Cheap Smart Home Tech and Where to Start on a Budget

When people think of smart home tech, they usually imagine an expensive luxurious home with equipment and appliances worth in the thousands. However, this is not always the case. Here are a few tips on how to get started with a smart home on a budget with this smart home guide on cheap smart home tech and where to start on a budget.

Every one of us dreams of living in a luxurious space filled with the latest smart home technology that does everything for you. While fully automated homes are already here to an extent, at often times looking at the starting price point of the appliances and devices needed might throw you off from making your home more automized. Nevertheless, being a smart home enthusiast can be done on the cheap without a lot of monthly investments and you can still show off what your home can do to your friends and family while making your life easier and secure and saving a few bucks off of your electricity and water bills. We already have a few helpful guides, if you are new to smart home tech, and you can always get our free eBook that will help you start out. However, we also decided to tackle the issues of not having that much money to spend on home automation technology in your pocket. With that in mind, here’s The BYSH smart Home Guide on cheap smart home tech and where to start on a budget.

Get Your Imagination in Order and Start Buying

The first thing you should do, when thinking about upgrading your home is to set your limits straight. To get your imagination in order, first you have to familiarize yourself with what the current technology on the market can offer and whether or not to start doing your own smart home solutions. Nevertheless, know that if you are not already quite familiar with how technology works, then going DIY might end up costing you too much time and effort. What’s more, even the cheapest smart home DIY boards do cost a few bucks, so at the end of the day, you might want to go for devices that are already on the market. In our eBook and our previous guides, we’ve tackled some of these issues, but now it’s time to directly talk about the technology that is already on the market and how to go about upgrading your home on a tight budget.

Step 1: Get the Amazon Dot (Echo) or Google Home

Being a smart home enthusiast, you’ll find out that some of the most exciting devices are actually quite affordable. While you might be considering to first purchase a cheap smart home device, such as an LED bulb or a smart plug, the truth is, you have to save up some money and purchase the Amazon Echo or the Google Home smart speaker. While the Amazon Echo is quite better, if you are searching for a more affordable option, the Amazon Dot actually manages to do everything the Echo does, at a lower price. Nevertheless, if Google is more your speed, get a Google Home speaker.

Having a smart home speaker might not help you out with efficiency, security or energy savings, but it is nonetheless essential in building your smart home setup. With a smart home speaker, you will be able to easily start familiarizing yourself with how to work with IFTTT and having a powerful voice-recognition assistant that you can shout commands to is definitely a fun and exciting experience. What’s more, if you are working professional and using different applications for organizing and keeping track of your schedule, with a smart home speaker you will be able to interact with those applications via voice commands. While at first, a smart home speaker might not seem that useful, chances are you will end up loving it. Furthermore, these speakers also serve their purpose for playing music, so even if voice recognition doesn’t entice you, you will still have a cool wireless speaker.

Step 2: Get LED Light Bulbs

Another exciting piece of cheap smart home tech that will definitely get you excited about home automation is LED lighting. While Phillips Hue are the current running champions of smart home lighting, if you don’t have the money, you can go for a more affordable option. There are dozens of different variations of the LED bulb technology that are relatively similar to the Philips Hue. Some of them are controlled via your smartphone, others have Amazon Alexa integration. However, at the end of the day, a controllable LED light bulb with different colors will definitely make your living room a tiny bit better. Also, if you are on a budget, don’t go for changing all of the lighting in your home to smart LED lighting. Simply change one or two bulbs in the rooms that you most often use, such as the living room and the bedroom.

Step 3: Check out Different Cheap Smart Home Devices and Buy What you Like

You might end up being surprised, but the fact of the matter is, most smart home devices that will help you with home automation aren’t that expensive. Of course, the biggest appliances will cost you more and to make your whole home automated is definitely a feat that will empty your wallet. However, if you are starting out, you can get a pretty decent set up by only spending less than fifty dollars per month. For example, a smart home plug is a relatively cheap smart home device that you can easily afford.

Consider What Will make you Excited about Home Automation on a Budget

Making your home smarter is not something that you can easily achieve, unless you have passion about smart home technology. At its current state, most devices do require time to set up and as a whole getting used to a more automated environment is not that easy. However, if you slowly start purchasing a few cheap smart home devices every now and then and keep track of what makes you excited about home automation on a budget, you will end up being a true smart home enthusiasts within just a few months.

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