5 Handy Ways To Use Smart Buttons Around The House

Whether you're setting up a smart home for the first time or looking for ways to improve on the setup you already have, strategically placing smart buttons around your home can help make your life easier. Smart buttons are one of those underrated smart home accessories that may not be on your radar but are worth trying out. If you already have smart devices spread out around your home, you may be used to controlling them with a smart display or opening up an app on your phone to turn them off and on. If you've set up a few automations, you may not even need to interact with these devices all that often.

Smart buttons offer a convenient middle ground between full automation and manual control. They give you instant tactile control over your devices without having to open an app or use voice commands. With the push of a smart button, you can quickly turn lights on or off, adjust the thermostat, play music, or activate a preset scene — making your everyday tasks easier.

A few strategically placed smart buttons throughout your home will allow you to set the mood with custom lighting scenes. For example, you can install a smart button near your front door and set it to run a "welcome home scene" with a single press to turn on specific lights to create a warm environment that makes you feel at home. 

We all know the importance of good sleep hygiene. That's why many of us limit our phone usage before bed and set up a sleep schedule on our Apple Watch to help us wind down in the evening. A smart button next to our beds can complement these routines by allowing us to adjust our bedroom lighting for activities like reading without having to use an app on our smartphone or voice commands.

As one of the top-ranked major smart lighting brands, if you have smart lighting in your home, you might be using Philips Hue bulbs. These smart bulbs can be used with the Philips Hue Smart Button, which retails for $29.99 on Amazon, to set a scene for a certain time of day or cycle through multiple pre-programmed scenes with each press. With a long press, you can dim the lights it's set up to control. 

Many of us struggle with getting up in the morning and are constantly on the lookout for ways to make our morning routines easier. While a smart button won't get you out of bed, it can help you get off on the right foot in the morning. You can program a smart button to run a morning routine to open your electric blinds, turn on the lights if it's still dark outside, and start your coffee maker. Depending on where you live and the weather, you can also set up your smart button to open your windows or adjust the thermostat to your preferred temperature in the morning.

"If you commute to the office, you probably check the weather first thing in the morning. You can use your smart buttons to trigger voice assistants like Amazon Echo to provide you with weather updates, read your schedule, or play your favorite morning playlist. While you could use a scheduled automation routine to set these things to happen at the same time each day, smart buttons give you more control and flexibility, allowing you to sleep in and wake up when you want.

We all want to keep our homes secure, and smart buttons can help us do just that. You can place smart buttons around your home that can act as panic buttons or emergency triggers if something goes wrong. Smart buttons can be programmed to turn your home alarm on and off or activate and deactivate your home's security cameras. Smart buttons placed in your bedroom, garage, or near the front door allow you to disarm your home's security system quickly. As part of a nighttime routine, you can use the smart button to lock your doors and arm your security system. 

Smart buttons like Fibaro The Button integrate several features to make your home a safer place. You can program the button to perform up to six different actions. When in panic mode, the smart button's emergency scene is triggered, activating a predefined emergency response, helping you and other members of your household get assistance in critical situations. The Flic 2 smart button works in a similar way and can be used with home security systems or to send your location via SMS to your designated contacts in case of an emergency.

Just like you have a morning and bedtime routine, you likely have a routine you use when it's time to relax on your couch in front of the TV after a long day. A smart button placed next to your sofa (or wherever is most convenient for you) can make it easy to initiate an evening entertainment routine. All you have to do is press the button to dim the lights, lower the blinds, turn on the TV and start your favorite streaming service — all without looking around for the remote or dealing with apps. 

You can do this because smart buttons work with popular smart home devices, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. These devices allow you to create routines for your smart button that trigger multiple actions at once. Most smart buttons support multiple input types, including single press, double press, and hold, which allows you to assign different functions for each action. That means you can set a single press to trigger your movie night routine, activating your favorite streaming service, while a double press could be used to start a music session.

In the same way that you use smart buttons to do things like turn on your TV or dim your lights at night, you can use them to help you with chores around your house. You can pair a smart button with a robot vacuum or mop to start a cleaning cycle by pressing the button instead of having to go into an app or use voice commands to operate these devices. If your washing machine and dryer are connected to smart plugs, you can use a smart button to turn them on when you're ready to do a load of laundry.

If you can use a voice assistant or smartphone app to control a household appliance, chances are it will work well with a smart button as well. For example, if your dishwasher is connected to your smart home system, you can use a smart button to start it. The same goes for brewing a cup of coffee or preheating your oven. You can place a smart button in your garage or another location to activate a robotic lawn mower. In order to use your household appliances with smart buttons, they'll have to have built-in smart capabilities or be compatible with smart plugs.