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With technology nowadays, life at home couldn't be any easier! In the next article, you'll find the best Smart Home Ideas to automate your house. Let's dive into them and I hope you can agree with me that some of them are fun and useful! The August Smart Lock. With this gadget, you'll access your house as a BMW owner does! It is the best smart-lock out there because it can be connected with any kind of smartphone or Voice Assistant in the market. Whether you have Android, IOS or Google Assistant you have full coverage to use it. With Apple HomeKit enabled, you can lock the door with your voice on an iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Homepod or iPad! Most luxurious vehicles such as BMWs for a few thousand dollars give you the comfort of letting you open the car without using your keys. The August Smart lock Pro has that feature! You can pair it with your smartphone and once you are close to your house, it will automatically detect you and let you in, like a premium series BMW. The same goes when you leave. Instead of closing the locks manually, the app will say to the smart lock that can secure it as the owner is no longer inside. Pretty handy when you leave your house and have your hands full and you can't lock easily But what about your guests? Well, if you're at home, you can open the door with just a tap of a button! Or if you’re not there, you can add them as guests and the door will let them in within the hours you have specified But I got to thinking. What If I lose my phone and I'm not in the house? Am I screwed up? No reason to panic! Just access lostphone.august.com and with your e-mail, you can unlock it After getting the August Smart Lock Pro, you don't need anything else to install it. You can use your regular lock and only change the mechanism that activates it. A word of advice with this one… As it is integrated with all voice assistants, if you leave your amazon echo near the lock someone could yell: “Alexa, open the smart lock” and voilà they're inside...... Just not let your echo devices near the door and you’re good to go As far as securing smart home systems to the next level, the Smart Lock Pro has Z-Wave Plus compatibility. Battery life: According to the manufacturer, you need 2 alkaline AA batteries to run the lock. Depending on its use, you may expect it to last between 3 to 6 months. And in case you wonder, what if I got home and the batteries are dead? You can open it with a key, but hey, don't worry, as the app connects to Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi, it will notify you when the batteries are starting to die. Even if your Wi-Fi is dead or the electricity is gone, you can access your house! It's just a matter of having either your smartphone charged or keeping the backup key outside in a place you only know! Some Smart home ideas like the August smart lock pro have the beauty of both worlds. Smart Home ideas: Amazon Alexa Alexa is the kind of voice assistant that you would want to have at home. Amazon has customized it with a huge number of features to give you the best user experience and save you time along the way! To start in this world of virtual assistants, you just need to get an Amazon smart speaker and start asking her questions! If you have Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, or others, you can just ask: “Alexa, play some rock music” As it is a smart speaker, you can get more than one and synchronize them to have music all over your house. or if you have one on each of your rooms, you can activate it in any part of your house. You can use it to your advantage at home! Just say to Alexa to remind you to do Yoga in the morning or create a calendar event so you won't forget very important to you at the moment. Before leaving home, you can ask her about how's traffic? How's the weather today? What if you couldn't see the game last night? While you're getting dressed, ask Alexa what was the score! There are so much awesome command voices that Alexa has for you to explore To start your journey automating your home, Alexa is an excellent tool. If at home, you have smart switches or smart lights, you can pair them and with just asking her, they will turn on or off! “Alexa, turn on the coffee maker” and during your shower, it will be ready to drink that beautiful boost in the morning. If you want to protect your kids, Alexa can filter explicit songs, set time limits and review their use through the parent dashboard. For just $2.99 per month, your kids can access over 1,000 Audible books, premium kids skills from brands like Disney and Nickelodeon, ad-free radio stations and playlists, podcasts, and more. Now, all Amazon echo speakers are designed to protect your privacy. You can review all the things that you have said to Alexa and erase them at any time. Also, you can hit a button to electronically cut the microphone! Tile Key Finder One of my favorites Smart Home Ideas This gadget came to my life way too late. Do you know how