Our wonderful Managing Director Phil Houlder has shared his tried and tested gadgets and smart devices that he has been enjoying recently and has found really useful.
I can honestly say that it drove me wild all that time spent at home during the lockdown. However, it did give me a chance to get all of those outstanding DIY jobs completed and alongside the DIY jobs, I also got to do a few things I wanted to do.
As some of you may know, I love my gadgets and smart devices and over the past years I have spent lots of hours playing with them. I’ve also wasted quite a bit of cash (don’t tell Cat, my Mrs).
Often I find they work well for the first few weeks then either stop working all together or give me lots of headaches and I end up removing them.
Anyway, I thought I would share my personal top 5 that have worked really well and to be honest, one of them I would be totally lost without. So, here they are:
Nest Thermostat
Works from an app on my phone and allows me to have full control of my heating at home, this does need wiring into your boiler and connects to the internet via wifi.
Super useful when you’re in bed!
Nest Camera
Connected via wifi and does need plugging into the mains electric. I have mine in my garden pointing directly at my patio doors and I have set it up so that I get notifications on my phone when anyone comes into view.
It’s connected to the same app as the thermostat, great bit of kit.
Ring Doorbell
Probably my second favourite out of all of these. You can buy two options, wired to the mains or battery operated.
It comes with a plug in bell in the box as well so it’s much easier when you’re at home to know someone is at the door.
This connects to your internet and notifies you via an app on your phone if anyone presses the bell or comes into the range of the camera.
It means you can talk to and see whoever is at the door when you are either not at home, or just plain lazy like me sometimes and can’t be bothered to go to the door.
Duracell Garden Lights
One thing I have always found a problem is making my garden lights waterproof. It’s possible to do but the cost to achieve this always puts our customers off.
These lights are bloody awesome, they are literally plug and play.
These lights are fitted with a photocell, some come on when it gets dark so there’s no need for a timer. I got mine from Toolstation and all you need is an outdoor socket.
Wifi Mesh System
By far the best thing I have ever installed at home, this basically pushes my wifi to every room in my house and even the bottom of my garden.
It needs plugging into the mains and needs ethernet cables installed to a couple of points in your house from your modem.
I’ve struggled for years and spent a lot of cash on various crap boosters and wasted a shed load of time trying to achieve what this does. Seriously, if you want to know more about this call me.
I installed it just before lockdown and would have been screwed without this bit of kit. The security features that let you control what your kids are up to on the internet are brilliant. I was amazed at how far you can go.
My youngest son Louie isn’t too keen though, he wasn’t helping out around the house much and would just sneak off into his bedroom onto his PlayStation. That was until I found out that this allows you to pause the internet on his devices while everyone else can keep using it haha…
There you have it, those are Phil’s top gadgets at the moment, go and check them out! If you have any questions about electricals and the right gadgets for your home, just get in touch with us today.
