Why do you need a smart home hub?
Great! You completed step 1 and got your smart light connected to your phone. Bet you feel like a smart home wizard about right now. Let’s take the next step on the smart home journey. Let’s explore smart hubs.
Now what if you bought a Wix smart light and you want to add a Philips smart light or a Kasa smart plug? You’ll need to install apps for each one and control each of those within their respective apps. Each app would have its own controls, schedule, and automation, and you will have to figure out how to control each one independent of one another. Add a few more devices in the mix and I think you can see the hassle. That’s where a smart hub comes in.
Why get a smart hub?
A smart home hub is basically an app that connects all your smart devices into one place for you to control, organize, and automate together. Instead of having to go to your Wix app and setting a schedule to turn off the light at midnight, then going into your Philips app and doing the same there, you can use a smart home hub and set a schedule that simultaneously controls all your lights, locks, curtains, tv, and anything else you connect to it. There are a hundred other uses for a smart hub like setting reminders, timers for when the pasta will be ready, and tell you jokes. My young kids love telling asking Alexa to sing to them (yes, Alexa will sing a song for you if you ask her) and make fart noises. Think of the smart hub as the software operating system to your home. Sounds expensive? Relax, the smart hub software we recommend are free, so there is no harm is trying it out.
While the smart hub is essentially software, it’s usually paired with a hardware device that you put somewhere in the middle of your home and it waits upon your every whim. Some names you may recognize are the Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, or the Google Nest Hub. The Amazon Echo, for example, is the hardware while Amazon Alexa is the smart hub software that is installed on the Echo and enables all the features. Think of Amazon Echo, the smart hub device, as the physical computer and Amazon Alexa as Windows 11, the operating system on that device.
The app is free, and the device can go anywhere from around thirty dollars to several hundred, depending on your choice. We are going to recommend the most cost efficient, easiest route and give you links to the more sophisticated options if you prefer a challenge or something with more bells and whistles.
Whether you choose Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or Apple Homekit, or some other hub, the smart hub has many nifty tricks that make it worth investing some time into customizing to your home. All of these life improvements with one cheap device make it more than worth the cost.
Here are some time-savers I programmed into my smart hub:
- Automatically turn on my kitchen and living room lights twenty minutes before sunset
- Turn off all the lights in my house at 1am.
- Turn on outdoor lights at sunset.
- Make sure all the outside doors in the house are locked at midnight every day.
- Turn on, pause, and play Netflix on my TV by voice command.
That’s only scratching the surface of what you can do. For example, instead of walking around the house and turning off all the lights, you can speak to your smart hub device and tell it to turn off all the lights for you so you can get right into your comfy bed. Another cool thing I did was put little tags around my home that I tap my phone against to turn on and off various lights or unlock doors using my smart hub. We’ll get into all the powerful actions it enables and guide you how to set it up.
Did I convince you yet? This thing really opens up the doors on what you can do with your home. If you’re ready to take the leap, let’s choose a smart hub for you.