many smartphones I would have recovered if I just invested 25 bucks on this? Believe me, at least three! The tile Key finder is a great gadget to avoid losing your things. I know how frustrating it feels to look for your keys, for phone or your control remote in a hurry! But this finder will help you out. Just adding a little square to your keys or stick it inside your smartphone case and you will make them reachable in no time! Just think of something that you really care about and the tile key finder will find it for you. Perhaps your bicycle, smartphone or even your mischievous cat! And how it works? Well, once you hook it up to your keys, use the Tile App to make ring immediately And if I lost my smartphone? Just double-clicking your tile will make your phone ring even if is in silent mode. The Mate Version has 200ft/61m of range. Once you are aware that you lost your bicycle, you can use the Tile App to search where it is moving or where did you actually park it! It helps you find anything you care about. Awesome feature. I remembered when I used to live in Colombia, thieves stole me like 4 bicycles. If I just know this before, I would have reached them and call the police right away… To protect your bike, I would recommend getting the Pro Tile as it can be tracked for almost 400ft! When you're home and for some reason, you can't find your control remote, just ask google home or Alexa… “Alexa, ring my tile” it will start making a lot of noise. Battery life is great. According to the manufacturer you can expect to last one year, but I would suggest to change it once the ringing noise starts to reduce for security purposes. There are various versions available. The Sticker Version is smaller and cheaper. You can put on your remote control or anything that you care about and it will be tracked for 150ft! and for 20 bucks? What's not to like? NanoLeaf Light Panels Let your creativity flow with Nanoleaf. It is a trendy modular light panel that allows you to arrange it the way you want it on your wall. With a drill-free installation, you can create hundreds of different images according to your mood and use the music sync app to see them dancing! You can activate it with Homekit(apple products), Alexa or Google Assistant on a second… just “Hey Siri, set my lights to dancing mode” and you'll see the magic begin If you have company and want the best ambiance, use the app and change the color with the tap of a button. When you are studying, you can set the lights to Daylight Scene so you can concentrate better. A great feature is that you can set it to wake you up in the morning with low sunlight with the Sunrise scene to start your morning fully energized. And when I mean you can let your imagination run free; I mean it. These panels can be installed on the corners of your living room to create a narrow effect!! If you already think that they are awesome… you are part of the family now! Once they are installed, using the app you can change the color of each triangle, turn them Off/On, design your ideas with your phone is almost limitless! Putting music and see them dancing is a unique feature. It is better than any of my regular portraits hanging on my walls, with this I can have fun, illuminating and impress my friends with some groovy lights! Smart Home Ideas: Clocky Alarm Clock The runaway Alarm Clock. How many people do you know that has to schedule at least three alarms before waking up? I have a friend that has 6 different alarms!! It's incredible his struggle to wake up every morning. Even me! Understandably, some mornings we feel more tired than usual due to a lot of factors But the show must go on! We have to wake up no matter what. My brother Armand, for example, is one of these cases. Every morning he suffered like crazy to wake up… and snoozing was part of his routine. I'm sure that he would love one of these Smart Home ideas back then in college. If you don't want to wake up… don't worry!! The Clocky alarm clock will make you no matter what. Once it starts ringing snooze it one time... next thing it will be running all over your room, making sounds and forcing you to wake up… it's that simple. If you have a lazy friend that is always late in the morning, this would an awesome and curious gift. Here's a fun video in action https://youtu.be/izWCU4Y61o4 The Excellent Quality Rapid Beverage Chiller Silver Who doesn't love to drink a cold beverage? Perhaps a beer or a soda? That delicious cold beer going down your throat after a long day of work is irreplaceable. But usually, my beers and my soda are too hot to drink it Until I met this beverage chiller. Sometimes when I invite some friends to come over, I buy something to drink way early in the morning so it can chill up in the freezer. But there are moments when they came to visit me unexpectedly (which is awesome) and everything is too hot to serve! Never worry about forgetting or pre-planning to put your beverages in the refrigerator. This chiller is the fastest in the market. A regular can will chill to 43ºF in