5 Amazon Gadgets Perfect for Your Smart Home DIY Project

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It’s getting easier, not to mention cheaper, to build a smart home as prices drop and availability increases. To add smart home equipment to your living space, such as smart thermostats, doorbell cameras, indoor/outdoor security cameras, smart locks, and motion sensors, you’ll want to start with a solid foundation so you don’t have to run back to the store during installation. Of course, Amazon not only sells a ton of smart home products from its own brands, as well as its competitors, but it also sells a lot of gadgets that you’ll find useful in your DIY smart home project.

What good is a smart home network without an access point, like a smart home hub? And why replace all your lighting with smart lights when you can easily extend your antiques to the digital realm with a smart plug or two? With all that said, you’ll need some gadgets on hand to help with installations such as adding a smart thermostat or video doorbell to your home.

So after a lot of digging, we’ve compiled a list of five Amazon gadgets that will surely help you get your DIY smart home project off the ground. Whether you’re just getting started building your smart home or want to take on more challenging projects like wiring a smart thermostat, here are some handy gadgets that will make things a lot easier.

Installing a smart camera is a great DIY project to start with, especially if you choose a battery-powered model that can be easily installed anywhere without a power source (which can make installation difficult). One of the better options in this battery-powered category is Google’s Nest Cam (Battery), which costs $179.99. While that price may seem a bit high compared to the cheaper smart cameras on the market, the Nest Cam (Battery) is weatherproof, packs a large 6,000mAh battery that lasts three months on a single charge, and features a smooth magnetic mount that makes it easy to mount the camera at almost any angle, not to mention remove it when you need a recharge.

If you plan to use an Alexa smart hub in your home, like the Echo Hub, or prefer to stay within the Google ecosystem with devices like the Nest Hub Max, the choice is yours; Nest Cam (Battery) supports both ecosystems. This also means you can use the Alexa or Google Home app to view the camera feed. Best of all, features like detection are free from Google, useful if you want to get alerts when visitors arrive, whether they’re people, animals, or a car. You also get free video storage with the purchase, which costs three hours, which is a nice touch when video storage is often sold by subscription. Of course, Google offers an optional subscription, Google Home Premium (formerly Nest Aware), which gives users additional features such as facial recognition and expanded video storage, with plans starting at $10 per month.

At the end of the day, adding a Nest Cam (Battery) to your home is about as easy as it gets to install a smart camera, making this a DIY smart home project that anyone can handle.

Did you want to remotely control, via an Internet connection, the power of a light or fan, or set a timer for a coffee pot or a slow cooker? However, instead of replacing your old appliances with new smart home appliances, you can easily add smart plugs to your outlets to achieve the same functionality of remote shut-off. In particular, TP-Link’s Kasa brand offers plugs that don’t need a smart hub to work, and support popular platforms like Google Home, Echo, and Alexa. Specifically, a two-pack of Kasa Smart Plug Ultra Mini 15A will run you $16.99. While Amazon’s similar two-pack Smart Plug, which only works with Alexa, is more than double the price at $49.98. That’s a tidy savings and then some, especially if you plan to pick up smart plugs for the whole house.

Beyond the exceptional value, Kasa’s Smart Plug Ultra Mini offers scheduling, timer, absence mode (like when you’re on vacation), and group control with the supported Kasa Smart app. While you can control these smart plugs through a hub, like the Echo, it’s not necessary as the app offers full control. On top of all that, user reviews on Amazon are excellent, with a 78% 5-star rating out of 17,000+ customer reviews. Ultimately, the Kasa Smart Plug Ultra Mini is a top choice due to its affordability and affordability, the perfect gadget for your next smart home DIY project.

If you’ve already experimented with smart plugs, consider setting up a hub so the whole family can control the smart home without having to pick up their phone. Although there are many smart hubs that you can choose for that task with the products on this list, choosing the right one to use as a central hub can be a challenge when the market has many products to choose from, especially if Amazon participates in this confusion with its many Echo products, including five different Echo Show devices with screens, and that lasts a long time for the product (with 15 models on the market so far, many of them still exist).

To keep things simple, the Amazon Echo Hub is the obvious choice for a dedicated smart home hub. The clue is in the name: unlike the Echo Show products designed for video calls and media playback, the Echo Hub is designed first and foremost to control your smart home from a central location, small enough to mount on a wall. Another reason why the Amazon Echo Hub stands out is that it is one of the most affordable options in the 8-10-inch smart hub screen category that supports Matter, Zigbee, and Alexa, central control and simplification with a screen size that the whole family can easily communicate with, young and old. Available for $179.99, it’s significantly cheaper than competitors like Google’s Nest Hub Max ($229.99) or Lenovo’s aging Smart Display 10 ($249.99), and it’ll easily tie into any Alexa-enabled products, a bonus if you’re already invested in the ecosystem.

Now that we’ve gotten to a few smart home products that easily lay the foundation for building your own smart home platform, we can dive into a few of the necessary gadgets you’ll want to invest in for more challenging hardware installations, say, a smart doorbell or a thermostat. To install any of these in your home, you will need to understand what kind of wires and power outputs are available, and the best way to know for sure what each wire provides is to use a multimeter and check its voltage.

For example, when installing a smart thermostat, you will very much want to know if a low power 24V C-wire is available, as this is what will keep the smart thermostat powered up and running, so it is very important (not guaranteed to be available in your home) with any smart thermostat that does not have a battery. This is also true if you are installing a smart doorbell, as you should check the doorbell’s transformer to make sure it outputs 16-24V AC, as the house chime can use some of this power, meaning if you fall below 16V, your smart doorbell may stop working, or at least, not trigger the house’s hardware chime.

The best way to test the compatibility of these smart home products is to use a multimeter, and the AstroAI Digital Multimeter at $42.99 offers a feature set and build quality close to an industrial multimeter (like Fluke) at a fraction of the price. For DIY projects like installing smart home appliances, the AstroAI Digital Multimeter provides accurate voltage testing to ensure you have the necessary wiring for those products to work.

Controlling your lighting remotely via an app or hub, perhaps using some of Kasa’s smart plugins, is really easy. But what if I told you there was a way to change your lights automatically, like when you walk into a room? This is where a smart motion sensor or two can be incredibly useful. Rather than setting a timer or logging into an app, you can use a motion sensor connected to your smart home network to turn it on automatically. While there are many sensors to choose from on the market, the Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2 comes highly recommended, especially for its $33.99 price tag.

What makes this motion sensor stand out is the fact that it supports multiple ecosystems, including Matter, Apple Home, and Alexa. But even though it’s platform agnostic, it does support Amazon’s Frustration-Free Setup (FFS), which is good news for any Alexa users invested in the platform. Yes, this sensor doesn’t just detect movement; it also detects light (unlike the P1 before it), which means you can use it to trigger automations as the sun rises or sets.

The detector offers a range of 23 meters for motion detection, with a horizontal viewing angle of 170° and a vertical viewing angle of 45 °. Also, it comes with a small stand that rotates 360°, making it very easy to position the detector to face your ideal detection position. So if you’ve always wanted to automate a few things around the house, based on motion or light, the Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2 is the perfect gadget for your next home DIY project.