Beginners Guide to Smart Home Apps
Smart homes are more and more popular these days. What was once considered a gimmick, has now become commonplaces. Smart homes and smart devices are more affordable, accessible, and available but understanding how best to implement a smart network in your home can seem like an overwhelming task. There is a lot to consider or compare so we wanted to help walk you through some basics so you can start your smart home with ease.
What is a Smart Home?
Let's start with the basics. A smart home is a wirelessly connected system used throughout your home to automate or customize certain home functions. This allows you to use apps or virtual assistants to control devices, appliances, and almost anything you can think of with just the tap of a button or a command from your voice.
What Devices Can You Control?
Smart homes allow you to control everything from light bulbs, to TVs, thermostats and even
lawnmowers. And with smart plugs and power bars, you can control even more devices that aren't considered “smart." Just plug in your lamp and turn it on and off with a simple command. The possibilities are endless.
What are Smart Home Apps?
Smart home apps are digital assistants to help manage your smart devices across your network. Any smart home hub requires an internet connection and corresponding app to function properly. Once plugged in and connected, they can respond to voice or inputs from an app on your mobile device.
If you want to know some more tips about picking a smart home hub you can read our blog here.
Types of Smart Home Apps
Amazon Alexa
This is the virtual assistant for Amazon's line of Echo devices. It will manage any Alexa-enabled devices and can be downloaded to any smart phone. If you use the Echo Dot or Echo Show or any of the Fire TV devices, this app will help connect them all.
Google Home
This is Google's line of home automation products. This can help manage devices like the Nest Thermostat, Nest Mini, and Google Chromecast. Just like Alexa, this too can be added to any smart phone and is recommended if you are using Google products. It simply uses the Google Assistant as its assistant.
Apple HomeKit
Apple's version of a smart home service is the HomeKit. Like Google and Amazon, it can be added to smart phones but is recommended for Apple products like Apple TV or HomePods. It uses Siri for all communications.
Phillips Hue
This is the app for managing Phillips' line of Hue products. Instead of a device digital management system, Hue is a smart lighting system. This means you can use the app to set routines for your lights to go on and off at a certain time, change the colour or brightness of certain bulbs, and even set them to coordinate with the lights on your TV.
Some other fun things you can do with smart lights are over here in our other blog.
These are the main smart home apps, although some products like certain smart TVs can help manage devices as well like Samsungs' SmartThings but with the current state of the smart home market, the apps listed above are leading the race. For more ways on how to keep your home top-of-the-line and energy efficient,
you can read more of our blogs here.
