Black Friday in home automation 2024

Well well well, here we are again with a new roundup of interesting devices, apps and services for our Black Friday in home automation 2024. This time I’m not going to include only devices, I also want to mention some app that we think is a bit pricey and haven’t bought… or that service we can’t quite decide on but which these days has a price that makes it more tempting. Also, whether you’re planning to spend money on Black Friday or not, something we can always do is review the services we’re ALREADY subscribed to, because some of them run deals so good these days that it’s worth renewing the subscription even if we still have a few weeks left, since that way we’ll pay the discounted price once renewal time comes around. Pretty clever, right? Actually I’m the exact opposite of a saver, I spend my life buying apps or devices just to try them out and spending a ton of money… but hey, the upside is that this way I can review them and share my opinions with you before you spend your money. I’m aware that the Black Friday campaign is already quite burnt out, we’ve killed the real spirit of last-minute shopping and now there are sites that pretty much do a whole Black Month. Also, we’ve sometimes seen how the price of a product gets bumped up in the weeks before, only for the discount to end up being much smaller than it would’ve been on the regular price… but it’s true that some people have a small budget set aside for these days, they’re not going to jump into compulsive purchases that don’t fit their budget, so I’m putting together this roundup for all those people who have some money to spend and are waiting to solve some real need while saving a bit of money. On another note, remember that as I mentioned last week, during these Black Friday days I’m offering the Home Automation Consulting service in express format for just €40, so we can spend an hour chatting either over a 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, how to deploy Home Assistant in a docker on a Pi, or how to get a WhatsApp notification via IFTTT when a teacher at school has flaked and your oldest kid is on the way home while you’re naked filming an OnlyFans for your followers. Also, if you’re swamped these days, you can still book the Express Home Automation Consulting taking advantage of the discount, but we’ll schedule it for whenever suits you, or for once you’ve received all the devices you bought these days because they were cheaper. Not to build up the hype, well actually yes, but the Express Home Automation Consulting will only be available until next Monday the 2nd, it’s a special Black Friday campaign, so afterward 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 that it’s MY relevance, devices I consider interesting or very useful for my day-to-day but that might not fit yours, okay? For example, I have a cousin who asked me for a recommendation and bought a smart lock, I’ll list it below, but he bought it for his new house… which he hasn’t even been handed over yet! He doesn’t have the keys yet, doesn’t know what type of cylinder it has or anything, but he knows that as soon as they hand it over he’s going to install a smart lock, so he took advantage of these days. I hope it doesn’t take too long before he gets the keys, because honestly some other more interesting model might come out in the meantime. Anyway, let’s get to it!

Ring Intercom: Automate your intercom with a 62% discount!

I love this little gadget, I talked about it in episode 55 of the podcast and every day I’m happier with it. Don’t think it’s the typical relay that lets you send the pulse needed to open the building’s front door, I used to do that with a Shelly. The Ring lets you communicate with whoever’s at the door as if it were a phone call, even from outside your home, so you can let them leave a package in the mailbox or on 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, run the command to open the door, and close the app… all of this thanks to a fellow member of the Telegram group who put a lot of work into it. Of course you can also just open it directly… or set up some advanced automation like the one I have, so that if one of my kids presses the doorbell 3 times in a row, the building’s front door opens automatically. Ring Intercom with 62% off: €37.99

The Netatmo thermostat and smart radiator valves with a 44% discount

My favorite option for managing a boiler and its radiators intelligently, and it had never had a 44% discount before. I’ve had them for a long time now and honestly I’m thrilled 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 you currently have set, it turns on the boiler to heat that room and then switches 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 with no trouble at all, 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, I’ll take the chance to buy another valve myself, like every year. The boiler thermostat (not wired, connects directly) with a 44% discount! Smart thermostatic valves for radiators with a 31% discount

All Shelly relays are on sale with more than 30% off

Whether you buy them on Amazon or on 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 extra discount. I’d personally buy another Shelly EM to monitor electricity consumption and be able to do things like what I told you about in this blog post, receiving an alert when there’s excessive power usage at home, or knowing exactly how much you’re going to pay on your electricity bill as I told you in this other blog post. This Shelly EM usually costs around €60 and is now €39 at ShellySpain. On Amazon we can find other interesting deals like the 33% discount on the Shelly 1 Mini, which brings it below €10, or the Shelly 1 Plus, which is the really good one with 16A support, that has a 35% discount and comes down to a mere 11 euros.

Discounted smart locks

At this point in my life, and after having tried a bunch of smart locks, I only recommend 2 of them. And not because they have spectacular discounts, there are probably others with bigger discounts, but these are the ones I like best as of November 2024, for their technology, how quiet they are, and their battery life. On one hand we have the crown jewel in terms of technology, the Aqara U200, which is on a massive sale for under €200 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 doesn’t make too much noise… and it’s also compatible with Homekey so you can carry the key on your phone or Apple Watch and simply tap it against the pad with the numeric keypad (or fingerprint reader). Amazing, I’ll say it again, right now it’s the best lock you can buy. But on the other hand we have the Tedee Go, on offer ONLY on Tedee’s website for €129, which if it’s not the first, it’s tied with it. The Tedee’s battery lasts a bit longer than the Aqara’s, it’s not Matter but it will become compatible soon (it uses a bridge), it’s quieter and faster… plus it’s less bulky. You also have the option of buying the exterior pad. At home I have the Tedee Go installed, I’ll publish a full review soon.

The Eero Pro 6 at half price!

And to wrap up the devices section, we have the set of 3 Eero Pro 6 routers at 50% off on Amazon, which as you already know is my favorite router for home use. It’s worth buying them even if you don’t need all 3, you can always sell one later on Wallapop. Since it’s a Mesh router, you need 2 to create the Mesh network, but you’re guaranteed coverage throughout the whole house at a speed that’s much better than what a conventional non-mesh router gives you. Also, Eero routers are compatible with HomeKit, so in the Home app you’ll see your devices and bridges trying to connect to the Internet, and you’ll be able to block this behavior directly from there, from the Home app, without needing to create rules in the Eero’s firewall or anything like that. Totally recommended, I have a much older model that I bought right before COVID and to this day I still haven’t replaced it for anything in the world.

Discounted services

Controller for HomeKit at 50%!!!!

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, even more so today now that it’s at 50% off. I’d buy it again right now.

Gentler Streak: analyze all your health data

If you’re someone who does sports (and if you’re not, you will be, since past 40 the body starts asking to move) and you also have an iPhone and/or an Apple Watch, this is one of the best apps out there for analyzing all the health data your devices collect and actually doing something with it. Some metrics like heart rate variability, VO2Max, nighttime pulse, etc, which aren’t made very clear in the iPhone’s Health app, are analyzed by Gentler Streak, giving you understandable information like whether you’re coming down with a cold or whether you haven’t rested well in days… and with that you can then organize the activities you do or figure out why you feel like you’re dragging yourself around all day. I love it, but today even more so because if you subscribe for 1 year you only pay 50%, it comes down to €27.49

TrainingPeaks: 25% discount… every little helps

Also for sports lovers, we have the TrainingPeaks service, which I don’t think needs any introduction. It’s true that I only ever used it to check the Training Calendar and organize my weeks, but ever since they made that part paid, you could either enter day by day the workouts for the next day, or hire a plan from a certified trainer to see the full programming, so I decided to migrate to other services that offer more or less the same at that calendar level but without all the analytical power of TrainingPeaks. Anyway, today it has a 25% discount with the code CYBER2024… it’s not much, but if you’re one of the TrainingPeaks faithful, 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 some REAL need, don’t be like me 😀