Making a second home "smart"

[Wadeski]

I'm in the fortunate position of having just bought a second home (a perk of having squeezed the family into 900 sq ft of NYC for a few years). The new house has plenty of bedrooms, scenic views, a pool, and will be a great place to escape for weekends and holidays.

Being a second home, it will be unoccupied for days at at a time, leading to big variations in heating, cooling and electric requirements. This surely sounds like the perfect opportunity for some "smart" home management....but as a noob to this, its quite confusing. You have good reviews from tech sites for Google / Nest family products, but comments full of people screaming about Google removing features and misusing your data. Then you have Amazon's ecosystem built around a device that lets you shout at it to order toilet paper or play Miley Cirus songs, which are not things i have ever needed/wanted to do. Then there's the third-party stuff like Ecobee that sounds good, but like it is in permanent beta.

Can the PH hive mind give any pointers on what solution will:

- Save me money on heating / cooling / electricity
- Help prevent pipes freezing when it hits 20 below
- Get the house up or down to a habitable temp by the time we drive out there from my phone
- Do other smart stuff i didn't know i needed until i have the system

Edited by Wadeski on Monday 2nd December 04:08

[AJB88]

I would say stick to one Ecosystem as best you can, ie Apple, Google or Amazon.

I've got Google, go Nest Thermostat, Nest Hello Doorbell (yet to install properly), 2x Google Home Mini, 1x Google Home Hub and a few smart bulbs (Lifx chose these because they work with Google and also dont require a hub)

I will at some point add 2x Nest outdoor cameras to replace my ageing CCTV. These all work nicely with my Pixel phone as well.

[Baldchap]

On the security front, we have a little place overseas that I fitted some Arlo cameras to, inside and out. The good thing is, they can be solar powered if outside, so no need to run any cables etc. The internal ones are plugged into the mains.

They're set to push notifications to my Pixel only when they detect movement and record to the cloud automatically. I can talk through them to anyone in the house or just view the outside weather in real time, whilst I freeze in the UK.

[nyt]

I have several NEST units around my home and garage to ensure that no part falls below 5C when it's empty during January and February. They all talk to the same control unit and turn on heating for the whole house if any part gets too cold. Not ideal, but the heating only comes on once or twice during January. It works well.

I'm not sure that the NEST will monitor down to -20C though, you'd have to check.

[AJB88]

Think Nest auto kicks in below 5 to prevent pipes freezing or thats the default.

[anonymous-user]

Most modern boilers will have an antifreeze mode where they'll keep the pipes above freezing regardless.

I use Hive for my remote heating. Phone app etc. Works brilliantly.

I use Amazon echos to control it, along with all my lighting and AV kit. Samsung Smarthings does nearly all the legwork in the background with Amazon being the voice controller to it.

I would not use Smarthings for any kind of security though. It is not sturdy enough.