A Smart Home for the Holidays

With our American friends finished celebrating their Thanksgiving, the Holiday season is ramping up on both sides of the 49th parallel. This is the time of year where many people add lighting, both inside and out, to celebrate. Smart lighting will not only allow you better control and design of your lighting, but through automations, you can save on your energy bills! So, let’s talk about how you can retrofit your existing Christmas and Holiday lighting, as well as what products are available that are smart home native.

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Outdoor Lighting

Most of us have outdoor lights that we’ve used for years. If you’ve bought outdoor holiday lighting in the last 10 years, chances are it’s no longer the incadescent type, where if one bulb was out you had to test every light in the string: a time-consuming and not-missed early winter tradition I recall from my chldhood helping my dad put up the Christmas lights. Instead, we are almost all utlizing the low energy consumption and low hear generating LED light strings: super reliable, come in many different colour options, and will last for tens of thousands of hours.

Most installations of outdoor lights usually terminate at one or two outlets. This creates the perfect opportunity to automate the lighting through outdoor rated smart plugs. One of my favourites, which is also one of the most cost effective options, is the Meross Outdoor Smart Plug. I love this one because each of the outlets can be individually controlled, and because it works with all the big three smart home platforms (Apple, Google and Amazon). If you are deep in the Lutron Caseta or Philips Hue ecosystem of smart lighting, you’re in luck! Both companies offer an outdoor plug or outdoor lighting options (see links below), with Philips Hue offering a variety of smart outdoor lighting that you can tune for the holidays.

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Indoor Lighting

Regardless of what indoor lighting system(s) you use, you can integrate almost any light string or animatronic device using smart plugs. One of the most cost effective options are those from Meross, who often have their 4-pack smart plug minis on sale on Amazon. If space is an issue their Smart Plug, which gives you two individually controllable outlets in one single plug space. Your Christmas tree lights, fireplace lights, Christmas village figures, the Polar Express Train… anything that is plugged into the wall can be plugged into a smart outlet and then incorprated into scenes and automations in your smart home. I’m also a big fan of the Thread-enabled Eve Energy, which not only acts as a Thread border router, but also will give you energy consumption and useage statistics that most of the less expensive smart plugs lack.

If you’ve invested in colour smart bulbs for your smart home, it’s easy to change the colour of the bulbs to match your holiday themes, with some of the best smart bulbs, like my favourite Thread-enabled smart bulbs and light strips from Nanoleaf (their Essentials and Shapes line).

However, if you want to really make an impact, look no further than Twinkly. I’m a massive fan of the Generation 2 GRGB+W lights for my Christmas tree and fireplace (images above). You can even get a completely pre-lit artifical tree! They also make outdoor lights, and all their products are now Homekit compatible, in addition to Google and Amazon. With individually addressable LEDs, and 6 million colours, combined with custom animations and lighting effects, these lights can do it all. Snowflakes falling, Santa’s sleigh across your fireplace, and with the Twinkly Music, you can time your lighting effects to your music.

There are a lot of ways to integrate your holiday traditions into your smart home, saving you money on energy costs, adding value by giving you more colour and lighting controls, and allowing automations to wow your family and friends. Make a plan of what you want to incorporate and look for sales on Black Friday, pre-holiday sales and Boxing week (for next year’s decorations!). If you can dream it, it’s possible. If you don’t know how, drop us a line and let Synapse Smart Homes make it a reality for you!

*affiliate links may generate a commission for the author at no additional cost to you

Smart Home Monitoring

One of the best parts of having a smart home, aside form the convenience of having control of everything at your fingertips or voice, is the ability to see what’s going on at your house when you are not there. Enter the security camera! While incredibly useful in a home setting, the cost is usually a prohibitive factor for people to take the plunge and install. I should know; I paid a lot of money to my builder of my last home to run RG6 coaxial cable to my exterior doors, and again to my home security installer to upgrade the RG6 to CAT5e. However, the $3000 price tag to install cameras and server in my basement, combined with the cost of displays in the house to actually see the camera feeds (but only when I was home) kept me from doing anything other than just putting dummy dome cameras up where the wiring terminated. 7 years that house had those dummy cameras up. Effective as a deterrent, sure, but what a waste of all that money to run cables that I never used.

At my new place I wanted to do something different. I definitely wanted to have the convenience and peace of mind of cameras here, but I wanted something that didn’t require me to run wires to every camera point, and I definitely wanted to be able to record and see my camera feeds when I wasn’t at home, ideally without having to pay hosting costs. Enter the smart home equipped camera!

