Feel free to politely tell a salesman to kick rocks if they come to your door and try to sell you a smart home experience for thousands of dollars.
How to build an affordable smart house
Having a smart house must be expensive, right? Even though it once was, the situation has changed. It’s no longer necessary to spend thousands of dollars, hire a professional installer to install everything, and then likely fork out hundreds of dollars each month to maintain a subscription service to make your house smarter.
A limited budget is no longer a barrier to purchasing smart gadgets because there are hundreds of affordable smart items available for purchase.
This year, my family moved into a house that needed repair and was on the verge of becoming a money hole since it lacked smart features. We developed a list of all the things we wanted for our smart home from the beginning. Due to the money hole once more, this assisted us in starting and maintaining a budget.
Create a list.
To create a smart home that works for you, you must first consider its design. Consider what you’ll need, how you’ll use it, the kind of automation you want to utilize, if any, and even the brands and systems you enjoy while you’re imagining a smart home.
How to utilize it and what you’ll need
Not every smart device on the market is something you need. Prioritize. If installing a security system is important to you, do it; if it’s not, don’t merely add a video doorbell out of obligation. Additionally, think about your preferred home automation system (HomeKit, Alexa, Google Home, Home Assistant, etc.). This will probably dictate which product brands you may purchase.
A basic list of smart home appliances may be like this, for instance:
- A hub (something to run your smart home on).
- Three to five smart light bulbs.
- Three to five smart plugs and outlets.
- Video doorbell.
- Indoor and outdoor cameras.
- Three to five motion sensors.
- Smart lock.
- Smart thermostat.
2. Decide on subscription services.
I dislike paying extra monthly fees for memberships for smart homes since I’d prefer not.
Read the tiny print before deciding which devices to add to your house. Many companies, like Ring, Wyze, Blink, and others, provide a membership to have access to all of the functionality of their products.
To decide if the features are sufficient for you or if you feel comfortable paying the monthly membership fees for the services you desire, find out which features are accessible without a subscription. If not, seek for substitutes like Eufy that don’t require a membership.
A few smart home companies that either don’t require a membership or provide subscription-free solutions include the following:
- Eufy Security: Excellent for video doorbells, motion sensors, indoor and outdoor cameras, smart locks, and more.
- Wyze: Known for its indoor and outdoor cameras, Wyze also offers smart plugs, lighting, switches, thermostats, and other home automation products. Even while the firm requires a monthly membership for the majority of its goods, you may still use devices like cameras, smart lights, and switches without one, albeit some will have fewer possibilities.
- Meross: Lots of smart lights, switches, and garage door openers.
- TP-Kasa Link’s Smart: Also fantastic for smart plugs and smart lights, but the business also provides switches, interior and outdoor cameras, pet cameras, and baby monitoring cameras.
- Blink: If you’re on a tight budget, choose this: Wyze cams are comparable in price to Blink’s Mini cameras, however, Blink also has additional interior and outdoor cameras, as well as reasonably priced video doorbells.
3. Look for bargains, but avoid being duped by packages
Even while this might seem like a rather obvious suggestion, keeping an eye out for excellent offers can help you save hundreds of dollars as you build your smart home.
For instance, we keep a list of the smart gadgets we wish to add to our house on Amazon. This makes it simple to keep an eye out for any sales around the major holidays, such as Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Of course, ZDNET is constantly searching for the greatest offers.
What I spent money on for my smart house
Mini HomePod
We needed a consistent ecosystem, and because my husband (though he won’t admit it) sold his soul to Apple, we chose to get a HomePod mini in order to use HomeKit.
I can’t say I preferred a HomePod over an Echo, Google Nest, or SmartThings in our house, but since we’re already surrounded by Apple goods, it just made the most sense to keep continuity. An Apple house just made sense for us because of how highly Apple prioritizes the security and privacy of its customers’ data.
We can operate all of the smart gadgets using Apple’s Home app since the HomePod mini serves as the hub for them all. It also functions as a decent speaker, however, my kids usually use that feature to play the music to the most recent animated film.
