There’s plenty to say about how a smart home can make day-to-day tasks easier, but some devices can have positive health effects too. By automating these devices, you can reap the benefits without having to remember or manually trigger a thing.
Though I’m a big fan of Home Assistant, most of these devices should work with any smart home ecosystem.
Air quality monitors
Understand what you can’t see
Air quality monitors range from cheap devices like the IKEA Alpstuga, which measures CO2 levels and particulate matter (PM2.5) in addition to temperature and humidity, through to professional-grade sensors like Project Aura, an ESP32-powered monitor that you can build yourself.
These devices give you information about the air around you that you cannot see. You can glance at them to see if it’s time to ventilate the space, or automate alerts to do so when you hit certain thresholds. You can also automate other devices to purify the air for you.
Air purifiers
Set ‘em and forget ‘em
When paired with an air quality monitor, a connected air purifier can clean the air for you any time it detects concerning levels of volatile
organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter, and whatever else your air quality monitor might detect.
Models like the Xiaomi Mi Air Purifier 4 Compact offer smart control and compatibility with Home Assistant for around $120, while the SwitchBot Air Purifier ($90) even has Matter support. Alternatively, you could find a “dumb” air purifier model that doesn’t require additional button presses to activate and pair it with a smart plug.
Dehumidifiers (and a smart plug)
Keep mold at bay
Paired with an air quality monitor (or a simple temperature and humidity sensor), you can use the humidity in the environment to trigger a dehumidifier or HVAC in dry mode. Finding a smart dehumidifier is a bit of a tall ask, but basic models will do as long as they can be triggered with a smart plug (and require no button presses to do so).
Cutting down on excess humidity is important if you live in an environment that’s prone to mold growth (plus it can save you money on your heating bill). Mold spores can be incredibly harmful, but mold only grows when the conditions are right. You can use a Home Assistant helper to predict when mold will grow and use that as a trigger.
Robot vacuums
Perfect for anyone sensitive to dust
Most people buy robot vacuums because they like the idea of having a helper around the house. That’s fair enough, but if you suffer from respiratory issues like asthma, they play a different role in your smart home. By having a robot vacuum cleaning up regularly, you help cut down on the dust that causes breathing issues to flare up.
This is especially true if you have carpets and rugs in your home. You can literally set and forget a cleaning schedule that has your robot clean once or twice a day, focusing on problem areas, and many of them are quiet enough that they can do most of the house at night while you sleep.
Smart (or fancy) electric kettles and cooktops
Your gas cooktop is polluting your home
I’ve only lived in countries that have a 220V or greater power supply, where the electric kettle reigns supreme. Even so, my predilection for pourover coffee has me boiling water in a gooseneck kettle on the stove (because I was feeling cheap when I bought it and didn’t fancy springing twice the price for an electric model).
If this sounds like you, using a small controlled fire in your kitchen to boil water for tea and coffee, you should take a look at your air quality monitor shortly after you’ve done so. Switching to an electric kettle instead of using gas means not polluting your atmosphere several times a day.
Smart kettles now exist that have all sorts of features like variable heat settings and the ability to hold a temperature. They might not be connected (though some, like the $200 Fellow Stagg EKG Electric Kettle are for firmware purposes only at the moment), but just eliminating the byproducts of gas combustion feels “smart” enough to warrant the upgrade.
Alternatively, you can remove gas from the equation entirely by switching to an induction cooktop.
Smart lights and blinds in the bedroom
Wake naturally with the sun (or emulate it)
Ben Lovejoy / How-To Geek
Not getting enough sleep is terrible for your health, and much of the time, a poor sleep schedule is to blame. A lot of this stems from not getting up at a consistent time, throwing out your circadian rhythm, and making it harder to fall asleep at night because you slept in way too long.
While you could just set an alarm and struggle through, using light to wake up naturally by stimulating cortisol levels can promote better alertness. One way you can do this is by having smart blinds slowly open in the morning or by using smart lights to get the same effect in the winter.
Medication reminders and management
Remembering is half the battle
Home Assistant users in particular can benefit from this one. Did you know you can use actionable notifications with Home Assistant to remember to do important things, like take medicine? But that’s not the only way the platform can help you remember in this way.
Sometimes, you might remember to take your medicine only to forget afterwards that you’ve already done it. You can add an NFC tag to your pill bottle, which you scan whenever you take your medicine. You can then build a simple tracker in Home Assistant to figure out if you’ve taken your medicine or not.
Another solution is adding a tilt or vibration sensor to the container, which will trigger an event any time you pick up the bottle.
Thankfully, a smart home doesn’t have to be strictly practical. Check out some of the more fun things you can do with connected devices.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
