We Have Smart Lights! So... What's Next?

For a while now, I have been swapping out all of the lights in our home for smart bulbs. I originally started with Philips Hue, then added a few from Tesco alongside some smart sockets that I've flashed with ESPHome to control the lamps I can't easily swap out—like the fish tank light.

Now, though, I want to do more, and I want to make things simpler. I'm constantly being bugged by Mrs. Jim that something isn't working for some unknown reason, or that one of the bulbs on the chandelier has decided it's going to stay on. Nine times out of ten it's usually my fault because I've changed the programming on Home Assistant to try something new out and forgot to change it back. But on the odd occasion that it isn't my fault, it's quite frustrating to have to fiddle for half an hour to figure out why a single bulb on the chandelier hasn't turned off when we've settled into bed for the night.

So, I thought I'd share my new plan with you all. It might give you an idea or two, or you might have a better solution for me—if so, leave a comment below!

I'm Ditching Home Assistant

I know, I've been on about Home Assistant for a while now, and it truly is an amazing piece of software. However, I really only use it as an interface to bridge my non-HomeKit stuff over to HomeKit. I have a few routines on there, but they can easily be set up directly in the native Apple Home app.

I'm planning to replace Home Assistant with Zemismart's HomeKit Zigbee Hub. There is a boatload of Zigbee products produced by Zemismart that are relatively cheap, have amazing reviews, and work flawlessly with this hub. It means it won't be a complete headache every time I want to add something new. Plus, it means I can finally use the Raspberry Pi that I'm currently running Home Assistant on for other projects.

Smart Bulbs

I may have only just finished getting all my bulbs changed over to smart bulbs, but they are currently a total mish-mash of different brands and technologies. Some only do warm white, while others cover the full color spectrum (though those particular bulbs are really dim if they aren't set to white or warm white). It's time to change them all over to a single brand with a single protocol.

The protocol is an easy pick since the Zemismart hub is Zigbee-based. Now comes the fun part: finding Zigbee bulbs that work with the Tuya app, which can then pass them to the hub and straight into HomeKit.

The manufacturer is someone I've been keeping an eye on for a fair while, to be honest, and it still might be a surprise to some of you. It's IKEA! Over the last few years, they have been releasing a range of smart devices for ridiculously cheap prices. So, when it comes to lighting, I'll be going with their E27 and E14 bulbs. Both are £15 each and cover the full spectrum of colors. In total, it'll cost me £285, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than if I'd gone entirely with Philips Hue (£759).

To control them, I'll be getting my hands on ten Zemismart battery-powered 4-gang remote switches (£164.70 for the lot). Some I'll use to replace the current wall switches (wiring the switch live permanently behind the wall), and others I'll be popping on each side of the bed and on my desk.

Sensors

The next thing I really want to do is start adding sensors to our smart home. Nothing drastic—just window, door, and PIR motion sensors so I can create some basic routines for when we leave the house, or for when someone goes to the loo in the middle of the night.

Again, Zemismart comes to the rescue with some really cheap Zigbee sensors. First off are the door and window sensors. These will come in especially handy as we have three escape artists (that identify as cats), so it would be convenient to know if we have left one of the doors open—especially if that door leads to a room where the cats aren't allowed. Zemismart's door and window sensors are £11.65 each, so for our six doors and another six windows, that comes to a total of £139.80.

Next up are the PIR motion sensors. These are nice and simple; we can set them to detect motion either between certain times so that the hall and bathroom lights come on automatically, or to only trigger when we are not at home and send us a notification to check if someone has broken in. At only £12.26 each, that's just £85.82 for the whole flat.

Lastly, I'd like some temperature and humidity sensors in all of the rooms, especially with the little one on the way. We can then set an automation where if a room gets too warm, the heaters turn off and a fan turns on—or if it's too cold, it does the exact opposite. Zemismart happens to have these with an easy-to-read LCD display for just £15.84 each, totaling £95.04 for the whole flat.

Smart Heating

One thing I almost forgot to include on this list was smart heating. I honestly thought I already had until I reread my draft!

It's great having heat and humidity sensors everywhere, but it would be even better if you could get those sensors to actually do something, like physically turning the heating on or off.

That's where Netatmo's Smart Thermostat and Radiator Valves come in. For a total of £519.97, we could have each radiator in our flat individually controlled so we are not wasting gas by heating up the entire flat when we are only using one room.

The other great thing we can do is link the systems: if a door or window sensor notices that a window is open, we can get HomeKit to automatically turn off that specific radiator to save even more money. There's no point heating a room when all the warmth is literally going straight out of the window.

Smart Locks

Of course, if I'm going to make everything else smart, I need to make the front door to our flat smart too, and Zemismart has just the tool for the job.

This particular smart lock is meant for internal doors, which actually works great for us. Even getting to our front door feels like getting into a bank vault with the multiple communal doors we need to get through first.

