Smart Home 2026: Smart Light Switches and Automations ⭐

In Smart Home-ish in 2026 ⭐, I wrote about the first steps I took to upgrade our condo in Pennsylvania with some basic smart home capabilities. This involved taking stock of what we had, basically several Sonos speakers and some Hue smart lights, and updating and organizing everything in Apple Home and Google Home, and then getting a few new smart home gadgets like two more Hue lights for the porch and garage and four smart plugs for the indoors.

It’s been a while, and though the basics are the same, Apple Home and Google Home have both benefitted from some long-needed smart home standardization, most obviously via the Matter protocol. (With the caveat that the owners of each smart home ecosystem still keep key products sealed off from rivals. For example, our Apple HomePod speakers are unreachable outside of Apple Home. And our Blink cameras only work with Amazon.)

But smart home tech is still complicated and unreliable, especially when you move beyond the basics. I’ve experienced this problem repeatedly in the past month, and pretty much across the board with the products mentioned above and, most recently, with a few new products and other changes. This reminded me of why I scaled back my smart home ambitions when we had the big house. And that more sophisticated smart home setups may never be simple enough for mainstream users.

I will elaborate.
? First tests automating the lights
In late November and early December, I bought a set of four Matter-compatible smart plugs and two Philips Hue Essential smart LED A19 smart light bulbs so that I could automate the outside and interior lighting, respectively, when we’re away. This is useful because we’re often gone for months at a time and the lighting will help give the appearance of someone being home.

I don’t really need all four lights to come on inside the place, but it was a set, and so I plugged each into a receptacle and configured each plug in the Apple Home and Google Home apps. Three are in the living room and attached to (dumb) lamps. And the fourth is in the kitchen, though I had it attached to the Christmas tree lights over the holidays.

I had to pull out a ladder to install the outside lights, but there are just two of them, one over the front door and one over the garage, and both are controlled via the same light switch just inside the front door. So that was easy enough, as was adding them to Apple and Google.

That was the end of the simplicity. Everything I’ve done since, or tried to do, has been a struggle.
? The basics
When we’re in PA, we don’t (and won’t) use the smart plugs. Instead, we just use the lamps normally. When we’re away, I basically just need to make sure the (dumb) lamps are each turned on. Then, I can control them using either Home app manually, and turning each on and off that way is obvious enough, if tedious. Obviously, some automation is required.

Ditto for the outdoor lights. The on/off switch inside the front door is...