Welcome to the unveiling of a web blog designed primarily for the purposes including but not limited to the promotion of various courses and products for home automation and android application development. This blog will mostly provide tutorials, real time experiences and information about the latest updates in order to enhance your knowledge on certain home technology products and software. The content will be regularly updated, so you should check in from time to time to see what’s new going on. We hope that these posts will make it easier for you to get acquainted with some of the best Android apps ever created in your daily life, as well as becoming an expert in applying them. Let’s start!
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Home Automation
- myQ Smart Garage: Total Control Over Your Garage
home automation – myQ
How many times have you pulled out of your garage in the morning only to get to your job and think, “Did I put the garage door down?” Your garage is an integral part of your home, and for some, it’s where many expensive items may be stored – including lawn equipment and vehicles.
Our garage door is something that we don’t always think about, but luckily, the technology now exists to manage it for us. Chambain, a garage door manufacturer, recently created a brilliant app that completely automates your garage. Here are some of its most notable features:
Check the status of the smart devices inside your garage and your home. For example, myQ allows you to see if your garage door is open or closed; check the temperature on the smart thermostat(s) in your house; and identify which lightbulbs are on or off.
Get instant notifications when an activity happens on any of your smart devices. For example, get instant alerts when the garage door opens or closes, when a light bulb is turned on or off, or when someone changes the temperature on your thermostat.
Control your garage doors or lights remotely and set automatic schedules so that your garage opens and closes at a predefined time.
This app controls the MyQ Smart Garage Door Openers and other Wi-Fi-enabled garage door openers. In addition, it can be synced to other smart home products including smart lights and smart thermostats from a variety of other smart device brands.
- Nuki Smart Lock: Your Virtual Keyring
Home automation apps for smart homes – smart lock
We’ve seen many changes in the world over the last century, but the lock and key system has rarely changed. Do we really even care for the concept of keys? We have to carry them everywhere, they are easy to get lost or stolen – and if you want to get a copy so someone else to access, you have to go all the way to the hardware store to have one made. Let’s face it – house keys are ancient.
The company, Nuki, understood the importance of making a more efficient key/lock process, so they created a smart app that you can use to unlock the doors in your house remotely – without having to carry a key. With Nuki, your phone becomes the tool that gives you access to your home.
In the world of home automation apps, what makes Nuki special? Here’s a few awesome features of the Nuki Smart Lock app:
Auto Unlock: As soon as you leave home, the app automatically locks all ‘smart lock’ doors in your house. Likewise when you come back, Nuki automatically unlocks them. Never touch your house’s keys again!
Give Access To Your Loved Ones: Create an access code within the app that you can share with anyone that you want to give access to your residence. This way, you can grant them access to your home for a specified amount of time – even if you’re not around to hand them your key.
Get Real-Time Alerts: Any time someone unlocks or locks any Nuki-enabled door, the app will notify you.
Remote Operation: No matter where you are in the world, you can lock or unlock your door with one tap from your smartphone.
The Nuki Smart Lock app controls the Nuki Smart Lock + Smart Bridge, which can be attached on top of your current lock to achieve remote functionality. To check whether the Nuki lock is compatible with your existing lock, take a look at their Installation Checker.
- Philips Hue: Limitless Lighting For Your Home
smart home apps – philips hue
The Phillips Hue app allows you to control the entire range of Philips Hue smart bulbs. Their Smart Bulbs can showcase over 16 million colors and can be dimmed or brightened remotely.
Here are a few cool features of the Philips Hue app:
Control every Philip bulb in your house: Change the color of the light output, set the level of brightness and set specific times that you want the bulbs to turn on or off.
Change the color of bulbs according to ‘moods’: The app has four moods that you can choose from such as Energize, Concentrate, Relax and Read. These “moods” change the bulb colors from either crisp and bright or warm and soft depending on the setting.
Transform your rooms with ‘scenes’: The app has 30 scenery lighting pre-sets designed especially to replicate lighting from famous locations. These settings include Honolulu Sunset and London
Nightlife, among others.
In addition to these features, the Philips Hue app automatically turns on your lights when you reach home, and turns them off when you leave. Not only are these features ultra cool, they also help you minimize electricity usage and reduce your utility bills – providing users of this home automation app with a great ROI.
