$250 Prime day 2024 Smart Home for Renters!
Today’s Post is all about the great Primeday deals for 2024 going on from now until 7/17 (so if the prices change it’s because the sales come and gone), and for a fun twist I decided to put together a smart home setup that is renter and budget friendly based around products that can be found for Primeday. Full disclosure, any links listed are Affiliate links from Amazon but the great thing is it comes at absolutely no cost to you while providing a small commission to me for just using my link. now to the setup!
This one was a doozie, but the key goals for this list are: Items that provide a big quality of life benefit for it’s price, don’t cost an arm and a leg, have versatile use cases and can easily be removed with no damage or major modifications needed.
First we start with the Ring Video Doorbell, the ‘OG’ of the smart home doorbell if you will. It’s a long proven product that’s great for it’s basic functionality, downsides being the subscription service, but for getting notifications and live viewing with a built in battery to boot, pretty hard to beat at it’s current Primeday price of $50.
Next up we have the TP-Link Kasa smart RGB A19 light bulbs in a 4 pack ($20). Great for the versatility these offer, you can place them in key fixtures like a lamp, or possibly utilize all to control the lighting in a particular room by replacing your normal bulbs with these. As another bonus, you can leverage the RGB features for things like visual notifications (if the door is unlocked, make x light red). The great thing is that pretty much anywhere you can use a normal light bulb you should be able to use these! (just don’t place these bulbs on a light switch/fan that can dim your original dumb bulbs).
Another item from the TP-Link Kasa lineup is their 4 pack of smart plugs with energy monitoring ($33) as an added bonus between the basic functionality of being able to turn a device on or off that is directly plugged into any of these, you can also create some great automations with free third party applications like Home Assistant to take advantage of the energy monitoring features (such as if you’re washing machine is below 10w for 5 minutes, send an announcement that the clothes are done washing!). These are great for resetting that annoying device that periodically needs to be rebooted on a regular basis, controlling how long something is on, making sure your kids aren’t having a midnight movie marathon, or ensuring something is off be it after a set amount of time or when you’re not home just to name a few potential use cases. They’re versatile, and work with the big three platforms (Apple Homekit, Google Home, and Alexa) so overall hard to beat for the price!
Finally, we have a smart lock from the folks over at SwitchBot which is their Smart Lock Pro and keypad combo ($140). This WiFi lock installs over your current deadbolt and requires no new lock or key to utilize. the included keypad allows for various access methods for you or your guests (codes, fingerprints, remote access, or your traditional key, etc..). It’s a bit on the bulky side, but for the price and the versatile feature set, it’s a hard bargain to beat considering the closest alternatives would have no smart features and require you to get approval to have a lock installed at your rental location.
So for a bit less than $250, you have a pretty great foundation for a smart home to start off with that is easily removeable and expandable whether you decide to continue to rent at a new location, or move on to a space of your own where you call the shots and want to take your smart home to the next level!