We are living in one of the most exciting technological times in the modern era. Every. single. day, advances are being made that improve our lives, bring families closer together and save us time and money. My home is a beautiful sanctuary, but it could operate more efficiently and be smarter. We put 5 smart home gadgets to the test in order to enhance life.
There are always slight annoyances in a home, and in anticipation of holiday entertaining and family bonding, I want our home to look and operate with precision. Looking around there were a number of fixes that have to happen in a short period of time! Thankfully, technological upgrades are pretty fast and easy to implement, and more often than not, using wifi eliminates messy cords.
Smart Light Switches
One of the most annoying things in my world is that my sons NEVER turn their bedroom lights off. I drill them about conserving energy to save the planet, about saving on the electricity bill and telling them that I will have to buy lightbulbs with funds from their piggy banks. Nothing works. Enter the Belkin WeMo Wi-Fi Light Switch. Now when I ask the boys if they have turned the lights off, they are able to control the lights from anywhere using a smartphone. I haven’t told them yet, but I was also able to program a schedule for the lights so that they shut off at bedtime, on in the morning, and are magically off as soon as it is time to leave for school. A little, inexpensive fix for one of the issues I nag about most.
Smart Plugs
Next up? Plugs. Remember the timers of yore, where the dial turns and the pins make your plugged-in lamps turn on and off? We ordered two Belkin WeMo Insight Wi-Fi Smart Plugs. Similar to the light switches, you can schedule fans and lights to come on when you get home from work, shut off the TV when you think your kids have had enough. There are even notification settings to tell you when the laundry is done so that you can fold clothes right away from the dryer and skip the ironing part… See how tech improves life?!
Smart Safety with Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarms
We renovated our home about 6 years ago, and tech has changed dramatically since then. One thing we did do right was to wire in smoke alarms, but our and Carbon Monoxide detectors were still plugged in, bulking up walls everywhere. With one quick swap out, our old alarms were upgraded to the Nest Protect Wi-Fi Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Alarm. For something as important as fire safety, you want a smoke alarm you can trust and rely on. That’s what you get with the battery-operated Nest Protect. This advanced smart device can distinguish between levels of urgency in smoke and CO levels, and sends you alerts on your smartphone immediately upon detection so you can take action right away.
Smart Lighting
A couple of months ago I needed an inexpensive, quick decor update and the Philips Hue A19 Smart LED Light Bulb Starter Kit was the solution. With your smart device as your control centre, you have a variety of lighting options at your fingertips. The lights can be adjusted to 16 million different colours to encourage specific moods or programmed to work as handy alarms and timers and the shades you can create are unbelievable. Red for a racy party or soft blue for concentration, these lights are super fun. One area of my kitchen counter was quite dark so I added the 6.5 foot Philips Hue LED Lightstrip Plus underneath the counter and all of a sudden the kitchen looked like we’d done a modernist renovation!
Smart Internet Usage
The Circle With Disney allowed our family to take back control of our family’s internet usage. This device pairs with your home’s Wi-Fi network and lets you personally manage each internet-connected device in your home. I did a full roundup of apps and devices to keep your kids safe that explains it in more detail. You can create profiles for each family member, set daily time limits on apps and devices, and filter out specific content that’s not suitable for kids.
We could really use the Smart Plugs to turn on the lights in our house.
The Smart Plugs would come in very handy in our house!
This would be great in our home for the lights! Thanks!
I’d really like to control my kids internet usage!
The smart lighting would be perfect for our house as we need to adjust some of the lights accordingly.
My door bell needs help.
I have too many things to plug in and not enough outlets!
The smart light switches would help so that I could turnn off lights that I forgot to turn off before I leave for the day. I do it so often and it wastes a lot of energy.
We could definitely use some Smart Light switches. I always find that the basement lights are left on – I guess because it’s out of sight so we don’t remember that they’re still on – so being able to check and control those lights from upstairs would help us save a bit of electricity.
oooo are carbon monoxide detectors and smoke detector can really use an upgrade. the smoke detector is over 13 years old and it would be so nice to have one device that works for two
I could definitely solve the problem of turning off lights in my house with the Smart Light Switches.
Our door bell could use an upgrade
Our front doorbell needs some help!
