAS, which also houses data backups for our computer and our media files. A CyberPower battery backup helps everything stay up and running, even when the power is out.
Basement Bedroom/Office
Lights: Aside from a couple Philips Hue smart lights and a Lutron Aurora smart switch on the wall, my office-slash-bedroom is ironically the least automated space in the house, well, for now.
Watch this video for my productivity desk setup.
Garage and Shed
Garage Door: Outside, we have a detached, single car garage. In there, I’m using ratgdo to make our garage door smart since Chamberlain removed smart home compatibility I use to rely on with their myQ garage door openers. With ratgdo, I can open and close the garage door with a single click on my phone, and create automations to close the door if it’s left open.
Camera: Since we get Amazon deliveries in our garage, I have a UniFi G3 Instant WiFi camera in here.
Lock: Also in the garage is a U-tec ULTRALOQ WiFi smart lock, which has a fingerprint reader in addition to a numeric keypad. For times when someone rings the front door and we’re outside, I have a Ring Chime out here as well, so we don’t miss any visitors.
Internet Networking: Since the garage is detached from our home, I added a UniFi access point out here so we have rock solid internet coverage no matter where we are on the property.
Irrigation: Out here I also have a Rachio 3 Pro for automating our in-ground irrigation system. I can combine this with UniFi G4 Bullet cameras around the exterior of our property, which also act as motion sensors. When raccoons decide to dig up our yard at night, their motion is detected by the cameras, and that tells Rachio to turn on the sprinklers, which sends the animals running away. My efforts to deter raccoons could be a whole separate video.
Lights: When I open the shed, two LIFX smart bulbs turn on automatically using another Ring Contact Sensor. This sensor is far from the Ring Alarm base station, but range has never been an issue.
Outside
Cameras: As mentioned, I have UniFi G4 cameras around the property. I highly recommend hardwired cameras over battery power. While battery power is easy to install, it can quickly become frustrating to charge batteries repeatedly.
Lights: Around our front walkway and back patio are Ring Pathway Lights, which are powered by solar energy and motion activated so we always have light at night. I also use the motion sensors in these lights to know when someone is approaching the back porch at night to turn on the porch string lights, which are plugged into a TP-Link Kasa outdoor smart plug. I have another one of these outdoor smart plugs in the front of the home for automating our Christmas lights.
Weather: Outside is also our Tempest Weather Station, but I’m not using this to check the temperature. Instead, I use the brightness sensor on the station to determine the perfect time to turn our outdoor Philips Hue lights on and off. I also use the rain sensor to know if the Rachio irrigation system should delay the next sprinkler cycle.
Solar Energy: Last but not least, on top of our home we have 20 solar panels. These connect to Home Assistant using SolarEdge monitoring, and allow me to know the real-time solar production on our home. I pair this with an Emporia Vue in our main electrical panel, which tells me how much energy each individual appliance in the home is using. Together, I’m able to see in an energy dashboard how much energy we are producing from solar, how much energy we’re sending back to or pulling from the grid, and then how much energy we actually use in our home, and which devices use the most energy.
Final Thoughts
So, that’s the smart home tour for 2024. I hope it gave you some ideas for your own smart home. Watch the video below for the complete tour.
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Michael Leen