- Nest: The App That Protects Your Home Completely
best smart home apps – Nest
Nest is known as one of the most innovative companies in the smart device sector. They create a variety of products that are meant to protect and automate your home. Currently, the Nest app focuses on developing devices such as smart cameras, smart doorbells, thermostats, alarm systems, and smoke + CO alarms.
The Nest app offers a variety of effective features that allow you to control and take advantage of their products. With the app, you can:
See who’s at your door through the app and let them in (or lock them out) remotely.
Monitor your home through security cameras to see what is happening inside and outside your home.
Control your thermostats or check the temperature inside your home.
Receive alerts if there is an unusual amount of smoke or carbon dioxide detected.
Receive instant notifications when the Nest alarm goes off.
The best thing about the Nest app is that it serves as a central hub where you can control all of your Nest smart devices – essentially, handling all of your home automation from a single application.
- Sonos Controller: Smart Music for Music Lovers
Smart home automation – sonos
If you are a music fanatic, today’s technology allows you to build the epic smart entertainment system that you only dreamed about in the past. The Sonos Controller app connects wirelessly to Sonos speakers and allows you to control music throughout your home.
Once connected to your speakers, the Sonos Controller app allows you to:
Play music, audiobooks and podcasts from 50+ music streaming services within a single app.
Control each individual speaker in your home and have them play the same (or different) music. Also, the app allows you to adjust the volume settings on each individual speaker.
The Sonos Controller app is the only app that streams music from all major streaming platforms like Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon Prime and more. Music is no longer limited to a single radio in your house – now you can automate your music too, and control output through your entire home in a way that was never before possible.
- Samsung SmartThings: A Central Hub For Home Automation
smart home automation apps – smartthings
We all know Samsung as the innovators of home devices in general – TVs, DVD players and many other home device accessories. Samsung is also a leader in the smart home automation market; bringing new smart technology with advanced solutions through their app, Samsung SmartThings.
This app goes beyond the capability of most home automation apps, not only allowing you to control devices such as cameras, locks and thermostats – but also giving you control over Samsung appliances like TVs, washing machines and air conditioners.
In addition to supporting Samsung devices, the app also supports a host of other smart devices from more than thirty brands – giving you the ability to control everything in your home from water valves to entertainment systems and more.
Furthermore, SmartThings allows you to automate specific processes so they happen at a certain time. For example, SmartThings can automatically:
Dim your lights when you leave home.
Turn your AC off when you walk out the door, or change the temperature on your smart thermostat when you come back home.
Notify you when there is motion in your home or even when a cabinet door is open or closed.
If you plan to make a serious investment into home automation, Samsung SmartThings provides a single hub where the entire automation of your home can be controlled.
Smart home dashboard apps
Amazon Alexa
Amazon’s app is similar to Google’s, in the sense that it offers the ability to control your devices and group them in rooms. It also offers the benefit of being compatible with a wide range of products and services.
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For each room, Alexa has icons to turn off all lights or plugs in a tap. Unfortunately, it isn’t smart enough to recognize lamps connected to a smart plug. That means if you tap the icon to turn on all the lights in the living room, it won’t switch on the ones that are connected to smart plugs.
Although the app comes with a widget, it doesn’t include a shortcut to control your smart devices. Similarly, you must tap the Devices icon every time you open the app. That’s inconvenient, especially if you’re planning on using the app as a smart remote control.
List of supported products and services
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Mobile LLC
LIFESTYLE
Price: Free
4.3
Download
Samsung SmartThings
SmartThings is one of the nicest-looking apps on this list. Although it’s made by Samsung, it’s not exclusive to the brand’s products and doesn’t require a hub; it can integrate with a many third-party services.
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SmartThings is easy to set up, and the app allows you to split devices by room. You can even set timers for the lights to turn off automatically after a certain amount of time, or at a specific hour. You can also configure multiple locations in the app.
Most importantly, it allows you to add widgets to your home screen, which makes it even more convenient. Unfortunately, some options aren’t well-designed, which makes this app harder to use as your daily driver.
There are far fewer compatible services compared to Google Home and Alexa. What’s more, SmartThings doesn’t let you change the color for all lights in a single room at once, forcing you to manually adjust each bulb’s hue.
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The built-in automation features are quite powerful; they can be conditional and control various devices at the same time. Configuration is easy. In addition, it avoids using a third-party platform like IFTTT. If your devices are compatible with SmartThings and you don’t often change a whole room’s lighting color, it’s worth trying.