Video Doorbell
We had to get this since, for years, we had merely a security camera at our old front entrance. However, when we relocated, we knew we wanted to upgrade to a video doorbell without having to pay a subscription fee to utilize it.
We chose this Eufy wireless doorbell because we wanted a doorbell without a monthly fee. We didn’t have to worry with the wiring because it is battery-powered. The Eufy Homebase, the cornerstone of our home security system, is a part of this Eufy package.
Since then, Eufy has produced a newer model with two cameras. If I didn’t already have one, I’d add it to our home because it seems really fascinating.
Smart lock
We wanted to fully do away with keys, but we also wanted to replace the deadbolt on the front door with a smart lock so we could see when it was locked and unlocked.
The HomeKit module on a Yale Assure Lock SL checked all the criteria for us. Since it has no keys, you may unlock it using a code or your phone. It will also send you to push alerts every time it is opened or locked and will automatically lock after a certain length of time.
For dog walkers, babysitters, kids, roommates, visitors, or anybody else, you may create up to 25 distinct entry codes. You can also monitor who visited your house and when on the Yale app.
Security System
Starting with the basic minimum will help you stay inside your budget if you decide to add a security system, and starting with a bundle will help you save even more. For our purposes, we desired motion sensors in the living room, at the kitchen’s rear door, and near the front entrance. There are several motion sensors that don’t need a hub to function, but many of them need one.
The Eufy Security system is accessible without monthly fees or subscriptions, while there is an option to add 24/7 Protection Service from Eufy, which is why we eventually chose it.
Think about how motion sensors may be used for purposes other than home security. Depending on the sensors you purchase, you can program automation to start when motion is detected, such as turning on a floodlight as an example.
Cameras
I prefer cameras over motion detectors for security reasons, both inside and outside the home. It’s fantastic to have a straightforward sensor that can send off an alert, but you are then left wondering what caused the motion detector to go off.
Although Wyze cameras are already quite inexpensive and frequently on sale, we already had three of them in our previous house, which made it much simpler to keep inside our budget. Additionally, they are easily compatible with IFTTT, Alexa, and Google Assistant.
Our Wyze cameras merely detect motion and provide an alert because we don’t pay for a subscription service. Either the live stream or replays may be seen by scrubbing the timeline. A Cam Plus subscription would provide you access to limitless full motion footage whenever it is detected, and it can filter alerts based on whether it detects people, packages, dogs, or automobiles.
Smart garage opener
More so than anything else, this was a necessity, but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. The house we purchased at the beginning of 2022 was, as I previously stated, more of a money pit than a fixer-upper, and part of that was because it required a new garage door as well as an opener.
We chose a smart garage door opener from Chamberlain that we could operate with the my app because changing this was one of the first things we did after moving here. Even though myQ and HomeKit are incompatible, we added it with Homebridge so that it may be controlled by the Apple Home app.
There is no real need to use the Wi-Fi functionality because the door opener functions flawlessly with full-function wall control and the included remotes. The ability to manage the garage from my phone and check if the door was left open or not, however—and I really mean this—has completely changed my life. We tend to be forgetful around here, so we frequently leave our homes and circle around to check whether we left the garage door open. a lot of the time.
MyQ offers Prime customers the option to sign up for Amazon Key to receive in-garage delivery of their Amazon items in an effort to avoid porch pirates, however, I don’t use it.
Honorable mentions
Because we wanted to stay to a strict budget, we decided to skip the smart lock on the door that leads from our kitchen to the garage. Instead, we got a Hugolog door lock, so we could skip the keys but keep the peace of mind of knowing it locks behind us every time.
We chose not to install a smart lock on the door that connects our kitchen to the garage since we had a stringent spending limit. Instead, we purchased a Hugolog door lock so that we could avoid using keys while still having the security of knowing that the door always locks from behind us.
The Wyze cam is competitively priced with the Blink camera. However, in my experience, I haven’t found them to be as dependable as the Wyze cameras because they have occasionally disconnected from our network. For the time being, we use ours as a pet cam, and it’s been excellent for our pooch. Without a subscription, they may be used for live view and motion alerts, but video recording requires a subscription or Sync Module 2.
