Back to Posts
dinkdongs
🏠 warm & cosy modern home inspired by local cafes | 5-room resale flat
Our smart home journey: Read this simple guide before you start yours!
4805
- Free Style
- HDB (Resale)
- ~1,200 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living
Hello! We will be breaking down our smart home journey in this week’s post — kudos to the mr for taking the time to pen this down 🤗 (warning: it’s a v detailed article!) What is a Smart Home? A smart home uses devices that connect to the internet and can be controlled remotely. These include things like lights, locks, switches, and speakers. You can use your phone or voice to turn them on, off, or set schedules. Smart homes make life easier by saving time, energy, and adding extra security. There are almost countless different smart systems and many unfamiliar terms when one first looks into the smart home and I'm sure this deters many people from trying it out by themselves… So we decided to craft this simple guide about our smart home journey and hope that it can inspire you to look into this 😄👍🏼 
Defining our Smart Home Goals: Firstly, we considered our *budget*. Setting up a smart home can quickly become expensive. With more features in the smart home, you may be required to purchase more accessories. That’s why careful planning was needed beforehand to ensure that we know what features we want, what accessories are needed to help us achieve them, and finally how much they cost in total. Features we wanted: 1) One Single App - Our biggest requirement was that we wanted a single app to control everything. Compared to having to toggle between apps from different brands to control different features. 2) Digital Door Lock - Had to be secure, responsive, and user friendly. We settled for a digital door lock with the standard features like fingerprint, pin and FOB unlock as well as being able to set temporary pins and remote unlock. 3) Smart Doorbell - We wanted to receive video notifications for guests/deliveries on our phones timely and remotely, and have the ability to view and communicate with the person at the door and have a physical chime as well. 4) Remote Control Appliances - This goes without saying, but we wanted the ability to control switches to lights, fans and other appliances in our home remotely (via phone/ custom switches) 5) Flexible - Able to expand and scale features if we would like to in the future. 
Choosing a Smart Home Ecosystem: This step was pretty simple for us. As we are both hardcore Apple users, we were deciding between only 2 systems. Apple’s ecosystem, Homekit or HomeAssistant. After doing a bit more research we decided to go for Homekit. Its interface is user-friendly and simple, and although some may argue that it comes at the cost of functionality and customizability that HomeAssistant provides, it was able to handle the features that we listed above. Selecting Devices: This section will go through the devices that we chose along with a short explanation of why we chose it. We will not be able to go through every device that we considered or this article will be even longer than it already is… 😅 Basically all of the devices here will need to be able to integrate with Apple Homekit so that they can all appear in the same app. 
#1 - Apple TV Firstly to enable Apple Homekit, we will need to either get an Apple HomePod or an AppleTV. We went with the AppleTV because we already wanted to change the interface for the TV we bought. We knew we didn't plan to use Siri for voice commands. 
#2 - Switches To be able to control the lights, fans and other electrical appliances remotely, we went with a brand called Aqara. We decided to go with Aqara because after researching, it is a reputable brand that is used worldwide. The reviews on its quality is good, and it has many different offerings to meet our needs while also integrating well with the Apple Homekit. Finally, it is also aesthetically pleasing and makes a satisfying sound when pressed (mouseclick-like) 🐭 
#3 - Video Doorbell For the doorbell, we went with the offering from Aqara. There were not many products out there to choose from but luckily Aqara’s was one of the top rated video doorbells as it provided HomeKit Secure Video support, allowing us to securely store and access video footage on iCloud. It also allows us to communicate with guests via our phone. 
#4 - Digital Door Lock For the digital lock, we decided to go with a more established brand in the door lock industry compared to Aqara’s offerings. After doing some research, we decided to go with the Yale Kyra Pro. It came with a smart module that allows it to connect to Homekit and it also came as a bundle deal with our main door (cheers The Door + Yale collab). 
#5 - Ikea Smart Plugs Since we have many lamps in our home, one way we convert traditional “dumb” lamps to “smart” ones is to use smart plugs. Ikea’s TRETAKT was simple to set up and use, and thankfully relatively inexpensive. 
So what does this do? Apart from the usual benefits that one might expect from a smart home (esp remotely controlling lights and appliances), one of the biggest game changers is the ability to control everything on a single app — which we mentioned was our no. 1 requirement. As you can see from the screenshot of the Apple Home app, we are able to control smart devices from multiple brands in one clean and simple interface. It is so intuitive that even our parents and guests are able to navigate and use it. A Big W: Another huge plus is the ability to set “Scenes”. Scenes are basically a saved configuration of the different smart products in the home and they can be triggered via switches or the app. Some of our most used “Scenes” are… • “Going out/ Arrive home” scene. We have a dedicated button at the entrance of our home that can trigger the above scenes. The “Going out” scene will basically turn off all the lights, fans and appliances in the home ensuring that we do not accidentally leave anything running for the day. The “Arrive home” scene will turn on some of the lights from the foyer to the bedroom so that we don’t have to stumble in the dark when we come home after work. 
• “Movie” scene. This will turn off all the main lights in the living area and kitchen making the environment perfect for watching movies. 
• “Goodnight” scene. This is a dedicated button located on our bedside table. This will allow us to turn off everything in the home except the bedroom fan without having to leave the bed to check. Future Plans: Motion Sensors! One feature we would like to implement in the future is to use some motion sensors to help automate some tasks. An example would be to have a motion sensor in the bomb shelter. The switch for the bomb shelter is located in an inconvenient corner making it hard to turn on especially at night. The motion sensor can allow the lights to turn on automatically when the door opens as well as turn off after a configured amount of time when it does not detect movement in case we forgot to turn off the lights. Another use for a motion sensor would be for when we need to use the bathroom at night. It could detect if anyone got out of bed and automatically turn on some dim lights so as to not wake our partner as well as guide us to the bathroom without having to stumble for the light switches or use our phones to remotely turn them on. We have narrowed down some motion sensor product solutions from Aqara and Ikea but have yet to implement it. Ok you’ve made it to the end! 🤩 Comment below (or dm us on IG) if you have specific questions or would like some advice on starting your smart home journey, and we will do our best to help! Thanks for reading (‘:
8 June