There are 3 main categories of cameras to consider (indoor, outdoor and doorbell), with a variety of connection and power options. However, selecting cameras that integrate into your smart home ecosystem allow you far more functionality than standalone cameras that are recording to a local (or remote) server. Ease of use and installation are not the only considerations; privacy is a must, and knowing where, and who has control, of your footage is paramount.

I’ve included links to the products mentioned in this article, and if you opt to purchase anything through the links provided Synapse Smart Homes received compensation through Amazon’s Affiliate program. Thank you!!!

1.       Indoor Cameras

Indoor cameras have a number of useful applications, from video baby monitors, to being able to check up on your pets when you are not home, to keeping an eye on what’s going on inside your house when you’re not there. Whether it is keeping an eye on contractors and trades working inside your house, to being able to check in on your teenager whose home alone for the first time, indoor cameras can provide a lot of useful features.

All indoor cameras will require power of some description, so you will need to consider placement near an outlet, or use a rechargeable power bank (for those cameras that use USB cables and AC adapters) if you want to place the camera in a location aware from your power outlets. There are a ton of indoor camera options out there (EVE Cam, Logitech Circle) but until recently, these cameras were going to run you a couple of hundred dollars. Enter the eufy Security 2K Indoor Cam and eufy Security 2K Indoor Cam Pan and Tilt,  two great options and both are regularly on sale for less than $70! Both have two-way communication capabilities, and excellent night vision recording as well as full Apple HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV) integration. The Eufy pan and tilt camera does exactly what it says: will automatically, or remotely, follow motion and movement when detected vs. the indoor cam which remains in a fixed position.

HKSV allows the cameras to record locally to MicroSD cards, as well as securely store the footage in your iCloud. You’ll need at least the 200 gb subscription to enable this for one camera, and the 2 TB subscription for up to 5 cameras, but the footage does not count towards your storage limit.  HKSV has additional benefits like object (person, pet, vehicle) detection, and facial recognition. In addition, you can control when the cameras record, giving you a lot of privacy control. Something that is important when you are using cameras indoors.  

2.       Outdoor Cameras

This is the one camera application that I had always wanted, but never been able to setup. With the wireless and battery powered smart home camera options widely available, and with lots of choice, you can now place cameras anywhere outside you want (within Wi-Fi range) and not need to worry about running wires to the cameras. With the addition of solar panels, you can effectively leave your battery-powered cameras up all year long!

My hands-down favourite right now is the eufy Security eufyCam 2 Pro. These cameras will give you up to a year of battery power (indefinite with the addition of the eufy Solar Panel, can be mounted on magnet or screw mounts, and communicate wirelessly with the HomeBase2, which also acts a range extender to help get your home Wi-Fi network out to those areas outside that you might want cameras but would typically fall outside of your routers range.

These cameras have the same Apple HomeKit and HKSV integration as the indoor cameras, excellent night vision and a high resolution for recording crystal clear, but they the footage they record is stored inside your house (and not on the camera) in the HomeBase2. This is excellent because it means that if the cameras are ever damaged or stolen, the footage is locked up safe and sound in your house.

Activity zones on your camera will ensure that they only record when objects and people enter into a specific area, say your driveway or front porch, thereby saving the battery of the camera from recording objects (like cars driving by) that are not important to you.

eufy Security 2K Indoor Cam

eufy Security 2K Indoor Cam IR Night Vision

3.       Doorbell Cameras

For most people, this is the first exterior camera that they get. For a long time, Ring and Nest had cornered the market. But security concerns over where the footage was being stored (and who had access to it), and partnerships with local law enforcement to access user camera data has made some people wary of having any cameras installed, especially if the camera footage is being stored offsite. In addition, most doorbell camera manufacturers charge a monthly fee for additional features like multi-day recording or object recognition, and some could only be installed using existing doorbell wires (a problem if your home doesn’t currently have a doorbell and chime wired already).

eufy released a few doorbell option earlier this year, including a wired and battery powered version (the latter can also be wired into existing doorbell wires if present negating the need to remove and recharge the doorbell every 6-9 months). Full disclosure the doorbell cams do not currently support HKSV, although there are strong indications that the battery powered version will likely in the near future. Even without HKSV support, you get many of the same features (activity zones, object recognition, etc.) all without a monthly fee, and the footage is stored on the doorbell (wired version) or on the HomeBase2 (battery version). One thing I love is that you can get the battery powered doorbell with a HomeBase2, and then add additional outdoor cameras, like the eufy Security eufyCam 2 and 2C to create whatever constellation of cameras you need to fully cover your house, indoor or out!

