How Google Home’s routines turned my random smart gadgets into a unified system

Smart home devices are so common that it’s challenging to find things that aren’t connected or smart. With numerous products and brands, managing our smart homes and integrating devices from different brands can be a nightmare.

I tamed the chaos by using Google Home to make dozens of smart home devices from different brands work together in near harmony.

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My Google Home setup was a mess — here are 6 ways I fixed it

Time to tidy up your setup

Get them together

Together, but not the same

After deciding what you want to include in your smart home, the challenge most people face is the number of apps needed to manage and control the devices. Most people, including myself, don’t pick a single brand to handle all their smart home needs. It’s challenging to do so.

While you can get one brand for your lighting, another for your security, and a third for your smart speaker, you’re looking at three or more apps. Because these devices aren’t in the same ecosystem, they don’t interact with each other.

Google Home aims to simplify that. Google’s smart home platform works with over 50,000 smart home devices from more than 10,000 brands. Whether linking your Philips Hue account to Google Home or connecting the device with Matter, this union is the first step to solving my mess of devices.

Getting my devices into a single app made my smart home easier to use. Because I don’t have to open a different app when I need to use a different brand of device, it saves time.

It’s about organizing the devices with the app. By placing the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and other devices in their respective rooms, I can control the entire house with a single tap or voice command.

This was a big win in getting the random smart home devices I had accumulated over the years into a single app. Google did a good job of organizing the app to be understandable and usable.

Putting the devices in Google Home was phase one. The next move took my home from a remote-controlled one to a smart one.

Get in a routine

Set it and forget it

While the first step in getting my smart home devices and brands to work together was setting them up in Google Home, the next step was to enhance the functionality of my light beyond turning it on or off using my phone or voice.

This functionality is achieved with automations, also known as Routines in Google Home terms. This gets your smart home device to complete a task automatically based on the conditions you set.

One popular routine is for automating lights. This is a simple one that runs differently throughout the day. For example, the lights in my living room, dining room, and kitchen turn on to 15% brightness at 5 AM, then increase in brightness to 70% by 7 AM. Then, at 9 AM, the lights turn off.

I like this one because it allows me to manage lights from Philips Hue, Govee, GE Cync, and Nanoleaf. I can operate them at the same time and under the same parameters, all set from a single app.

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Automate, organize, and entertain

I also have a Routine where I use my phone’s location as the starter. Then, when I leave my home and no one is present, the lights turn off, the doors lock, and my cameras are armed. It runs in reverse when I get home.

While the process is straightforward, there are missing options that other platforms offer, such as using sensors as triggers. However, Google is preparing easier ways to create Routines and add more functions to the platform.

Finding some solace

Taming the chaos

Source: Google Play Store, Evelyn Paris – unsplash

Smart home products and platforms are improving. Devices are becoming more affordable while gaining new functions and becoming easier to use. Platforms like Google Home are finding new ways to manage the growing number of devices on the market.

In addition to consolidating gadgets into a single app, making it easier to use products from different brands together is another area where we’re seeing improvement.

There are more tips and tricks to help with your smart home journey. Link as many products as you can to your Google Home account because starting organized is a great step towards taming your smart home and automating your smart home devices to work together.