Some smart home devices are expensive and can only do a single job. Other devices can cost less than the price of a smart bulb, and yet you can use them in multiple different ways. One of the most useful smart home devices I own is a cheap smart button.
Why a smart button is more useful than it sounds
Physical controls still matter
My ultimate dream for my smart home is complete automation. Every automation should run without me having to do a thing other than go about my daily life. When I walk into a room the lights should turn on if it’s dark enough to warrant it, and when I leave the room, they should turn off again.
While it’s possible to automate a lot of things in a smart home, there are still times when I want to trigger something manually. For example, I always read in bed before I go to sleep. My smart home has no way of knowing when I decide to stop reading and want to turn the lights off; the only way to make it happen is with a manual trigger.
Voice commands are an option, but they’re far from ideal. You may not always be in a situation where you want to have to speak out loud, and there may be times when the noise in your home makes using voice commands problematic.
A smart button is a simple but effective way to trigger automations manually. Whenever you want an automation to run, you can press the button to make it happen.
They’re better than dashboards for physical control
You can put them exactly where you need them
A lot of people have wall-mounted dashboards in their homes to monitor and control their smart homes. Smart home forums are full of people sharing the impressive dashboards they’ve created that are packed with information and controls.
The problem with controlling your home using wall-mounted smart home dashboards is that they’re essentially just very expensive wall switches. You can turn your lights on and off using a wall-mounted dashboard, but only if you’re physically standing next to it. If you’re not, you need to walk over to it in order to interact.
The beauty of smart buttons is that they’re small enough to place almost anywhere. For example, when I finish reading and decide I want to turn out the lights, a smart button on the side of my bed makes it easy to do so just by reaching out. I don’t have to get out of bed or even sit up and stretch across to the nightstand; I can press the button just by moving my arm.
Smart buttons can be very cheap. Some new Matter smart buttons from IKEA, for example, cost just $6 each. It means you can place them wherever you need them, rather than having a single dashboard that’s rarely within reach when you need it.
- Connectivity
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Matter-over-Thread
- Color
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White
The IKEA BILRESA is a smart remote with two buttons that can control Matter devices or trigger automations. It’s powered by a AAA battery and comes with optional adhesive on the back for mounting to a wall or furniture.
One button can do multiple things
Automation can make them even more powerful
Having a smart button next to my bed to run my bedtime automation is really useful, but it’s only doing one job. It doesn’t feel very smart to have a smart home device that can only do one task.
The good news is that smart buttons don’t have to be limited to a single task. You can use the same button to trigger multiple automations.
Many smart buttons have different areas you can press to trigger different things. Each of those areas can also have multiple actions, such as a single click, double click, and long press, each of which can be used to trigger a different automation.
Even if you have the most basic smart button that only has a single button with a single click action, you can make it do different things using automation. You can create an automation that recreates a double-click action just by starting a very short timer on the first press and running a different set of actions if a second press is detected before that timer ends.
You can even change what the smart button does based on the circumstances. For example, the smart button by my bed will run my bedtime automation when I press it in the evening but will run my morning automation when I press it in the morning. You can also vary what the button does depending on the state of devices in your smart home, which people are at home, and more.
They’re useful for far more than lights
You can use them for almost anything
The most obvious use for a smart button is controlling lights. You can use these buttons to turn lights on and off, to change the brightness, to switch colors, or to run different scenes. Smart buttons are useful for so much more, however.
My son gets a lot of nosebleeds, and we have a smart button by his bed that sends critical alerts to our phone. If he gets a nosebleed in the night, he can alert us without having to shout through the house or run to our room dripping blood everywhere.
There’s a smart button in the kitchen that serves multiple purposes. It can be used to play an announcement on all the smart speakers in the house saying that it’s time to eat, it can send the same message just for the kids, it can start a playlist and it can trigger an announcement stating which trash collection is due this week.
I’ve found that when I’ve add a smart button to a location to do a specific job, there are often other uses that I can find for that smart button. They can be incredibly versatile.
Smart buttons give you manual control when and where you need it
Smart buttons can be so cheap that you can place them wherever you need them and use them for manual control when you really need it. They’re an ideal way to fill the gaps where true automation isn’t possible.