The Zemismart Zigbee Smart Door Lock is brilliant because it has multiple ways to open it: from a PIN code and fingerprint scanner to an RFID card, a physical backup key, or simply through the Home app.

I have to admit I was a bit bummed out at first when I found out it was strictly for internal doors. The reason for this is that it only works on the type of door latch you typically have on a living room door, rather than a heavy-duty multi-point external lock. A bit of a downside, but in our secure flat layout, that shouldn't be too much of a worry (please don't test that theory for me!). And at just £79.12, you wouldn't really expect it to hold up on a main external building door anyway.

Smart Plugs & Sockets

We currently have four smart plugs that I picked up on Amazon for £20 (a deal that's unfortunately no longer available). Because they are built on Tuya's older hardware, I have been able to install Home Accessory Architect firmware on them, which treats them as entirely native HomeKit devices. This has already helped me move away from my reliance on Home Assistant.

Unfortunately, in the UK, there is really only one major supplier of fully integrated HomeKit smart wall sockets, and that's LightwaveRF. Because they are the only real supply for an Apple-friendly protocol built into the wall, I bet you can guess the downside... the price! Each double socket costs £60 direct from their website, and that doesn't even include the required hub, which is sold separately for another £125.

So, for the twelve double sockets in our flat plus the hub, we'd be looking at a massive £845! I think we'll stick to putting those cheap smart plugs on the specific appliances that really need them until a cheaper integrated option comes along. Especially since we don't own the property; if we move to a bigger home in the future (at least, that's the long-term plan), we're probably going to end up doubling that hardware price.

Smart Speakers

Well, in an Apple HomeKit home, there really is only one smart speaker choice to go for... the HomePod mini.

I know they are on the expensive side and Siri isn't quite up there with Alexa or Google Home when it comes to raw trivia intelligence, but the ecosystem benefits are tremendous.

Not only can you pair them like other wireless speakers, but by stereo-pairing them you get Apple's spatial audio through some clever technical wizardry. Along with that, you can easily use AirPlay to hand off any audio from your iPhone or iPad directly to the HomePod—whether that's calls, music, audiobooks, or podcasts.

Don't get me wrong, if Apple still produced the original large HomePod, they'd be top of this list because the audio on those was fantastic, but as they don't, these minis will do nicely. I was originally toying with the idea of putting a pair of IKEA's SYMFONISK speakers in each room alongside a single HomePod mini as a voice assistant. However, when you consider the HomePod minis are £89 each, it's really not worth splitting the hardware when you look at the benefits of pairing them directly. To put two minis in every room (except the bathroom, which gets one—if I can figure out the power situation safely), that comes to a total of £801. Not bad for whole-home audio with a built-in intercom, calling, and texting.

Smart Doorbell & Cameras

Last on my list for today is a reliable doorbell. We've currently got a Ring doorbell which isn't bad, but because the parent company is Amazon, it has zero native support for HomeKit. We've also given the Blink doorbell a go, which suffers from the exact same ecosystem issue and threw up a few more connectivity drops.

So, while researching for this post, I went on a proper hunt for a native HomeKit doorbell. I tell you now, there are not many available in the UK. The only one that sounds consistently reliable is Netatmo's Smart Video Doorbell. I've heard incredibly mixed reviews on the Robin Smart Video Doorbell, and the Logitech Circle View Doorbell isn't easily available in the UK.

The one downside to the Netatmo Smart Doorbell is that it doesn't support HomeKit Secure Video right out of the box, but it should be coming in a future firmware update (and Netatmo are usually pretty good at keeping their software promises). I suppose the other downside is the price. It's definitely not as cheap as a £40 wired Blink doorbell—the Netatmo goes for an eye-watering £270!

Now, there's no point having a smart doorbell if you don't have a camera or two for Mrs. Jim to see what's happening in the front and back garden as part of her mission to be a one-woman neighbourhood watch. Eufy has just the solution with the eufyCam 2C Pro pack. It comes with two 2K outdoor cameras, the 'HomeBase 2' for recording your video feeds locally, a bunch of smart tracking features, and of course, it's all completely HomeKit compatible. You get all of this for £300 straight from the Eufy website.

Summary

I've managed to almost fully kit out my home blueprint with smart gear! I know there's more stuff out there—I really want a smart robot vacuum—but as the total cost of this post is already sitting at £3,585.45, let's leave that for another day.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my choices. Sure, some of it isn't as cheap as I'd originally hoped, but with these being HomeKit-compatible products, I wasn't expecting everything to be as dirt cheap as the base Zemismart gear. I am really looking forward to seeing what else they come out with. I'm already planning the expansion to this post, including the smart vac, smart blinds, smart curtains, and a bunch of other tech I'm sure Mrs. Jim would tell me to put straight back on the shelf if she saw the price tags!

So, what do you guys think? Are there better HomeKit products out there that I've missed? Are there cheaper, more reliable versions? What should I include in the next part of this list? Let me know in the comments below!