After seeing Oliver Heath at the Real Home Improvement Show in London in September I have been looking about for new ways to make your home smarter in an eco friendly way. We have all seen promises made about the home of the future controlled at the press of a button but largely filed these away along with the hover car in to things we won’t see any time soon.
These dreams are slowly becoming reality though and I have managed to find a few devices that are available now which can help you control your home and the energy used much more effectively. I installed an Owl energy monitor and heating control on our new boiler when we had it installed back in March. We hadn’t used it much because it has been pretty warm in London until a few weeks ago but now we have programmed it so the heating isn’t on when we are out at yoga but ready for us to get home. The best bit is turning on the heating on the bus home and getting in to a lovely warm house.
This is the first of many systems controlled by your computer and from a smartphone app. B&Q are now stocking Lightwave products, these have a link attached to your wifi router which then controls light switches, sockets, radiators and the room thermostat throughout the house. This means you can turn off all the lights when you are in bed, control the heat in individual rooms and even press one code to turn everything off when you leave the house a simple but brilliant idea. You can also dim the lights to change the atmosphere in a room, something that the Philips Hue has taken even further, this allows you to change the colours as well, not widely available in the UK yet but I will feature it when it is.
I am sure there will be a flood of smart devices over the next year, connected to the internet of things and I will try and feature the ones that are actually available to buy now and let you know how they can save you energy or water as well as making your home a better place. Even little things that make a small difference and look cool like the water pebble.
Update 24/11/2013, found this cool smoke and carbon monoxide detector to add to the smart devices for your house.
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