Smart home living is a great (and modern) way to incorporate security, convenience, and energy saving strategies into your life. But no single, uniform strategy exists for setting up the ideal Smart Home (or smart apartment, as the case may be). If you live in an apartment and have a baby and/or pets, your smart home strategy is going to be different than someone’s who lives alone in a large detached house. In the case of the former (apartment living with a baby and pets), if you’re struggling with the question of how best to get started with your own perfect smart home, then struggle no more, because today I ride in to help with a blog article designed especially for you. Read on!
Where to begin my smart apartment?
Router
While routers and range extenders are not—in and of themselves, smart home products (they actually fall under the category of Computer Networking), they are extremely important to a functional smart home since all smart home products require the Internet to run.
For this reason, you should begin building your smart home with the addition of a powerful router as most smart home tech is going to place demands on your home’s Internet bandwidth, and that demand is cumulative as you add more devices.
With a good router in place, your smart home will be able to handle the extra demand of those new devices and keep everything running smoothly even if you add several new smart home products at once. After all, you wouldn’t want your Netflix feed to slow to a crawl just because you’ve added a few new smart home devices.
Smart Locks
One of the best (and first!) ways you can create the best possible smart apartment for your spouse, baby, and pets is by securing the premises with convenient Smart Locks.
Smart locks come in a variety of different styles and designs (and from different manufacturers), yet they pretty much all do most of the same things.
For instance, they can lock the door behind you as your leave your home, they can be accessed via an app on your smart phone (to allow you to check that your door is locked no matter where you are), and they can even unlock the door as you approach it so you can easily open it up even if your hands are full with the baby and sacks of groceries.
There’s really nothing quite as important as home security—particularly when there’s a brand new baby involved, and smart locks are your first line of defence when protecting those you love.
Smart Lighting
Another great addition to any smart home—apartment or otherwise, is Smart Lighting. After all, you wouldn’t want to walk into a pitch-black apartment and trip over one of your pets while carrying an armful of groceries, or (heaven forbid!) your baby.
Smart lights, since they can automatically turn on (or be set to turn on with a voice command if you have a smart speaker such as the Google Home), give you a significant level of control (which is convenient) as well as providing great cost savings (both in terms of their low energy usage and their long lifetime of use before needing to be replaced).
They also come in a large variety of styles to suit different decors and purposes, and they are easy to control from anywhere on Earth using your smart phone and the dedicated app of the lights you choose. Plus they can light up in millions of different colour options!
Do keep in mind, however, that many smart lights (like most of the offerings from Philips Hue) require a special hub to work properly. Of course, you can buy complete kits where the bulbs and a hub are all included together. If you’re just getting started with your smart home, smart lights are really one of the first types of products you should pick up.
Smart Speakers/Displays
Smart Speakers & Displays (such as the Google Home or Google Nest Mini) are also invaluable to today’s fully functioning smart home.
Smart speakers allow you to control all (or nearly all) of your other smart home devices with simple voice-based commands. This could help you out in a number of key ways, such as when you have to get up in the middle of the night to feed your baby and need the lights to come on. All you have to do is ask!
Similarly, you could ask your smart speaker to play some soothing music to help your child go back to sleep, you could ask it for information from the Internet that might help you with baby related matters, or you could ask it to remind you about something important. For example, you could have it set a timer to control the length of your baby’s nap, or ask it to let you know when a specific time arrives so you can properly administer medicine to an ailing child.
There are so many ways that a smart speaker (or display) can make your life easier when taking care of a brand new baby—or an aging cat.
Safety Sensors & Detectors
Another must-have smart home item as far as I am concerned is Safety Sensors & Detectors, which is especially true when one has family to protect and keep safe. 
One truly exceptional example of just such a product is the Google Nest Protect Wi-Fi Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Alarm, which comes in both battery powered and wired in versions and has myriad ways to protect you and your family from imminent (and sometimes not so imminent) household dangers.
For instance, if you experience a carbon monoxide leak in your home, one of these detectors will let you know in plenty of time so you can take steps to prevent something bad from happening. It can even turn off your furnace (the potential source of the leak) all on its own, possibly saving your life and that of your spouse, infant, and beloved pets.
Of course, you may not have your own furnace if you live in an apartment, but fires are always a nasty possibility wherever one resides, and one of these alarms can save you from those as well!
Smart Cameras
Lastly, Security Cameras aren’t just about providing a watchful eye for the outside of your home to keep trespassers and potential intruders at bay—they can also watch over crib and baby so you can keep an eye on them both night and day.
In fact, most smart security cameras today have a number of useful features for watching over baby. For instance, motion detection and instant smart phone notifications can combine to let you know when baby wakes up so you can be right there when needed.
And there’s always the possibility that you just want to be able to take a look in and check on your sleeping baby without disturbing them by opening the door to their room. For that matter, since you can view your camera’s live feed directly on your phone, you can easily check in on them from anywhere and at any time—and even speak to them if you like.
If you’re in the position of living in an apartment and have responsibilities like a baby and pets in the home, check out Best Buy’s Smart Home offerings and use the tips above to begin enacting your own smart apartment game plan today!