one-minute, regular bottles in 3.5 minutes and wine bottles in 6 minutes! These times compared to a regular freezer are 40x faster for cans and 10x for wine bottles. But if you are like me that prefer the ice-cold-33ºF temperature, just double these chill times. To use it is very simple… just add ice, water, plug in and chill! And if you are a wine enthusiast, this is the perfect chiller for you. You can chill your wine bottles without mixing up the content. To wash it is very simple. Just remove the water, dry it and that's it. As it doesn't have a complicated freezing system, this beverage chiller is very reliable and it will last long enough for all your parties in the next years! Smart Home ideas: Skydrop Smart Sprinkler System Did you know that your normal watering schedule could be breaking the law and risking you as much as $500 a day in fines? Don’t be a lawn bandit, and don’t risk hefty fines. From your lawn to your flower beds and vegetable garden – Skydrop takes care of all the details (including your local watering restrictions) so you don’t have to. It is a well-designed controller that adjusts your sprinkler's decisions better than anything else. It can reduce 50% of water consumption. How? Well, it is connected to local weather stations in your neighborhood every hour for real-time weather data specific to your lawn. Depending on raining conditions, humidity and more weather factors, it calculates how much water is necessary to keep your garden in perfect conditions Skydrop was designed for smart, responsible, environmentally-conscious homeowners and professionals As we would expect from a fully automated sprinkler system, it has integration with voice assistant Alexa. With very little wiring, you can change your old water sprinkler system and automate it to reduce water consumption and increase the beauty of your landscape. As it works with Wi-Fi, in case something happens with it you can manually manage the controller. As it saves your watering plans, it will continue sprinkling your lawn no matter what happens. You can fully automatize your sprinkler system with the Skydrop controller. If a problem has arisen during the watering process, on your smartphone you will receive a notification with the exact information of the issue and how to correct it. This is an intelligent way of watering your landscape. If according to the weather it will rain today for example, between 2pm to 5pm, Skydrop will stop watering your garden and saving you money on your bills. Google Home Smart Speaker A Smart Speaker, with all the corks and features that Google has on its voice assistant. Released in 2016, Google Home is the best tool to start your home automation Journey. You can set up tons of appliances with your voice and this little speaker. Google Assistant is a great tool to give you feedback on all the devices that you have in your home. You may think… well, this speaker is just another regular voice assistant. The Artificial Intelligence on this is above average… you can do almost everything you have in mind! A few examples are: converting units, setting calendars, alarms, translating information, tell you jokes, search anything on google, open Apps in your smartphone without touching the screen, turning on/off all of your smart home devices, etc. If you want to learn 200 awesome and very useful commands for your google assistant click here! Once you get into the smart home world you would love this cute speaker. When you have several appliances all over your house connected to a hub, the Google Home Smart Speaker will control them with just your voice. You can have one in each room and just waking them up with “hey, google turn on the coffee maker” will make your life very easy! If you are working on an essay or an article, just dictate it to the mini nest and he will start writing your documents and save them in a memo on your smartphone. Once finished, you can edit it in Microsoft Word or another program and it has saved you time and improved your creativity along the way. One of the best Smart Home ideas. A 24/7 virtual assistant at your service. Ring Video Doorbell 2 A great welcome to your visitors at home. The first thing that a friend of yours interact at the moment he or she arrives at your home is the doorbell Why not have an awesome one then? The Ring Video Doorbell 2 is the mother of all doorbells. Once someone gets closer to your house, the motion alert sensor will start recording to see what is happening. Great way to protect home with smart home ideas. Also, once someone rings your door, in case you are busy you can use the speaker to say to them anything you want. With the doorbell 2, you will know everything happens on your front door. After you dial in the sensors, you will see every time a mailman or a delivery has reached your door and it will be saved on a cloud for you to review. These features are very handy if you are working focused and someone rings your door. Immediately, you will have a live feed of your front door and decide whether you