I remember seeing some new built homes a couple of years ago and being amazed and envious of the smart home technology that was being built into these homes. I remember thinking “my 80 year old home will never be that cool.” Then we moved, and I then thought “my 50 year old home will never be that cool!”
Smartplug from Zuli received.
Well, as it tends to do, technology continues to improve and adapt to work with more and more people. There are so many smart home options to add to your current home, regardless of the age. All of these smart home functions are set to make your home & life more comfortable.
That’s why we are excited about the Smartplug from Zuli. We found it amazing how much tech, simplicity & comfort could be crammed into a little smartplug.
As a parent, I wanted to focus on how it can improve and simplify a parent’s life, Granted, the Zuli Smartplugs are great for everyone, and it may have greater uses than this, but I wanted to focus on how it makes your life easier and more comfortable as a parent.
First I wanted to explain how a Zuli Smartplug works. Simply plug Zuli into your wall outlet and the app walks you through setup (surprisingly easy). From there a Bluetooth connection to your cell phone makes all the magic happen! From your phone you are able to turn on/off, dim lights, get a reading on energy consumption, work with your Nest Smart Thermostat and schedule the run times for small appliances – like coffee pots & crockpots (and more). The coolest feature of Zuli is “Presence” which I will explain shortly.
The Zuli Smartplug allows you to add a new layer of comfort in how your home operates and how you operate in your home. As a parent, this is awesome – here are some of the benefits.
– Imagine you’re out with the kids and its dark in the house, while carrying one child and holding the hand of another, you walk in the door and the lights automatically turn on.
– Imagine as you are waking up the kids for school, your coffee automatically starts brewing for you so it’s ready to go as you are getting breakfast ready.
– Imagine the comfort of starting an awesome chili in the crockpot for dinner automatically in the middle of the day so it’s ready when you come home.
– How many times have you been reading to your child and they fall asleep in your lap. It’s not exactly easy to get up or reach over and turn off the light. Zuli allows you to just grab your iPhone and turn the light off or even dim it, making it more comfortable for you and your child to relax for a post reading nap!
– Imagine leaving the house for the day and know that your lights turn off automatically when you leave.
So many things that are simple, but when added up are a huge convenience to any and everybody – especially parents.
There are many devices that can do one or a couple of the above things, but Zuli is the only one I have experienced that can do all of them well. I mentioned Zuli Presence earlier, and it is pretty impressive. If you have 3 or more Zuli Smartplugs you can set them up so they are able to “detect” your presence in the area thanks to the Bluetooth connection between the Smartplugs and your iPhone.
This way when you enter a room, the lights can turn on automatically, when you leave the room, the lights can turn off – you can set the time duration so they don’t turn off if you just run down the hall and come back.
The Zuli Smartplugs on their own are quite useful, but to get the full benefits of this unique system, you need to setup Presence with your 3+ Smartplugs. I was very curious about how to setup the Presence setting and it was easy, simple and made you feel a little awkward, but it was fun. You need to establish a detection area, and the way to do that is by following the steps in the Zuli app. The final step is to walk around the area of your room you are setting up and wave your iPhone around as you walk around. It was pretty funny, and I had the kids help out with this part and they had a blast.
Zuli sets up a “perimeter” which when your iPhone crosses that “perimeter” the plug is activated. We had a little fun with this and setup one room and kept walking in the room and then out and watching the lights turn on and off when we returned and then left the room.
There are a couple of things that would be great if they could be worked into the next update of Zuli; because it is Bluetooth, you are limited and do not have the ability to access your Smartplugs remotely. You need to be within Bluetooth range (which is normally about 30 feet). Currently, Zuli is setup to work with only one Bluetooth connection, I think adding an additional user as an option would be a huge and useful upgrade to Zuli – this is a feature that Zuli is in process of adding, hopefully in the next month or so it will be available. The last improvement – even though I am fine without it – is adding an app for Android phones, currently it is only for the iPhone.
Zuli is the next step in turning your home into a Smart Home or a comfort home, even if it is 50 years old like ours.
We are giving away one smartplug to a lucky reader of 2Wired2Tired from Zuli, this can get you well on your way to making your home a smart home!
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