Lightsabers and flying cars might not exist yet, but you have to admit, science fiction gets it right sometimes. Just look at the smart home. Today, building a hi-tech smart home is no longer just a far-fetched, futuristic imagining of a visionary storyteller. And Google and Nest are spearheading the drive to make every home at least a little smarter.

Nest thermostats, for example, have opened up new possibilities for how smart home tech can be integrated together. And, since Google acquired Nest in 2014, Google’s products work seamlessly within the Nest framework for a perfectly coordinated symphony of home convenience, security, and energy efficiency.

Read on to learn how smartening up your living space can enrich you and your family’s life, and then enter this contest for a chance at winning the grand prize, which includes enough goodies to build your own domestic ecosystem. There are also second and third place prizes to be won!

A snapshot of smarter living with Nest and Google

If you’re a long time reader of the Best Buy Canada Blog, I’m sure you’ve read a lot about smart home technology by now in articles such as Leonard Bond’s comprehensive breakdown of Works with Nest, or Elliot Chun’s smart home series. But, if you’re still wondering what exactly a smart home is and how it can complement your day-to-day life, allow me to paint a picture of what life can be like in an AI-enabled home. And by simply entering this contest, living in a tech-enhanced home could soon be your reality:

Nest Smart Learning Thermostat

You pull up the driveway at the same time you do every day. It’s late Fall and Jack Frost is starting to make his presence felt with cold winds that let you know that it’s the beginning of a long winter. You hurry to the front door to escape the icy chill and step into cozy comfort. Your energy-efficient Nest Thermostat has learned what time you usually come home and turned itself on a few minutes before you arrive—no more waiting for cold rooms to heat up!

Voice-controlled Google Home answers questions, plays your music, and controls other smart devices, including Nest

 

 

As soon as you’ve settled in, you go to the kitchen to get dinner ready. It’s cheat day, you’re craving carbs, and everyone in the family loves Italian food, so you ask your voice-activated Google Home to tell you about a recipe for a tasty pasta dish, request some good cooking music, and set a timer to ensure your pasta is perfectly al dente, all without lifting a finger.

Just as dinner is ready to serve, your smartphone vibrates with a notification: your Nest Cam IQ in the front yard has detected someone you know in the driveway. Seconds later, your Nest Hello video doorbell rings. It uses facial recognition to identify the person and transmits the message to Google Home to tell you that your mother is at the door.

As you take your mother’s coat, your partner arrives with your hungry toddler fresh out of daycare. The four of you sit down to dinner and you ask Google to dim the lights and play some nice background music. After dinner, you and your other half head out to the movie theatre for date night while your little one and Grandma stay in to watch a Disney classic.

Nest Cam IQ records in 1080p and boasts a wide-angle lens to capture the entire room

At the theatre, before the movie begins, that familiar feeling of separation anxiety hits you right on time, and you wonder if everything is okay at home. Plus, you’ve also got a niggling feeling that you left the cooker on. With Nest Cams in the nursery, living room, and kitchen, as well as outside in the front and back yards, you open the Nest App to view the Full HD live feed on your smartphone.

Live feed on the Nest App of your kitchen’s Nest Cam IQ

 

While baby plays happily in the living room, you can see Grandma is reading nearby with a blanket over her shoulders. You adjust the room’s temperature from your phone so they’ll be nice and cozy. Then you switch over to your kitchen Nest Cam. It has a perfect view of the entire room with its wide angle lens, and you zoom in on your range. It’s off. Priceless peace of mind! Now, you can relax.

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This scenario only scratches the surface of how a smart home ecosystem can make your life more convenient. Nest and Google have been working tirelessly to make premium smart home products accessible to everyone. Installation is a doddle, and, as you can see, every individual item works together and can be controlled with your voice or from an app on your smartphone. There’s lots of goodies to be won in this contest, and if you’re wondering what other gear you’ll need to make a smart home platform work seamlessly in your house or apartment, remember this general rule of thumb: If you have a smartphone, you can have a smart home. It’s as simple as that.