want to break your idea and open the door or just forget about it and continue working. For security purposes is very useful also. Usually, burglars are looking for a way to get into your house. The first thing the check if you have cameras, but with this doorbell, you can fool them! If you want you to learn more about the best video doorbell for you, check out this post Smart Home ideas: A Coffee Maker to start your day Nothing beats waking up in the morning with the smell of a fresh coffee. It’s just a unique sensation! The smell only gives me the energy to wake up and take that first sip! The Atomi Smart Coffee Maker comes with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant to make your life easier. And How can I forget! The App is available on the App Store for iOS. Just talk to your Smartphone “Hey Google, Brew Coffee” and it will instantly start working on your morning boost. You can set schedules on your phone that suits your lifestyle. Or you can always rely on your Voice assistant in case you overslept on those relaxing Sundays No hub is required, just connect it to your WiFi and it will be good to go. Another great gadget to save precious time in the morning Think that while you’re dressing or taking a bath, your Atomi Smart Coffee Maker will be working on your coffee… I can’t even count how many times I have left my coffee maker On by mistake. Usually, in the morning I’m in rush and forget about turning the #$%&! Thing off. But with Smart technology at Home, I can just use my phone to turn it off and avoid fire up my house! I know most coffee makers tend to turn off automatically after two hours, but I try to protect my home as much as possible. What if the coffee maker doesn’t turn off? It could cause an accident! one the Smart home ideas that gives you energy and protect your house. I think you can't see that too often right? Meet the Robot Vacuum Lords It’s incredible how this Vacuums can help you out at home these days. There aren’t just some clumsy toys that keep hitting your wall like an old toy truck! These Robots can perform even better than a regular Vacuum and here is why. Built to behave autonomously, they can reach every inch of your house with Artificial intelligence. With several dirt sensors, it can detect the zones covered with more dust and make sure your floor is thoroughly clean. My personal Vacuum and the one I recommend is the i9+ from Roomba Robots. It has an awesome trash bin where the vacuum empties the dust by itself and at the same time it auto charges! The power to suck in the dirt is incredible and the roller brush will reach even dirt stuck on corners! Very quiet and very helpful, these vacuums are becoming your best friend to keep your house clean without moving a finger. A sharp vacuum to clean your home for sure is one of the best Smart home ideas! Just think of the fact that you can program your Robot Vacuum to clean your house when you’re not there. Using Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri, your floor is a voice command away to be cleaned! And your Friend the Robot Mop! Yes, there are Robotic mops as well. You can pair your Robot mop with your vacuum and clean your entire house without making a single effort! The one that I recommend is the Braava Jet M6. It has jet sprinklers to wet stains and using a pad to let your floor shiny. I love this Robot because you only need to put the cleaning product inside, a good pad to clean the floor and the rest is done with your Voice assistant. The technology on this Jet M6 is superb. It will cover your entire house without missing a single spot! Keep in mind that these Robots were designed by the MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Best engineering source in the world. I’m sure they know a thing or two. If you want to know which are the best robot vacuums in 2020, check out this post where I review them Ecobee SmartThermostat with Voice Control Did you know that having a Smart Thermostat will reduce your electricity bill by 23% annually on your heating and cooling costs? This Thermostat is designed to control intelligently your comfort like no other. With a sleek design, it has Smart sensors to adjust the thermostat, keeping in mind if there are people inside or not. You can have 32 different sensors throughout your house to have full temperature control! Works with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings, and IFTTT. Also, those sensors will let you use your Voice Assistant on your House just asking “Hey Google, call mom” See this post if you want to learn 200 different voice commands that you can use with your voice assistant! Voice assistants nowadays let you control almost everything on your Smart Home. If you aren’t there, just talk to Siri and it will reduce or increase the temperature so when you get there it will be in the perfect ambiance! The installation is pretty straightforward. It will take you about an hour to connect everything and if you know how to use a screwdriver, you can do it by yourself. Reducing