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Give the illusion of activity in your home while you’re away and make thieves think twice about stopping by.
Chris Wedel Home Tech Editor
Chris Wedel is a fan of all things tech and gadgets. Living in rural Kansas with his wife and two young boys makes finding ways to stay online tricky — not to mention making my homestead smarter. However, by utilizing his years of experience in the tech and mobile communications industries, success is assured. When not conquering the outdoors and testing new gadgets, Chris enjoys cruising a gravel road in his UTV with some good tunes, camping, and hanging out with his family.
Expertise Smart home devices, outdoors gadgets, smartphones, wearables, kid’s tech, and some dabbling in 3D printing Credentials
- Covered the mobile and smart home tech space for the past five years for multiple large publications.
We know that smart home devices can do all sorts of things. Smart lights offer adjustable colors and brightness to set the mood, while locks help secure our doors and cameras monitor our homes for incoming deliveries and potential bad actors. But these handy gadgets can also help deter unwanted guests before they ever reach the front door.
By employing a basic smart light or smart plug, you can make it appear that you’re home when you aren’t. Even better, this setup is very affordable, as you can get started for $10 or less.
Let’s get into it so you can start securing your home.
Using a smart plug to deter thieves
Smart plugs are a quick and easy way to add not only remote control over appliances, but also automations.
Chris Wedel/CNETFrom talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated.
Smart plugs are a fantastic smart home device for beginners and enthusiasts alike. While there are many uses for smart plugs, like allowing you to control your favorite lamp remotely, one particular function is super helpful in deterring thieves — scheduling.
The ability to schedule a light to power on and off automatically creates the illusion of somebody being home. But for the best effect, you’d want the light, or even better, lights, to power on and off randomly over a specified period of time to imply there is activity happening inside. Some smart plugs, like the Kasa Smart Plug Ultra Mini, offer a feature called Away Mode to handle this for you.
Away Mode for Kasa smart plugs with randomly power on and and off whatever is plugged into it during the set timeframe.
Chris Wedel/CNETAway Mode allows you to set a start and end time for the smart plug’s operation. Then, the plug will automatically switch on and off during the specified timeframe and days you’ve selected for it to run.
These randomized activities aim to simulate people being home, turning lights on and off going from room to room, making it much less appealing to potential thieves.
From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated.
Using the rest of your smart home to deter thieves
Amazon Echo devices are available in many styles, but all can be great home assistants.
Chris Wedel/CNETAs a smart plug can control a non-smart lamp to create an illusion of people being home, going directly to a smart light bulb is another option for deterring thieves.
Using a smart light allows you to use any lighting fixture in your home rather than only the ones that plug into an outlet. The options for scheduling a smart light are like a smart plug, but again, a random schedule is the best option here.
Some smart lighting brands including Philips Hue offer a pre-built automation that will handle most of the work for you, much like the Kasa smart plug. But others require more effort on your part to manually create the routine as you choose.
Smart home devices have grown in availability while becoming more affordable and easier to use.
Chris Wedel/CNETAnother route you can take to simulate active home lighting while you’re away is with with Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Each of these platforms offer ways to create custom auotmations that provide you with that random lighting to make potential thieves think twice.
Getting started with a smart home can be daunting, but there are three easy steps you can take to dive in. Once you get a few devices and auomations under your belt, you’ll be on the path to a home full of convenience and with this sly trick, one that’s more secure.
