It can be difficult to get started with smart home automation. Here are some inexpensive home automation ideas you can start today.
These are the five most affordable home automation ideas in 2020:
- Motion activated light to illuminate stairs or rooms
- During winter months, a door sensor monitors the room’s temperature
- Voice commands can be used to turn on or off your TV.
- Smart plugs for scheduling activities such as brewing coffee in your morning
- Smart bulb that changes colour every morning to warn you when it’s raining
- Continue reading to see how I implemented each one in my own home.
A quick note
Three of the five home automation ideas listed below require a SmartHub. (I indicate below if applicable): Specifically, the Samsung SmartThings hub.
I will save you all the hassle of trying to figure out what a smart hub looks like or which one you should buy. Just get the Samsung SmartThings hub.
It allows devices to communicate with one another and gives you the ability to centralise your automations and products in one location, the SmartThings app.
Samsung is very user-friendly and integrates with tons of products. It is the smart hub that I purchased and it has been my favourite. Even after more than a year of adding smart products to our home, SmartThings still works.
You will slowly add smarter products to your home. If that is the case, a hub is the best way to go.
This article will explain more about smart hubs if you are still sceptical.
Home automation ideas at a low price
Motion activated lighting is making a comeback, and with good reason
This is a simple one: trigger your lights so that they turn on when motion has been detected and off after a certain amount of “motionless-time” has passed.
Motion activated lighting is not a new concept. They have been around for many years.
They are still very practical and extremely useful.
A smart motion sensor and a light bulb with WiFi capability are the cheapest and most straightforward way to set up motion activated lighting.
We have a smart motion sensor installed at the top of the stairs in our home and a smart bulb added to the staircase.
Automated lighting is set up so that when someone enters the staircase, it automatically turns on.
After ten minutes without motion, the smart staircase light will automatically turn off.
It’s great not to have to search for the light switch every night, especially when I need to go downstairs to change the laundry.
This saves me and my wife money because we don’t have to remember to turn the light off.
