iHome is making it a bit more affordable to connect outdoor appliances to your network and smartphone. It released an outdoor smart plug today (meaning it’s water resistant) that works with most of the big smart home systems: Wink, Nest, Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and Apple’s HomeKit. That means you’ll be able to connect it to a Google Home or to an iPhone pretty easily, set it on timers or routines with other gadgets in your house, and control the outlet by voice.
The smart plug — called the iSP100 — sells for $39.99. That’s half the price of iDevices’ outdoor smart plug, although it also has half as many outlets. iDevices’ product includes two outlets, whereas iHome’s plug only includes one. Still, it’s a nice option to have available, especially since you might not have a ton of things to plug in outside that really need to be on a schedule. It sounds like this could be useful for outdoor lighting or setting up some kind of makeshift sprinkler system.
In addition to the outdoor plug, iHome also announced a motion sensor, leak sensor, and a door/window opening sensor that all connect to Wi-Fi. Those sensors don’t work with the array of smart home systems listed above, though — you’re stuck managing them through the iHome app, so they may not be the best investment. Last I checked, iHome’s app is very bad, even if its devices work well enough.
The smart plug — called the iSP100 — sells for $39.99. That’s half the price of iDevices’ outdoor smart plug, although it also has half as many outlets. iDevices’ product includes two outlets, whereas iHome’s plug only includes one. Still, it’s a nice option to have available, especially since you might not have a ton of things to plug in outside that really need to be on a schedule. It sounds like this could be useful for outdoor lighting or setting up some kind of makeshift sprinkler system.
In addition to the outdoor plug, iHome also announced a motion sensor, leak sensor, and a door/window opening sensor that all connect to Wi-Fi. Those sensors don’t work with the array of smart home systems listed above, though — you’re stuck managing them through the iHome app, so they may not be the best investment. Last I checked, iHome’s app is very bad, even if its devices work well enough.