Last month my wife and I purchased our first home together. I’m hoping to install a ton of smart home features around the house. I’m not completely unfamiliar with the concept, as I had several IKEA Trafri lights and outlet switches in our last apartment together. However, we only used them on stand-alone fixtures and didn’t bother installing any smart bulbs in wired outlets.
We were also fortunate to inherit two smart thermostats (Google Nest, bridged to Apple HomeKit) from the last owners. I’ve supplemented that with a single camera from Eufy. Apple provides no additional cost cloud storage for one camera on my existing iCloud subscription.
As of now, I’m stuck on how to build out my smart home lighting items. It seems like it might be a smarter idea to wire everything for smart switches and keep using dumb bulbs in every wired fixture (and keep using the IKEA bulbs on lamps). I did pick up a Philips Hue starter kit on clearance from Costco, so I can start there if I want to keep my dumb switches and use smart bulbs, but that seems more complex. I’m not sure what path to go down.
A limiting factor is that I use Apple HomeKit, which cuts down on the number of comparable devices.
Some other items to consider: replacing my locks, garage door opener, sprinkler system, or anything else you can think of.
We were also fortunate to inherit two smart thermostats (Google Nest, bridged to Apple HomeKit) from the last owners. I’ve supplemented that with a single camera from Eufy. Apple provides no additional cost cloud storage for one camera on my existing iCloud subscription.
As of now, I’m stuck on how to build out my smart home lighting items. It seems like it might be a smarter idea to wire everything for smart switches and keep using dumb bulbs in every wired fixture (and keep using the IKEA bulbs on lamps). I did pick up a Philips Hue starter kit on clearance from Costco, so I can start there if I want to keep my dumb switches and use smart bulbs, but that seems more complex. I’m not sure what path to go down.
A limiting factor is that I use Apple HomeKit, which cuts down on the number of comparable devices.
Some other items to consider: replacing my locks, garage door opener, sprinkler system, or anything else you can think of.