HOW TO ENTER:

You can only submit one entry for this contest. Browse Best Buy’s smart home catalog, and in a comment below this article, tell us one smart home product that you would like to add to your daily life and why.

WHAT YOU CAN WIN:

We will randomly draw three winners. One person will win the grand prize, one person will win the second prize, and one person will win the third prize. The prizes are shown here, and also in the Rules and Regulations posted below.

Grand Prize 2nd Prize
 

  • Nest Temperature Sensor
  • Nest Wi-Fi Smart Learning Thermostat 3rd Gen
  • Nest Cam IQ Wi-Fi Outdoor 1080p Security Camera
  • Nest Cam Wi-Fi Outdoor 1080p IP Camera
  • Nest Cam IQ Wi-Fi Indoor 1080p IP Camera
  • Nest Cam Wi-Fi Indoor IP Camera – Black
  • Nest Hello Wi-Fi Video Doorbell
  • 2 x Google Home Mini
  • Google Home
  • Nest Cam IQ Wi-Fi Outdoor 1080p Security Camera
  • Nest Cam IQ Wi-Fi Indoor 1080p IP Camera
  • Nest Wi-Fi Smart Learning Thermostat 3rd Gen
  • Nest Temperature Sensor
  • Nest Hello Wi-Fi Video Doorbell
  • Google Home

 

3rd Prize

  • Nest Cam Wi-Fi Outdoor 1080p IP Camera
  • Google Home Mini

This contest runs from October 15th until October 28th.

Remember, you can only enter once. However, you probably know someone who would love to add some incredible smart products to their home, so please share this contest and they too will have a chance to win one of these prizes.

Win Google and Nest Smart Home Goodies Rules and Regulations

Good Luck.  

We frequently have many contests running at Best Buy, so check out the “contests in progress” page for more great contests to enter.
Kevin McElligott
Kevin McElligott
Kevin cut his teeth as a journalist writing articles for trade publications in Dublin. He moved to Vancouver and honed his craft first as a copywriter, and now as an Editor at Best Buy. He enjoys cooking when he has the time, playing soccer, and just recently ran in his first marathon. Fitness is important to him, and he needs the exercise thanks to his fondness for donuts.
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1307 COMMENTS

  1. I had no idea smart blinds existed. But it makes sense since they would be great to regulate temperature and sun exposure especially during the hotter months, which would help keep electricity bills down. So if I could, I would add smart blinds to my home.

  2. Personally, I’d prefer the newly launched Google Home Hub as the ultimate place to store info. For my mom it would work perfectly at the end of the kitchen island, but to have the Nest thermostat and smart lighting installed would make things even easier for her!

  3. I would love to have a nest smart thermometer. I can turn up the heat on my way home from work or vacation so our house will be toasty warm when our family comes home. Also it would be great you use our Google home mini with it to control the temperature.

  4. I would like a Google Home to give to my grandma. That way, she can call us from it and access the internet in a non-complex way.

  6. My first purchase was two of the Google home units. I then bought a nest home thermostat and 3 WeMo light switches. I would like to add the nest doorbell. We have had some incidents in our neighborhood and would like to add security. We also can’t hear our doorbell from the bedroom and would like the announcement and the video to appear in other rooms

  8. I’m looking at another Google home mini to be used in the kitchen, where I’ve already set up smart connected switches to the lights.

  9. I’m constantly away from home, traveling for business and leaving behind my wife and kids. Having a smart home setup would not only give me peace of mind when I’m away, knowing they’re monitored and safe, but also would let me check in from time to time when I’m homesick and want to see them.

    Added bonus: A nest doorbell would help when I want to avoid door to door salespeople. 🙂

  10. I would love to have a Google Home Mini because I have some smart home devices and it would really be convenient to control them with my voice.