electricity costs is a huge deal. Due to all the increases that have been going on, it's imperative that our Smart Home saves energy while giving you the best user experience. Using IFTTT, you can set up morning or night routines to gather all your smart home devices to act at the same time! Such as closing your door with August Smart Lock, turning off lights, brew coffee and the list can go as long as you want! Check out this post where I review the best Smart thermostats! Smart Home ideas are here to stay. Besides having fun with cool gadgets and lights, keep in mind you can save money having the proper gadgets for your house. If you want to reduce your electricity bill check out this post Aukey Wi-Fi Smart Plug Turn On or Off your house with this Smart Plug You can put any appliance at home automatized with this Smart Plug with only 28 bucks! Just connect your living room lights to it and ask Alexa or Google Assistant “Alexa, turn off my living room lamp” and the magic begins! They have 45-Day Money Back & 24-Month Warranty so you can’t go wrong with them. And the price is unbeatable. If you want you Start your Smart Home journey with the smallest budget, check out this post! You can connect almost everything to this Smart Plug. Your fan, any lights, dehumidifiers and make them Smart with a little budget! Smart Security Cameras, burglars beware! Protect your Home with a Security camera without having the hassle of installing complex CCTV circuits. Just put a magnetic base on a high place and set up your smart cameras with your Smartphone. Cover all blind spots of your house with a 180º camera and set up your motion sensors to detect any unusual activity Cameras nowadays have tons of features. You can talk to the people with their built-in microphone, scare the hell out of them with a 100-decibel alarm and if you see that there is a potential threat… call 911 instantly! The best Smart Security Camera in 2020 is the Arlo Ultra. It comes with 4k resolution, a strong light that it will ignite at the moment it detects movement. During the surveillance, if the camera detects movement, it can automatically follow it to avoid losing information! And the best of all is that it has a noise-cancellation feature. You can hear everything at home due to the great noise filters to reduce wind noise. Of course, it works with all the voice assistants. For a full review visit my post of the best Smart Security Cameras in 2020 Smart lights to change the ambiance of your Room Having a date and in need of a romantic room? You can easily adjust your room colors with the Phillips Smart bulb. There are 16 million color combinations for you to try! And talk to your Voice assistant to help you out with the lights. “Alexa, turn lights blue” Very easy to install. The Phillip Smart light will ignite your home faster and easier than other light. You can schedule timers for your lights to save energy and save you time. In your front door just add a timer between 6 pm to 6 am and they will automatically turn on. And if you have one in your room you can program it to help you wake up naturally. Very useful and under a budget! Smart home ideas: Philips Wake Up Alarm Clock Light The ultimate wake Up alarm to start your morning energized. There are mornings for all of us that hearing the alarm sound is as painful as hitting your pinky with the nightstand!!! And the sleep scientists proved it: sunlight affects your internal clock. This wake-up alarm gives you a pleasant, natural way to start your day better than any other. You can try between 20 different brightness settings to fit your internal clock to the best feeling! Using natural sounds, you can experience waterfalls and bird slightly increasing volume in the morning to start your day with a big smile! 92% of the users agree that it is easier to get out of bed! An even at night, you can set up dim lights to help rest your eyes before going to bed. This will guide you to a great sleep, and achieving that REM state where your brain will rest better than before. With a Sleek design, you can even read your favorite book with a light color designed to read. It helps your eyes sustain longer times reading without soreness or tiredness. The ability to simulate a sunrise inside your room will help you out waking up better than any other light! In the market, there are plenty of other lights that do the job similarly. But what it puts this above the others is the ability to increase the amount of light very gradually to give you the best experience. One of the best Smart home ideas to wake up energized Conclusion Smart home gadgets are an incredible tool at home to improve your lifestyle. There are tons of options in the market, but these devices were thoroughly reviewed for you to take a good decision on the next step of automating your home. Feel free to share your thoughts Did you like some of the most creative smart home ideas? Which one do you prefer? Let me know in the comments! I'll try to answer them

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