The spookiest holiday of the year is rapidly looming, so what are you doing to get your Halloween home decor ready?
If you’re expecting the usual onslaught of trick-or-treaters, why not get ready to have some fun yourself
this year?
Blast some spooky sounds from a weatherproofed speaker hidden in the bushes or take full advantage of smart lighting this year. Whatever your chosen devices, you have plenty of options for spooky effects for your Halloween home decor with smart home tech. Why not get things started with some highly effective outdoor lighting?
Smart Outdoor Landscape Lighting
Sylvania’s Lightify lines come in a number of variants with this outdoor landscape lighting and these lights are a superb way to inject a spooky air into your garden.
You’ll get 9 RGB lights that you can either mount or pop in the ground. You can string these out over a distance of 14 feet, but what about control?
You need a Zigbee hub to get the most from this landscape lighting. There is an Osram Lightify hub available, although you won’t need this if you have a Zigbee gateway. Compatible with Echo Plus, SmartThings or Wink, you’re spoiled for choice.
A hub is needed if you’re looking to control your Halloween lights with voice commands. While Alexa and Google Assistant are supported, you’ll need that gateway. Echo Plus is the exception since that comes with a de facto Zigbee hub baked in.
If the base configuration doesn’t give you quite enough scope, you can extend this kit.
For a nice and subtle way to add a spooky atmosphere into your Halloween home decor, this colored smart landscape lighting is a must. Tweak those colors and get your garden ready for some fun.
Smart Sound Effects
If you have a smart speaker in the house, you’ll be able to build out spooky playlists with the help of your virtual butler.
In the lead-up to the holiday season, you can kick start a Halloween countdown timer to keep the kids on their toes.
What if your kids have friends coming over for the evening? Why not rack up another free Alexa skill that will add to your Halloween home decor, Spooky Scream. Fire up this skill then set a delay before a blood-curdling scream kicks in.
While there are plenty of other scary Alexa skills for this time of year, the inbuilt kicker of investing in an
Echo device or Google Home smart speaker is that you’ll reap huge usage out of it year-round.
Our recommendation in a crowded vertical is the Amazon Echo Plus. Not only does Alexa have a suite of scary skills, but you’ll also get a Zigbee hub onboard. This means you’ll be able to get all compatible smart tech signing in harmony with no third-party gateway needed. However ambitious your home automation plans, an Echo Plus makes a superb addition to your Halloween home decor.
Portable Smart Lighting
Much like an Alexa-enabled Echo device, portable smart lighting is a powerful choice for the Halloween season. The Hue Go from the mighty Philips Stable gives you up to three hours of use on a single charge.
As with all Hue lighting, you’ll be able to choose from a staggering 16 million colors and 50,000 shades of white. In a neat touch, you’ll be able to manipulate these settings from a physical switch on the
device. This allows you to benefit from full functionality without needing to invest in a bridge.
You can pick up the Hue Hub separately so you can really ramp things up and take charge from a distance. This gateway also allows you to build out a Philips Hue ecosystem where you have all your lighting and much, much more singing in harmony. As long as you have a smart speaker in place, you’ll be able to control your portable light with voice commands, too.
Imagination is your only limitation with this compact, but a powerful color-changing device. Whether you want to pop it inside a pumpkin or hide it in your kids’ room to play a trick on them, the Hue Go is a consistent favorite that frequently sells out completely. Make sure to get it quickly in time for this year’s Halloween home decor!
Smart Bulbs For Indoor Lighting
While there’s no beating spotlights and landscape lighting for some laser-focused Halloween effects, you can alter the vibe across the whole house with smart bulbs.
Smart switches are all good and well, but they’re pretty costly to install in some cases. Switches are not too renter-friendly, either. Why not roll with the plug-and-play simplicity of a Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance Starter Kit for this year’s Halloween home decor?
Philips has a vast array of starter kits, so it’s well worth doubling down to get the precise configuration you want. This iteration comes with 4 bulbs and the Hue Hub you’ll need for more ambitious automation. If you want voice control, just add in a smart speaker.
Once you’re set-up, creating scenes is a cinch. Switch the colors up and set spooky lighting throughout the house for any Halloween party. Thanks to the picture-light algorithm baked in, you can project your favorite spooky images onto the walls in-app.
Whether you want to use the nimble Hue app or your voice, smart bulbs are a great way to introduce some fun and color into proceedings throughout the scary season.
If you want to take a look at some of the competition that Philips Hue is now facing in the smart light space, go here.
Waterproof Outdoor Speaker
Do you get a steady stream of trick-or-treaters ringing your bell throughout the night? If so, why not give them a taste of their own medicine with Halloween home decor that will give them a fright? What about a concealed speaker outdoors that’s ready to blast out some sounds at any given moment?
The JBL Flip 4 connects to your smartphone or tablet wirelessly and you can hit back at those visitors and send them scurrying next door!
12 hours of playback on a single charge is enough to keep you going all through the evening. Rated IPX7 waterproof, you can pop this Bluetooth beauty outside without any concerns about the weather.
While there are certainly cheaper options if you’re only interested in Halloween sound effects, invest in the JBL and you’ll get a versatile speaker that you can enjoy for much more than a bit of Halloween fun.
The soundscape is crisp and clear even at a higher volume. Its weatherproof nature means you can take it to the beach, camping, or anywhere you’d like some music on the go.
Tuck this little speaker in the bush by the front door and watch as you hit back at the trick or treaters aiming to give you a fright!
On/Off Outdoor Module
Invest in an Insteon On/Off Outdoor Module and you’ll be free to control regular decorative
lighting from your smartphone or using voice commands.
Whatever string of scary lights you have, just plug them into this completely weatherproofed module and you’ll instantly smarten them up.
You can take care of basic scheduling in-app so your lights come on as soon as the sun goes down. If you build out your lighting with a motion sensor, you can get your Halloween decorations coming on whenever any movement is detected.
If you have younger kids and you’re looking to introduce them to smart tech, Halloween is the perfect time to do that. Assuming you have the Hub Central Controller in place alongside an Echo device or Google Home, you can teach your children how to use voice control to activate the lighting. If you prefer Siri to Alexa or Assistant, you’ll need a HomeKit-enabled hub along with HomePod.
Stay Safe With a Video Doorbell
While most visitors on fright night are looking for no more than a few candy bars, this occasion is also used by those looking to get up to no good.
A smart video doorbell is a surefire way to stay completely abreast of what’s going on at the entryway to your home without leaving your seat.
Security specialist Ring has a stranglehold on the video doorbell vertical. Our recommended option is Video Doorbell Pro. This comes in at half the cost of the pro-grade Elite while packing much of the same functionality.
The ability to customize motion detection zones comes in particularly handy at Halloween. If you want to avoid any unnecessary triggers, just switch things up on the 31st to take account of the unusual activity that night.
The footage is recorded in 1080p HD, so if someone does try to get up to no good, you’ll have the recording as evidence.
Hopefully, though, investing in Video Doorbell Pro will just make your life easier this Halloween. You can see who’s at the door without getting up off the couch and you can keep a close eye on the revelers remotely.
Final Word
Well, you should be spoiled for choice with spooky Halloween home decor options now. Whether you want some unusual lighting effects or some scary sounds, you have plenty of options indoors and out in the yard.
Bookmark our blog for the latest smart home news Monday to Friday and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter, too. If you’re tempted by any of these Halloween ideas, we’ll give you 20% off your
first order at Smarthome. What are you waiting for?
The post Smart Halloween Home Decor That Will Spook Everyone appeared first on Smarthome Blog.
Source: All Things Home Automation