Morning Routines with Smart Home Automation
The whole purpose of a smart home is to make life at home somewhat less demanding, if not more charming. We regularly speak about smart homes without understanding what a smart home can really do. That’s because there’s such a variety in things we can automate or control using smart home devices. One of the best places to start using your smart home is automating your mornings! Perhaps these examples can enable you to easily through your mornings.
Waking up in a cozy room with white lights.
After your blasting alarm awakens you, you’d want to hear your favorite songs to start your day on the right foot! Flic button and smart lights can help activate your smart light’s bright white to wake you up, and you can press start with your Flic button to enjoy your morning playlist. On your Flic button, you can press on the Plus button next to one of the three preset commands. From there, you can add either Apple Music, Spotify, or Sonos action to select the playlist you want.
Going for a run.
Getting up to go for a run, especially in the cold, can be terrible. If your day consists of going out for a bit of an exercise, you can take care of business with the push of a button before you take off to go running. With a Flic Smart Button, you can play your workout playlist, starts automatically tracking your runs with an application (with Runkeeper or Strava) can start a stopwatch to track your time, and can even donate some money to a goal. Have fun and reward yourself!
Overslept? Alert your friends or coworkers that you’ll be late.
Say you overslept. Don’t worry, it happens! Fortunately, you can tell your collaborators or friends you’re on you way when you leave your home without wasting time. With an app called IFTTT, you can send custom voice commands to your Google Assistant that exists in your Google Home voice assistant. You can also set up your IFTTT to your Slack account, so when you say, “Hey Google, I’m running late!” it turns into a message sent to a contact or contacts. The Flic button can also ensure that all your appliances and lights are turned off for the day before you leave.
Turn on your lights slowly.
Getting a good night’s rest is IMPERATIVE. However, no one likes to be awoken by an uproarious, unexpected alarm. Try to pursue awakening smoothly to a delicate, graduating light instead! It is more ambient than bright, white light and will prevent you from being ripped out of a deep sleep. Smart bulbs can be programmed to come on at the same time, and you can often choose how long it takes for the bulbs to reach the desired brightness — whether that’d be a few seconds, minutes, or instantly! Make a schedule for the light bulbs overhead or the bedside light to gradually turn on to full brightness around the time you need to wake up. Best products to use are the Phillips White Ambiance Bulbs, LIFX Bulbs, and the Phillips Wake-up Lights.
Slowly raise or lower the temperature.
Nobody needs to take off the comfortable sheets early in the day and wake up to a chilly room. To prevent this, you can set your smart thermostat to slowly raise the temperature before you plan to get out of bed! Much like gradually turning on the room lights, this will help you delicately pull you out of rest and make waking up less jolting. Ecobee4 has a perfect touch screen display and remote temperature features that can help you wake up much more gently in the mornings.
A fresh cup of coffee without the hassle!
Who doesn’t love waking up to a fresh cup of coffee early in the morning. I know I sure would love that. With your smart home, you have the ability to wake up with a fresh cup of hot coffee every day. While there ARE smart coffee makers that do this, all you need is any coffee maker and a smart plug. The only requirement needed is that the coffee maker needs a power button that can toggle switch that will remain on, even after brewing finishes. The Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug by TP-Link, or D-Link Smart Plug is compatible to both Google Home and Alexa, and you can tell your device to start making coffee as soon as you wake up!
Monitoring your kids and pets.
With a webcam in a nearby window, you can keep of your pets, but it doesn’t make sense to have that camera on all the time. Adding a tilt sensor can trigger a webcam to power on. The same tactic can be used for kids going out the backdoor. Using a webcam with a magnetic sensor can help make sure that playtime is safe for you kids. Products best for this would be the Zmodo Wireless IP Security Camera or the Vivint Wireless Door Tilt if you already have a webcam!
Morning news without touching the remote.
Most importantly, the news. With smart speakers, staying up to date on the news is easier than before. With Alexa Routines, you can have Alexa play “Flash Briefing” every morning by saying “Alexa, play my Flash Briefing. For Google Home speakers, you can automate your news, traffic, or weather by saying “Ok Google, good morning.” However, they have more features. With these smart home gadgets, the options are limitless. Have fun and be creative on how to use it for the mornings!
