Black Friday 2025 in Home Automation

Welcome once again to the Black Friday home-automation deals roundup. I’ve been doing this post for several years now, and honestly, if we look back, we can see that the manufacturers willing to step up are more or less always the same, the usual suspects, but the models keep changing as technology moves forward, and I like putting this roundup together to compare prices with last year and also see if we can grab a deal and save a few euros… to spend on more smart home gear, of course. Also, just like last year, I want to recommend a service or app that has some special perk these days. There are some like Controller for HomeKit offering a lifetime subscription only during these days… By the way, we’ll talk about Controller later, they’ve got me pretty pleased… they’ve pulled a Plus subscription out of their sleeve that enables some new features, like being able to see temperature graphs, consumption, etc. when you open a device. It’s true it can be pretty interesting, I often check the temperature graphs of some of my sensors to see how the temperature evolves overnight and decide whether to adjust the radiator in that room… but damn it, if we’ve already paid for a Lifetime license at some point, you can’t now say this is a Plus or Ultra license or whatever, you should’ve thought your business model through better, man. I don’t know, this has me really annoyed and I promise I’m going to write to them to complain. Anyway, the idea behind this roundup of interesting subscriptions is that whether you’re planning to spend money on Black Friday or not, we can review the services we’re ALREADY subscribed to and check if any of them have run an interesting deal these days, making it worth renewing the subscription even if we’ve still got a few weeks left, since that way we’ll pay the discounted price once renewal time comes around. I’m also well aware that the Black Friday campaign is pretty burned out by now, we’ve killed the real spirit of last-minute shopping and now there are websites that pretty much run a whole Black Month. Also, we’ve sometimes seen how a product’s price gets bumped up in the weeks before, only to then apply a much smaller discount than what would’ve applied to the regular price… but it’s also true that there are people with a small budget set aside for these days, it’s not like they’re going to jump into compulsive purchases that don’t fit their budget, so I put this roundup together for all those folks who have a bit of money to spend and are waiting to solve some real need while saving a bit of money. On another note, this year I also want to offer you the Black Friday deal for the Home Automation Consultancy, just like I did last year, so if you get in touch these days you’ll be able to book the Home Automation Consultancy in express format for just €40, meaning we can spend an hour chatting either over video call or over a coffee or a beer or whatever comes up, and I’ll try to help you decide which smart lock to buy, why the folks at Nabu Casa deserve the worst of deaths, or how to get a WhatsApp notification through IFTTT when a teacher at school has called in sick and your oldest kid is heading home while you’re stark naked recording an OnlyFans for your followers. Keep in mind that this Express Home Automation Consultancy lasts the same as the regular Home Automation Consultancy, but afterwards I won’t send you the summary document with everything we discussed, links to devices and so on, just that. Also, if you’re swamped these days and we can’t schedule a session, you can still book the Express Home Automation Consultancy taking advantage of the discount, and we’ll set it up for whenever works for you, or for whenever you receive all the devices you’ve bought these days because they’re cheaper. Not trying to build up hype, but the Express Home Automation Consultancy will only be available until this coming Thursday the 4th, it’s a special Black Friday campaign, so afterwards it’ll go back to its regular price. As in previous years, I’ll be ordering the items not by discount but by relevance, but keep in mind this is MY relevance, devices I consider interesting or very useful for my day to day, but which might not fit yours, eh?

Smart locks on sale

Smart locks have become the «entry-level product» in home automation. A few years ago it was smart bulbs or smart plugs, then we moved on to smart heating control, and now it’s smart locks. By «entry-level product» I mean there are people who don’t have any home automation at all yet, no connected gadgets whatsoever… but still want to install a lock and start integrating things from there. The thing is they’re very trendy right now and there are some genuinely interesting ones. Anyway, I’m going to recommend the crown jewel in terms of technology, the Aqara U200 Lite, which is on a massive deal for under €90 on Amazon. As of today, it’s, in my opinion, the best smart lock you can buy. It’s Matter, the battery lasts ages, it’s not too noisy… and this version doesn’t have any outside panel for entering a PIN or an NFC keyfob or HomeKey, which its older sibling does have, which you can check out here, also discounted to €159 when last year it was at €189. The non-Lite version is spectacular, but remember it has the panel on the outside of your home… and there are people who don’t want to give away ‘hints’ about whether or not you have a smart lock. Either way, the Lite at €89 is an incredible bargain, there are no smart locks on the market at that price… and much less being Matter.

Aqara’s 2K camera for under €30

Sticking with Aqara, we’ve got the G100 camera compatible with HomeKit and Home Assistant for a mere 29 euros, and that’s with it being 2K, having night vision, being able to be installed both indoors and outdoors, and recognizing faces via AI so it doesn’t notify you if someone familiar shows up near your house… you know, the typical case of the neighbor coming over in her nightgown to ask for a bit of sugar… well, that.

Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra vacuum with a 32% discount… and Matter compatible!

This is the first year I’m recommending a vacuum, well, a robot vacuum, but until now integration with the HomeKit ecosystem was conspicuously absent, so until Matter came along we couldn’t interact with these gadgets from the Home app. I want to recommend the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, which besides being the vacuum I’ve liked most out of all the ones I’ve had, is now compatible with Matter… and on top of that it’s massively discounted! An absolute MUST that’s worth grabbing during these days. You can find it on Amazon for €749… the price of a regular vacuum.

