Want to Make Your Home Smarter?

Here Are The Best Deals For Starter Kits

So you've decided to take the plunge and turn your home into a Smart Home. Where do you start, and how do you save money? One option is to buy a kit that includes the basics that you need to get going in one handy pack. So, let's take a look at what deals are on offer for smart home starter kits.

The Philips Hue smart lighting platform is one of the most popular smart home systems available, as it offers a simple, easy-to-use way to control your lights. The best place to start is the Hue White A19 starter kit, which includes two white, dimmable A19 LED light bulbs and bridge (hub), and also works with Alexa. Available at Amazon for $69.99 (Frustration-Free Packaging). Its listed at Deaslcube for $55.99 but it looked like it wasn’t available at the time I made a query.

Once you have the system installed and are controlling your lights from your smartphone, you can start to expand it with kits like the Hue Light Recipe kit ($49.99 at Amazon), which includes an additional white dimmable bulb and a wireless remote. This kit allows you to control multiple bulbs with the remote, creating different lighting setups that can be switched in at the touch of a button. If you want to control the color of the light, things get a bit more expensive: the full-color version of the Philips Hue bulb costs $50 a pop.

Alternatively, the discontinued-but-still-supported Belkin WeMo LED Starter Kit ($50 directly from Belkin while supplies last) includes two bulbs and the controlling WeMo Link plug-in hub. These won't change colors like those full-color Hue LEDs, but like Hue, you'll be able to add less expensive, generic smart bulbs to your setup, including the Cree Connected LED, which costs $15 at Home Depot.

Whichever lighting kit you start with, once you have gotten used to turning the lights on and off remotely, it is time to start controlling other devices. It used to be the case that different smart home devices didn't talk to each other: they spoke different languages and there was no translator. Fortunately, that's continuing to change, but if you want to use a variety of devices, then you'll still probably want a master system that ties everything together.

One option that'll do exactly that is Samsung SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit (hub), a device that can speak to pretty much every smart home device out there. Samsung offers a number of kits that combine a SmartThings hub with devices that work with it. The Home Monitoring Kit, which includes the hub, a wall socket controller, motion sensor and two activity sensors, seems like a good place to start. Amazon has it for $ $223, about $26 off the usual $249 price.

Now that you have control over both your lighting and wall sockets, it's time to expand further. This is where the versatility of the SmartThings hub comes in: it can work with devices like the Honeywell Lyric Round Wifi Thermostat (on sale at Sears for $199.99 with free shipping) and the Belkin WeMo Insight switch, available at Amazon for $49.99 with Alexa support, and at Home Depot for $40-50. The latter allows you to control pretty much any device that plugs into a wall socket, so things like standing lamps and small appliances are now under your control.

From there, the world is your oyster. You can add voice control by integrating with Google Home or Alexa. This will not only reduce your bills, it will also help our environment.

Have you spotted any smart home starter kit deals? Post them in the comments and we'll feature the best ones.