Definitely our room temperatures – would be so useful to automatically have the rooms be the right temp when we are home versus not home.
We would use the Smart plugs to turn on the lights.
The Smart Plug for sure, would be handy to be able to set it for the lights to come on and off. We often leave a light on for our pets if we are going to be out past dark and it would be great to set it to come on just as it gets dark not hours before.
The smart thermostat would help us reduce wasted heat when we are not at home all day.
Going into the holidays I would love something to help with the Christmas lights. I kinda live in 1996 and unplug them nightly
We need the smart gadget to turn the lights off around the house. Anything that helps reduce to hydro bill !
I’m sure a smart light switch would come in handy in this house! The kids always forget to turn off the hall lights!!
We have a problem with Internet overusage but having something like Circle with Disney would help a lot with controlling screen time and filtering content.
The led light strip could help solve some of our under the cupboards lighting woes.
When it rains water sometimes gets into our basement so it would be nice to detect that!
I would love the Smart Safety with Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarms. This is an area I worry about the most in my home!
Wow I didn’t know about most of this – I’d love to have the smart plugs, as it would be great to have the lights go on or off when I want it to, even if I’m not there! This would be amazing if you have a pet, which I’m thinking of getting.
The smart plug would be great for when I get home, especially in the dark of winter.
Our home could use all of these, but we especially need the smart plugs!
This would be great for our lights!
Oh my! With 2 disabled people here, the possibilities are endless. It would be especially nice to have the turning lights off gizmo! We can’t always get up once we are in bed.
We could really use the Smart Plugs to turn on the lights in our house.
Wow So many cool gadgets!! I’d love the smart plugs for turning off lights!
To control the lights
I like the Smart Light Switches so I can control the lights
The smart light switch would be very useful when we forget if we turned off the lights.
I could def use the smart plugs . I really like to control my useage
I would love to have some smart plugs, especially for the laundry.
I could really use some smart plugs for my lights and A/C unit!
I would really love new plugs and light switches that are smart.
I would love a smart thermostat to help decrease energy costs.
I could solve the problem of turning off lights in my house with the Smart Light Switches.
I would like to control the amount of light we use and also internet usage.
I’d really like to control my kids internet usage
The Belkin WeMo Insight Wi-Fi Smart Plugs would make life so much easier by turning on my electronics on when i get home for my hearing assist devices!
my thermostat is very old and a new smart one would be great
this is easy- my husband complains that i leave lights on too much.. its true.. the worst is the basement lights when i leave them on all night. the smarthome stuff could help me or him turn them off from upstairs
the smart thermostat would be a big energy saver!
the Smart Safety with Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarms would give me piece of mind when the wood stove downstairs is burning.
I would love a smart C02 detector because I really think if I wasn’t home, my whole family would ignore the alarm, so I would feel safer getting an alert on my phone
smart plugs would be useful so that we could have the lights turn on when we get home esp when we had a late night. also we could setup one of our outlets to a smart outlet for our humidifier & heater
Smart plugs would be a life saver in our home! Everyone wants to charge their devices at the same time!
Smart Light Switches would be good for us since my kids always turn on lights downstairs and upstairs but then always forgot to turn off the ones downstairs when they go upstairs
My family can really benefit from Smart Light Switches especially in morning when everybody is in a rush and forget to turn off lights.
Some members in my household have a habit of leaving the lights on after they leave a room. The Belkin WeMo Wi-Fi Light Switch would help us solve this problem.
The smart plugs sound SO cool! Who hasn’t forgotten about wet laundry before? A plug that’ll tell me when it’s finished? Sign me up! Thanks for the information!
Lamp assistance would be great on the dark nights
The Belkin WeMo Wi-Fi Light Switch would be perfect for the garage. I’d like to turn the lights on before I go out for my workout and turn them off if I forget to on the way out.
The Smart Plugs would be perfect for turning on the lights in our home.
We would love to have a Nest to regulate the temperature.
I have been trying to enter the last couple days but the rafflecopter form doesn’t load. the symbol just keeps going 🙁
i thought it was just my computer. i tried everything. it’s been 2 days now
Getting the same problem.. Thought it was me..
no idea if it’ll be fixed. too bad since it ends tomorrow
for our thermostat, it would be fantastic
Our door bell could use an upgrade!