Meross Presence Sensor compatible with Matter for €28

It’s not exactly a camera, but it also lets us know if someone comes into the house. As you know, presence sensors aren’t for everyone, sometimes a much simpler motion sensor does the same job, but this MS600 from Meross has a spectacular price and is Matter compatible, which makes life much easier for integrations. Sticking with Meross, they’ve dropped the price by 20% on their famous smart power strip with 4 USB ports and 4 outlets, more than recommendable for turning off gadgets that don’t need to be on all the time, like the game console… or the Christmas tree around this time of year ;).

Ring Intercom Audio: automate your building’s entry phone with a 56% discount!

I love this gadget, I talked about it in episode 55 of the podcast and I’m happier with it every day. Don’t think it’s just the typical relay that sends the pulse needed to open the building’s front door, I already did that before with a Shelly. The Ring lets you talk to whoever’s at the front door as if it were a phone call, even from outside your home, so you can buzz them in to leave a package by the mailbox or the doormat, etc. It integrates with Home Assistant and from there you can bring it into HomeKit and the Home app without any issues. If you don’t have Home Assistant you can also create a Siri Shortcut to open the Ring app, trigger the command to open the front door, and close the app… all thanks to a member of the Telegram group who put a lot of work into it. Of course you can also open it directly… or build some advanced automation like the one I have set up so that if one of my kids rings the house doorbell three times in a row, the building’s front door opens automatically. Ring Intercom with 62% off: €34.99 There’s now a new model that also lets you see video in case you have a video intercom, but we’ll talk about that gadget later on since it just came out and hasn’t been discounted, so it’s left out of this roundup. If you already have a Ring device and are familiar with their ecosystem, you might be able to take advantage of the great deal on the indoor camera, which is at half price! Yes, a 50% discount: https://amzn.to/49IGh2w . It’s true it only has 1080 resolution and there are much more interesting cameras on the market, but if you already have Ring’s security system, it’s the most convenient way to expand it.

Netatmo’s thermostat and smart radiator valves with a 44% discount

My favorite option for smartly managing a boiler and its radiators, and it had never had a 44% discount before. I’ve had these for a long time now and honestly I’m really pleased with them. The advantage of having Netatmo devices is that they can «talk» to each other, so if a radiator requests a temperature above the one currently set, it turns on the boiler to heat that room and then shuts it off. In one of the podcast episodes I told you how I’d migrated the scenes and automations from the Netatmo app to the HomeKit Home app without any issues, and now it detects which devices are around the house to know which rooms should have the radiator open and which ones can be closed. It’s not the cheapest option, but it’s the one that works best. Totally recommendable, over the past few years I’ve taken advantage of these days’ deals to gradually buy valves, and by now I already have every radiator in the house automated. The boiler thermostat (not wired, connects directly) with a 41% discount! Smart thermostatic valves for radiators with a 44% discount

All Shelly relays are on sale with over 30% off

Whether you buy them on Amazon or at ShellySpain, I recommend buying them at ShellySpain because they’ll give you support if you need it. Also, for products that aren’t on sale, you can add the code SAHUQUILLO for an additional discount. For example, the Shelly 1 Mini Gen4, which is now Matter compatible and doesn’t need flashing to be available in the Home app, comes down to a mere 12 euros!

Eero 6+ with a 40% discount!

And to wrap up the devices section, what in my opinion are the best home routers and access points, the 3-pack of Eero 6+ comes down to a price of €210, and with this you could cover the whole Bernabeu. You can also buy the 2-pack, but don’t buy just one because Mesh devices need at least 2 to create the mesh network. And if you want to jump onto the Wi-Fi 7 bandwagon already, there’s the 3-pack of Eero 7 for a bit over €300. The price difference with the 6+ isn’t huge, but performance-wise you can definitely notice it… as long as you actually need all that bandwidth, of course, which in my case I don’t think I really do… but if you’re a famous YouTuber or move huge files over the network, it’s probably worth going for the Eero 7. Also, Eeros are compatible with HomeKit, so in the Home app you’ll see your devices and bridges trying to connect to the internet, and you can block that behavior right from there, from the Home app, without needing to set up rules in the Eero’s firewall or anything like that, and they act as Zigbee repeaters too. I’ll just say that for me they’re the perfect router as long as you don’t need to do fancy stuff on your network like setting up VLANs and things like that.

Services with deals

Controller for HomeKit at 50% off!!!!

I don’t need to say much about Controller for HomeKit, you already know it’s the app I always recommend for managing your HomeKit home, in fact in my case it’s almost completely replaced Apple’s native Home app. 100% recommendable, and even more so today at 50% off. I’d buy it again right now. For those who already own the app, you can grab that Plus module with a special deal for €25 for the first year. Anyway.

TrainingPeaks: 25% off… better than nothing

Also for sports lovers, we’ve got the TrainingPeaks service, which I don’t think needs any introduction. It’s true I only used it to check the Training Calendar and organize my weeks, but ever since they made that part paid, you could only enter day by day the next day’s workouts or hire a plan from a certified coach to see the full schedule, so I decided to switch to other services offering more or less the same at that calendar level but without all the analytical power of TrainingPeaks. Anyway, today it’s got a 25% discount with the code CYBER2025… it’s not much, but if you’re loyal to TrainingPeaks, it might be worth renewing your subscription today. And not much else, I hope you find the device you need and manage to save some money… but remember, don’t buy a device just because it’s cheap these days, buy the ones you actually need to solve a REAL need, don’t be like me 😀