Make Your Home Smarter, Lighter and Safer, with Best Buy
If you call yourself a techie, you may have the latest smart phone, smart watch, pimped out car and camera, but what about the latest in home technology? While your television may unlock the full potential of HDR, and you’ve even got a home 3D printer, have you updated to the latest in home security? Are your your lighting and thermostat controls amped up? And can you monitor the temperature, air quality and even noise pollution inside and outside your home? If not, you may not be worthy of that nerd shirt you so proudly sport, and it’s time to act before your friends stop coming over to play.
Over at the Good Life Vancouver headquarters in Vancouver (the not so secret code name for our smallish Kitsilano apartment from where GLV based) we are in the process of updating a few design aspects in our home and doing some minor renos. You may have seen us wandering the isles of home hardware stores, as well as Best Buy, to satisfy our geeky side. We’ve discovered more than a few things we just can’t live without and suggest you add these very useful gadgets to add to your shopping list.
Ever wanted your own weather station? Well we have , and now, with the Netamo Smart Weather Station, we can gather not only temperature and humidity levels inside and outside our home, but also air quality, CO2 level, barometric pressure and even noise pollution, all accessed from our smartphones. We now know when to wear our rain boots and also when to turn our stereo down.
It’s not that cold out here on the “wet coast”, but we are still concerned about keeping our hydro bills down and do so with the Nest WiFi Smart Thermostat, a learning thermostat that remembers the temperatures we like and then programs itself to save energy. The LCD display lights up when approached, so no need to squint to read. We can also control if from both our mobile phones and use it with numerous home products. We still have yet to agree on what that perfect temperature is though.
Another energy cost reducer, is the Belkin WeMo Smart Plug , that controls fans and lights, shuts off the TV when we’ve forgotten, and also notifies us when our laundry is done, again, all via our phones. Unfortunately it doesn’t fold up the clothes and put them away, and our dryer still eats socks.
We’re childless and petless so the Nest Cam Indoor Camera isn’t necessary as a nanny or pet cam, but we used it when we were traveling last so we could spy on some of the home repair work that was going on while we were gone. Did I warn them? Maybe, maybe not.
We then took an inventory of our lighting, and along with some new track lighting with smarter LED bulbs, we went a little tech crazy and are currently installing light panels from Nanoleaf and will be adding more soon. The starter pack has nine panels that we applied to our wall and now we can customize lighting and choose from millions of colours to pretty up our living room. When I’m a little tired I switch it to bright white light and can almost blast the blues away. All lights are controlled by our Androids (IOS devices too) as well as being voice-enabled if we choose.
Another fun conversation starter (cause you know it’s so quiet here) for that next dinner party is the Mipow Playbulb Sphere Lamp, which can be placed in or out of doors and provides accent lighting via a phone app that allows you to choose from five different lighting effects.
If you are looking to earn, or maintain your Geek title, and smarten up your home, this is definitely the weekend to do so, as the Home+Design Show is in town October 27 – 30, 2016, and Best Buy will be showcasing some of their top Smart products at the BC Hydro Smart Home Booth, right on site. Take note as some of these tech gadgets are eligible for a BC Hydro discount on at Best Buy. Can’t make the home show this time? Head right in to your nearest Best Buy and ask for a demo. Use #BestBuySmartHome if you are sharing and let us know how you’re geeking out at home.
