The holidays are here, and as I packed my suitcase to pack for my annual trip to see my family, I felt that inevitable apprehension of “leaving my house alone” for such a long time. This time was even more intense because I had just moved to a new, bigger place, and it would be the first time we were gone for more than a day. What was even more worrying was that we had just installed a few new smart home productsand I wondered how they would behave while we were gone. Or if they might be useful.

As I mentally replayed each scenario in my mind, I started taking notes of everything I needed to test and every setting I needed to turn on/off/check before leaving. So here’s a quick reminder if you’re also going on vacation, based on my experience.

Whether it’s one or two security cameras or a full-fledged security system, one of the most essential pieces of equipment you can own for your smart home is something to secure your home and you ensure you can drop in remotely to check things out.

In my previous accommodation, which was part of a large semi-secure building, I only had one Xiaomi camera that I had just plugged in before leaving. I still have the camera, but I added a proper security system to my new house. This includes door and window open/close sensors, motion detectors with automatic and on-demand photo capture, fire and smoke alarms, and water leak detectors.

Before leaving, I made sure all security system batteries were full and all sensors were working properlyand I did some tests (which I will come back to a little later). It took a long time, but hey, it’s better to do it than to spend several days on vacation agonizing over an unexpected alert. Don’t forget to arm your system and enable your camera notifications before leaving, and you should be fine!

I also have a smart lock, so I made sure I disabled any temporary codes that I no longer needed. My Nuki smart lock also allows me to disable pairing attempts, making it undiscoverable via Bluetooth. I did it too. If I’m away, I don’t want to leave any weak spots or vulnerabilities.

Smart lights may seem like more of a part of your smart home, but they can also be very useful when you’re away. Depending on the brand of your smart lights, you may find a built-in feature that imitates your presence when you are away to thwart thieves.

My Philips Hue lights provide this. I chose specific rooms and turned on this automation, which turns these lights on and off at random times of the day. Obviously I haven’t enabled it for bathrooms and rooms that don’t have windows or exterior exposure, but I’ve enabled it for all rooms that do. I know this won’t completely stop the most persistent thieves, but it should raise the barrier of entry for those who simply choose vulnerable, unoccupied homes to loot during the holidays.

If your smart lights don’t offer this presence mimicking option, try creating a few automations to do it or set timers and reminders on your phone to turn the lights on and off remotely at different times.

Since I wouldn’t be home for several days, I knew it was time to save a little on my energy bill. I am completely I unplugged all smart devices which are only useful when I’m at home but useless when I’m away. This includes my Nest smart speakers and hubs, Google TV Streamera smart air purifier and the few decorative Hue bulbs I didn’t need to mimic the presence.

But above all, I made sure my thermostat was set to Away mode. I obviously don’t need my heater to turn on and increase my energy bill when I’m not home, but I do need it to keep running at low capacity to prevent water from heating by the ground from freezing, keeping my plants alive and avoiding additional humidity in the walls. Knowing how isolated my house is, the sweet spot is around 15°C (59°F) to run the thermostat as little as possible while still keeping a viable indoor temperature, so that’s what my Tado is set to. in Away mode.

No one wants to spend time on maintenance, but again, it’s a crucial step before leaving your smart home for a few days. For me, the interview included:

• apply all pending updates and make sure they haven’t broken anything,
• check all batteries and charge levels,
• fill the clean water tank of my Roborock vacuum cleaner and empty the dirty so I can clean my house before coming back,
• and reviewing all the settings for the different apps to make sure everything was set up exactly how I wanted it.

This is how, for example, I realized that I had forgotten to set the correct temperature on my kitchen thermostat and had left it at the default value of 5°C (41°F). My houseplants would have frozen and died if I hadn’t caught this!

The best thing I did before leaving my smart home was to try it out for a day. I spent the day away from home and verified that I had remote access to the camera, alarm, smart lock, lights, thermostats, vacuums and router. I also checked that everything was working as it was supposed to while I was gone: thermostat wasn’t heating, vacuum wasn’t cleaning, lights were turning on/off randomly, alarm wasn’t going off randomly I got access to the photo on demand from my motion sensor, and so on.

If you have a security system, now is also a good time to do a penetration test. I temporarily deactivated the siren to avoid needlessly alerting our neighbors, then my husband and I tested several intrusion scenarios. I armed the system, and it opened the doors and windows, walked around the house and dropped water on the leak sensors, all the while keeping an eye on my phone to check that I received the alerts.

This is how we discovered we had made a mistake installing one of our motion cameras. We had it tasked with following the main door and delaying the alarm on entry/exit to give us time to enter the code and unlock, but it seemed like this limited the motion sensor to only triggering when the door sensor was triggered. Yeah. If someone had broken in through the door without opening it, the motion detector would not have detected them! We quickly fixed this issue, tested it again, and made sure the new setting worked as it was supposed to.

So far, this is where I am with my rebooted smart home journey. Eventually, I want to automate many of these processes so that I don’t have to spend several hours configuring, verifying, and disabling/enabling items. I’ve already purchased a Home Assistant Yellow hub, which I’ll probably install when I return, and I’ll try to create a dashboard that alerts me when things need maintenance and some automation that automatically manages the thermostat routines , lighting and vacuum cleaner. .