Which smart home platforms are there?

You can find Google Assistant in various devices, like your phone, tablet, smartwatch, or Sonos speaker. You can also control your entire house with a smart home hub like Google Home or Google Nest Hub. Google Assistant is currently compatible with over 30,000 smart products from over 3500 brands. This number is increasing fast.

Alexa is the voice control system that is integrated in an Amazon Alexa device. Among these are the Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Show, for example. Alexa can be used to control a lot of smart devices. As with Google products, this assortment is ever expanding. More than 60,000 smart products are already compatible with Amazon Alexa.

If you own an iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, the Apple HomeKit platform is convenient for linking several home automation brands. If a smart plug or another home automation product works with HomeKit, you can link these products to each other.

With the Athom Homey, you can personalize your smart home. Connect suitable smart products to the Homey and control everything from the Homey app. The advantage of this advanced hub is that it uses many different wireless technologies. Thanks to this, almost all smart home products work together via the hub, even those of lesser-known brands.

IFTTT stands for If This, Then That. This principle makes it possible to easily link devices for home automation and start a chain of reactions with so-called 'applets'.

An example of an IFTTT applet, is if your Nest thermostat is set to the status Absent, your Philips Hue lights will automatically switch themselves off.

You can control any products that's compatible with Samsung SmartThings by using the Samsung SmartThings app. If you connect all of your products, you'll only need this one app. It allows you to control all smart products in your home. SmartThings has Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa integrations as well as its own voice assistant Bixby. As a result, you can easily control everything using your voice.