Stone homes tend to be old homes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have “smart home” upgrades. My husband is our family’s chief technical officer and has been finding creative ways to smarten up our old stone beauty to bring in some modern conveniences. He has toyed with these smart plugs which controlled our timed Christmas lights (set it and forget it!) as well as our pool cover pump that self-activates when rain is in the forecast. Yes, the pump turns itself on when it rains! This still amazes me. We also use an outdoor smart plug that is temperature activated and automatically turns on our new chicken water heater when the temp drops below freezing. Oh happy day when I don’t have to go out to plug the heater in when it is freezing cold outside!
Our latest foray into the smart home world is this Key Smart Lock Kit by Schlage. Sadly Philadelphia, like other big cities, suffers from its fair share of package theft. Imagine a world where you can remotely let the Amazon delivery person in your house to place your package securely inside, and then lock the door behind them! You can change the access codes as often as needed without having to change the locks. This one is going to be a game changer for sure.
My hubby-CTO links all these doo-hickies up with our Amazon Alexa and controls it all with a free app called If This Then That (IFTTT). It’s all slightly above my pay-grade but he has offered to consult with my readers for free - so hit us up in the comments!