There are a ton of options out there that you can access now, most without monthly monitoring or hosting fees (like the eufy Security cameras) that you can integrate into your smart home setup which can give you powerful automation and monitoring options. If this is something you are interested in learning more about, feel free to contact us at info@synapsesmarthomes.com to setup a consultation to create your smart home or augment your existing setup.

*affiliate links may generate a commission for the author at no additional cost to you

Top 5 Smart Home Upgrades

Using smart switches, bulbs and LED light strips can allow you to create any lighting concept, virtually anywhere. With all the lighting and electrical components tied together the automation options are limitless!

It seems like more than ever we are spending a LOT of time in our homes. As the warm and sunny days of summer turn into the rainy and cloudy days of fall, the kids go back to school and many of us spend our days in our home offices; wouldn’t it be wonderful if your home worked for you? There are a number of ways that you can make your home “smarter”, save money on your utilities, and automate common things that you do everyday. I have chosen my Top 5 Smart Home upgrades to help you become the “Master of Your Domain.”

1. Smart Thermostats

   Smart thermostats are absolutely the first upgrade I recommend to clients. While there are several reasons for this, the most appealing is how they will help you reduce your energy consumption by only heating and cooling your home when it is necessary. Older, programmable thermostats had set times that you had to program and didn’t adapt well to changes in your schedule. The beauty of modern smart thermostats, like my personal favourite the Ecobee Smart Thermostat with Voice Control, is that they learn your patterns based on when you are home, or away. Another excellent feature of the Ecobee thermostats are that they are assisted by smart sensors, which allow the thermostat to measure, and subsequently heat/cool your house based on occupancy. These sensors can be used to help in other home automations as well (like turning lights on and off).

2. Robot Vacuums

   The point of home automation is to make things easier, and nothing makes your life easier than not having to vacuum! Robot vacuums have come a long way, and modern ones can handle a variety of floor surfaces (tile, hardwood, carpet) with ease. Some will even mop your floors! The iRobot Roomba i7 can even map the floor of your home it is on, and you can program schedules to vacuum, or avoid, certain rooms when you are away, at night, or as often as you want. Anyone with small children or pets will appreciate the amount of cleaning these devices can do for you.

3. Smart Light Switches, Bulbs, LED

   Automating your lighting can not only help you save money on your electric bill, but in a smart home the sky is the limit in terms of the automations and scenes you can create. Combining smart switches/dimmers, light bulbs (full colour) and LED light strips (for accent or bias lighting) can allow you to create lighting in any room, in any colour. No more yelling at the kids to turn the lights out; automatic shutoff does it all for you.

4. Smart Outlets

   In addition to smart switches, smart outlets allow you to automate the function of devices that plug into a wall outlet. Lamps (where smart bulbs aren’t needed), humidifiers, fans, heaters, and coffee machines are just some of the things that smart outlets can help you control and automate.

5. Smart Garage Doors

   Anyone with a garage has had that sudden moment of panic after leaving their home and wondering if the garage door was closed. Almost any existing electric garage door opener can have a module added to allow the garage door to become “smart” meaning you can ask your voice assistant if the garage door is open, and if it is, to go ahead and close it. You can also automate your doors so they open when you pull into your driveway, and make sure that they are closed at night when you turn in.

6. Bonus Tip!

   No discussion about smart home upgrades would be complete without talking about smart door locks. Much like garage doors, these can be automated so that you can check if you locked the front door, as well as remotely lock and unlock the door if you are not home. In addition to having a physical key, many will allow you to create temporary digital “keys” that can be used to let people in at certain times (think your handyman or cleaning company) while not allowing access outside of the specified times. You can also assign codes (or in some of the best locks, fingerprint access!) for different members of your family so that you can get an alert when they arrive or leave home.

I have only scratched the surface of what you can do to automate your home, and you can make your home automation as simple, or complex, as you want. Indoor/outdoor cameras, window coverings, and home audio are other areas that can be tied in together to complete your smart home. Imagine programming your blinds to close when the weather is sunny outside, or have your garage door open as you arrive home, your doors unlock, and soothing music and warm lights greet you as you walk in? Take control of your domain, and let us show you how!