Author: Josh Hendrickson / Source: How-To Geek
Smarthomes are easier to put together than ever. While they’re still not a necessity, what they are useful for is solving annoying problems around your home.
No More House Shouting
Smarthomes don’t always work well in family situations. Automation is particularly hard in homes with families and music integration can lead to account issues.
But one area where Smarthomes shine is communication. If you’ve ever asked a child to tell the family there’s dinner, and all they did was yell “dinner” as loud as they can, you’ll appreciate both the Amazon Echo and Google Home’s intercom features.Intercoms are normally annoying and difficult to install in a home, require wiring and sometimes making holes in the wall. But with an Echo or Home in different rooms, you can use either the Echo’s Announce or Google Home’s Broadcast feature.
The Echo’s announce feature lets you broadcast a one-way message to all the other Echos in your home (assuming they’re on the same Amazon account), but people can’t reply to the announcement. Google Home’s Broadcast feature is two-way, though; people can reply, and you’ll hear it on the Home device from which you broadcast.
Alexa’s does have a drop-in feature that lets you get a two-way conversation going, but it only works between two Echo devices.
RELATED: Amazon Echo vs. Google Home: Which One Should You Buy?
Never Leave the Lights on Again
It happens often enough to be truly annoying. You get home from work, and one or more lights are on. Or you walk around your home and see that the children have turned lights on everywhere and never turned them off.
If you aren’t using automation, you should be. If your lights turn themselves off every day after you leave for work, you won’t have to worry about leaving them on by accident. You can also tie your lights into your Nest to turn off when you’re away, which can help when people turn the lights on and forget to turn them back off. Motion sensors can help with this problem as well.
Always Know that the Garage Door Is Closed
Perhaps worse than leaving the lights on is leaving the garage door open. That leaves your garage, and perhaps the rest of your home, vulnerable to bad actors.
If you have a smart garage system, such as MyQ, you can receive alerts when the garage door is opened and remotely control it. Never again will you have to drive all the way back home on the hunch that you might have left the garage door open.
You can even have the garage door automatically close at the end of the day, just in case you forget to when you get home. Many homeowners leave and arrive through the garage, making this point of entry more likely to leave open than a front door.
Be the First to Know When There’s a Leak
Water leaks are easy to miss and quick to cause damage, especially when they happen in an out of the way place in your home or, worse, when you’re away.
A water leak sensor is probably the most overlooked smarthome sensor you can install. If you have a spot in the house that is prone to leaks (a basement that floods, an appliance that leaks, anywhere you have your water heater), you should absolutely be using a water leak sensor. Knowing early is the key to stopping a tragedy in its tracks before the water does massive damage to your home. Without that early warning, you may lose floor, walls, and other materials to mold, grime, and damage.
Never Lose a Remote Again
Somehow the TV remote has a way of getting lost deep in the folds of a couch. Or wandering to another room entirely. And once you’ve settled in for a good movie marathon, you really don’t want to get back up to find it. With a little smarthome magic, you do without your remote—at least in a pinch.
You can control a Fire Tv cube with Alexa, which lessens the need for a voice.
Roku devices used to require a third party app to work with Google Home but recently introduced native integration. It isn’t perfect yet. You can control your Roku, and some integration with channels is starting to happen, but you can’t control most Roku apps—like Netflix, for example—with your voice.
A more powerful route is to set up a Harmony Hub and a voice assistant.
Also be sure to check whether your device has a smartphone or tablet app that operates as a…
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