  11. We would really like to get a Nest Cam Wi-Fi Outdoor 1080p IP Camera to keep an eye on our young children playing in the backyard.
    We love the nest e thermostat we bought, nothing like turning on the heat from bed and getting out when it’s warm. Thanks

  12. I would love to have the nest hello, I could see who is still the door before opening it and keep an eye on my deliveries!

  13. I set up a Nest thermostat in my parents house, and they love it! Right now I’ve only got a Home Mini and a couple smart plugs for lights. Home automation is really cool, but still a bit expensive. I’d be real interested in a Nest thermostat for myself, and another Home Mini for multi-room music and control would be sweet!

  15. I would love a Philips Hue Lucca E26 Smart Outdoor Wall Light because it is always a fight on whether to leave the outside light on all night or not

  16. The nest smart thermostat would be perfect for regulating the temperatures and saving money when i am not home !

  19. I would like to add a Nest to my already established Google smartphone setup because my house has very different temperatures depending on where you are. A Nest would learn by house “hangout” habits and get the temperature right in the rooms I hang out in at the right time.

  20. I would like a Google Home to be able to answer questions hands free, and also to get quick and easy access to info like the weather, news and songs!

  22. Nest Camera would be awesome. Had quite a few break ins in the area and would be super to make sure someone hasn’t broken into my place. Have lots of Hue lights, would be nice to trigger them as soon as camera picks up motion via IFTTT.

  25. We have some Amazon Echo units and one Google home device at the house, i would like to enable the locks on my garage door using one of these units.

  28. The person who built our home did not think out the lighting very well, and we have light switches EVERYWHERE! I would love some of the Belkin WeMo Wi-Fi Light Switch (F7C030FC) so we could use our phones for our lights!

    • I feel the nest security cameras would be a huge asset around my house. There is a lot of car and house break-ins in the area and if we can see what’s going on, it would help us and the community out

  32. I would love a Philips Hue Lucca E26 Smart Outdoor Wall Light because it is always a fight on whether to leave the outside light on all night or not

  34. The Nest smart home thermostat would be a great addition to my house to help me keep my heating bills to a minimum, all the products by Nest seem to be the answer to everyone’s home sweet home

  35. The Nest IQ camera would be the best!! I work early in the morning and my boys have to get ready for school on their own after I leave for work, so it would be pretty awesome if I could set a routine where if the outdoor IQ camera did not recognize them leaving by a certain time that I could cast an alarm sound/message or song to remind/alert them to get going to the school bus ASAP!!? Lol

  37. I’d like to upgrade my smoke detectors, replace them with the Nest. The generic ones that came with my place are just too sensitive and making pancakes can turn into a circus very abruptly freaking the kids out with the high pitch alarm noise these are making. so yeah, the smoke detectors

  38. I’d like to upgrade my smoke detectors, replace them with the Nest. The generic ones that came with my place are just too sensitive and making pancakes can turn into a circus very abruptly freaking the kids out with the high pitch alarm noise these are making. so yeah, the smoke detectors

  40. The Nest Hello doorbell cam would be nice. It would allow me to replace my existing front door camera with something that is hardwired.

  41. I would like a nest doorbell to see who is at the door. Especially for deliveries and door to door sales.

  43. I have a google home mini and would love to add some nest outdoor cams I work 1hr away from home and always worrying about the safety of my home!

  44. The Nest Thermostat would be a great addition so we can save a bit during the day when we’re off at work but still have the perfect temperature by the time we get back home.

  45. Nest hello doorbell is what I would love to have. I had my newborn’s Amazon package of diapers stolen when he needed it most! Wish I had a cam to catch the thief! Also solicitors keep ringing the doorbell during his naps. Wish I could just tell them to go away.

  47. I would add a neat cam to my home as it would give me the ability for extra security as well as keeping an eye on my toddlers at home when they play.

  48. I would love the Nest Hello Video Doorbell. Would give my family a safer feeling being able to see who exactly is at the door before opening it.

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