List of supported products and services
SmartThings
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
LIFESTYLE
Price: Free
4.4
Download
Olisto
Olisto is not a control panel per se, but rather a way to automate most of your smart home devices and appliances, then direct them to communicate with each other. It allows you to create “triggs” based on various elements, such as the time or location, to perform various actions. For instance, you can ask it to turn on the lights, lock the doors, and open the blinds every weekday at 9:00 AM.
You can also automate various actions based on triggers from devices you already have at home, such as your smart camera, fitness tracker, and much more. Thanks to Olisto’s integration with an extensive range of services, you can input creative “triggs” like locking the kitchen door when you haven’t exercised enough before 7:00 PM.
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What’s particularly powerful is its ability to create “now” buttons to perform “triggs.” For example, you can press a single virtual button when you get home to open the blinds, turn on the lights, and start playing music on your speakers. The downside is that you have to manually create a button for every feature in every product, which is time-consuming to set up, but quite convenient when used daily.
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Olisto is probably not for everyone, especially if you’re not looking to spend a lot of time on configuration. On the other hand, if you like to fiddle with technology and want to create some pretty neat home automations that are triggered at the touch of a virtual button, give this app a try. It allows you to create more complex routines than IFTTT, but supports fewer services. Lastly, although there is no widget, there’s an option to engage a persistent notification, which comes in handy.
List of supported products and services
Olisto – Connect everything with every thing
Triggi
PRODUCTIVITY
Price: Free
2.8
Download
iHaus
iHaus isn’t an eye-pleasing app, but it’s useful. It doesn’t require extensive setup and allows you to connect to your smart home devices without logging into third-party services. I managed to link my Roomba and Hue lights with the touch of a button; the app automatically scanned for devices connected to my Wi-Fi network. Unfortunately, my plugs and cast-enabled speakers weren’t supported, so I couldn’t have all of my devices in the app.
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Unlike Olisto, iHaus is more of a control panel for your smart devices, including some speakers, lights, plugs, kitchen appliances, locks, thermostats, and even your Tesla. It’s easier to use than Google Home, in the sense that you can just tap a device’s icon to turn it on or start it. What’s also great is that it can automatically recognize groups, such as Hue rooms, so you can turn on all lights in a room at once, or change their color at the same time.
You can also create routines to turn off everything at home with a single virtual button. iHaus offers the ability to create scripts with conditional triggers, but they’re not great in practice. Again, this will depend on what you’re trying to achieve, what devices you have, and whether they’re compatible with the app.
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All in all, iHaus can be a useful option if you’re looking for something simple and easy to try, but don’t mind the looks.
List of supported products and services
iHaus Smart Living App
iHaus AG
LIFESTYLE
Price: Free
Download
Yonomi
Yonomi is relatively similar to Olisto, in the sense that it’s designed to help you automate actions at home. However, it can also act as a remote control for lights and other devices. It’s easy to set up and can automatically detect what devices are on your Wi-Fi network, just like iHaus. However, it doesn’t support groups. Although you can control apps individually, you can’t turn several lights on or off at the same time.
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Yonomi might become useful when setting up routines, though, as these can be conditional. However, there aren’t many supported services, so you’ll have to see whether it’s relevant for you compared with Olisto or IFTTT.
List of supported products and services
Yonomi – Smart Home Automation
Yonomi
HOUSE & HOME
Price: Free
2.2
Download
IFTTT
IFTTT is one of our favorite services. Once you’ve set up everything, you can forget it exists. For instance, if you use various smart plugs at home to control your lights and don’t want to thumb through multiple apps to turn them off when you leave, IFTTT can help. Just add all the plugs to the app and create a location-based recipe. In fact, IFTTT is so efficient that you rarely need to use the app, unless you’re setting up a new applet or checking your activity log.
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There’s also an option for you to control your smart devices directly from your phone, thanks to widgets and “Do buttons.” Just like Olisto and Google Home, you’ll have to create recipes manually, but they can be useful for a few features, such as turning lights on or off.
IFTTT is worth considering if you don’t intend to create too many buttons. The platform supports a wide range of services and allows you to create tasks in just a flew clicks. The app also has a widget, which most others don’t, so it might serve as a good option for many.
Conclusion
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