Smart Lighting
Before I even came across my first set of smart light bulbs the wife and I were still living in a apartment and I wanted to get into smart home tech, but were to start for anyone who what’s to get into creating a smart home, smart lighting is the easiest and usually is the beginning step for mostly everyone. This is how my journey into creating a smart home started. I was at the hardware store, and I came across some GE smart light bulbs.
I didn’t have an idea on what I was going to do with them, but I needed to start somewhere. Around the same time, we got our first Alexa echo device so I setup the GE light bulbs in the living room. One was for the main light in the living room and pretty quickly I had it setup to gradually come on before sunset and by the time the sun comes down the light is fully on.
The other one was setup over my wife’ desk to gradually come on around the time she was starting to wake up and getting ready for the day. This light also had the double duty of when I came home for the day it would flash a few times to let her know I made it home.
Sometime afterwards I did get more GE smart light bulbs and a motion sensor. I set them up in our bathroom at the apartment to automatically come on when we step into the bathroom. Yes, with showers this proposed a unique issue of it turning off the lights however we started to use it as a timer to think about getting out. However, if we wanted more time a simple wave at it and the lights would come back on.
After moving out of the apartment and into our house we begun the process of setting everything up again. We have even added another set of lights to the master bathroom this time using the Philips Hue system of smart lights. After working with both the GE and Philips Hue systems. I do prefer the Philips Hue due to its easy integration with home assistant and when Matter (which is a new protocol developed to be a standard for smart home hardware) is fully deployed most of the communication is done locally.
I have enjoyed my Smart Home journey and I’m still learning new ways to do things. I hope to share a little more about our smart home and I would like to hear about yours. Have you started? Did you go the same path as I? If not, what did you do differently? Please comment below!