Step 1: Set up a smart light and control it with your smart phone
Let’s get started!
A smart home is simply a home you can control with a smart phone.
Let’s start making a smart home the simplest way possible: with a smart light bulb that can be controlled by your smart phone. We’ll use it as a building block to control all the lighting in your home and understand how to control all the technology easily. From there, we’ll branch out into other cool things and smart devices like a smart switch you can build cheaply to automate your life.
Choosing a smart bulb
Let’s begin by choosing a smart bulb to start this journey cheaply and get you familiar with smart home technology. Essentially, a smart bulb is a light bulb you can control from your phone. Nowadays there are a lot of choices for smart bulbs, so which one do you get? At the time of writing this, most cost efficient, highly-rated smart bulbs cost around $10 each. That said, according to highly reputable sites like CNET and high Amazon ratings, this WiZ smart bulb is a great first choice. Perfect! So should you now buy fifty smart bulbs to replace all the lighting in your house? No. If you do, it’s like building a house out of Legos using just one type of block. I would recommend you start this journey by buying one of these smart bulbs so you can understand the technology and how it works. It’s a great first step into smart homes that will let you try some of the fancy time-saving features of smart home technology for only about ten bucks.
If you decide to dig in and do some more research on smart bulbs on your own (which is a great way to learn), you’ll see a few numbers and ratings that will seem foreign. Here’s a quick list to help guide you:
- A19: This means the light bulb is the standard size and shape that is most commonly used in home lighting
- W: This is the wattage of the light bulb which translates to how bright it is. 60W (Watts) is the standard, most common brightness.
- LM / Lumen: This is a measure of brightness of the bulb. 800 Lumens is the same as a 60 Watt bulb.
- E26: this is the standard, most common socket size. A19 bulbs use this socket size.
- Matter / Alexa / Google Home / Homekit / Siri: This tells you what smart hub this bulb is compatible with. We haven’t gotten there yet, but if it says it’s Alexa / Google Home / Apple compatible then you will be fine for the next steps of building your smart home. Matter is technology that works with all three.
Side Note: When I first started my smart home journey, I bought GHome smart light bulbs because they were super cheap at $17 for 4 bulbs. I've had lots of problems with them not responding to my phone, so I'm not going to recommend them. On the bright side, I also purchased and installed GHome light switches, and they have been great. When trying new things, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.
Should you replace all your lighting in your house with those WiZ smart bulbs from earlier or some other smart bulb you choose? The average home has 67 light bulbs, so that would cost you around $750 at $11 per bulb, which is not an efficient use of your hard-earned money. I would recommend buying a few bulbs (1 to 3) to test the smart home waters and see if this way of controlling your smart lights work for you. There are other cheaper and easier ways to control your lighting which we’ll get to.
For now, buy that bulb(s) so you can be a smart person with a smart bulb in a smart home for just $10!
Setting up a Smart Bulb
Once you get the bulb, it will come with instructions on how to connect it to your smartphone. Those instructions will be different based on the manufacturer of the bulb and whether you have an Android or an iPhone. Nearly all of them will have you download an app to control the smart bulb. You usually screw in the light bulb into a socket to get power to it. Once it has power, it usually tries to connect wirelessly to your app. You would have to press a few buttons in your app to get it to look for that light bulb on the wireless network. If all goes well, they find each other like long lost friends, shake hands, and are best friends again forever. You should be able to and use that app to connect to your shiny new smart bulb any time you want, as long as there is power going to that smart bulb.
So if you bought that WiZ smart bulb there is a WiZ app to control it. If you decide to buy a Philips Hue bulb, there is a Philips Hue app to control it. So go ahead and buy that bulb and follow the instructions that came with it to connect it to your phone. I’ll wait. Remember, you’re just starting off, so don’t go crazy and buy crates of smart bulbs. I know you’re excited, but there are other options for controlling your lighting out there that we haven’t talked about yet.
Did you do it? Did you buy that smart bulb and now your house is officially smart? Congratulations! You have taken your first step into automating your home. Granny and I are so proud of you!
Ok, so what now? That’s it, there’s nothing else you can do – got you! I’m just kidding. Feel free to experiment with your app to do cool things with your bulb like change the color or brightness or create a schedule where your light turns on or off at certain times of the day. My GHome bulb lets me turn the room into a color changing disco. The Wiz or Philips apps should let you do nifty things like that, too. Play around and have fun.
I’m not going to show you how to do all those nifty things in this article. Why? A lot of the nifty things like setting schedules and actions based on weather depend on the manufacturer’s app, and you can’t have multiple smart devices working together. What if you decide to use more smart devices like smart locks, a robot vacuum, or smart plugs? Those aren’t all going to use the WiX or Philips Hue app. You would have to learn how to set up and manage schedules in each of those apps separately which is a pain. Imagine having 10 different apps with 10 different ways of controlling parts of your home that you have to keep track of. There is a better way (foreshadowing: smart hubs), so let’s turn on your smart light and journey over to Step 2 of the plan: smart hubs.