Smart Home -Avenue South, Singapore

Condominium | Bukit Merah, Singapore | 2 Adults

This beautiful home in Avenue South Residence manages to squeeze quite a bit of smart home technology into its space – our clients are a young couple very familiar with tech. As Apple users, they were looking for devices that could work with the Apple HomeKit framework, and we were happy to help integrate their devices into their Apple Home app. It also happens to be the first one in our list of portfolios that features our smart lighting!

We spent some time taking a video of the project here:

Before entering their home, you’d find an Aqara Doorbell G4 standing guard at their door. The homeowners were specifically looking for a doorbell camera that works with Apple HomeKit Secure Video – meaning that the doorbell notifications, video feeds, and remote viewing would be natively integrated into their iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. They also opted to have it battery-powered instead of wiring it up for ease of installation.

Opening their door, you’d be holding on to the push-pull bars of the Aqara Smart Door Lock D100. Same thing here – they were impressed with the Apple Home Key feature of the door lock and wanted the security and peace-of-mind of a door lock that can comply with Apple’s standards. Oh, and probably also the convenience of tapping their iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock the door, ala Apple Pay.

Beside the lock in the photo above, you can also spot our Aqara smart switch – in black – peeking out. This switch controls the smart lights in the entryway. It also gives a hint to the type of darker, woodier design the ID was going for.

And there, you have it. A panel of black switches, starting from our HomeSmart Water Heater switch in black on the left. There’s a Wireless Knob Switch H1 next, spray-painted black by our clients themselves – an act of dedication to the art, for sure. Then there’s the Aqara D1 switch in a 3-gang version. While the D1 is available in black (now), our clients had a white switch spray-painted as well, to ensure consistency next to the rotary dial. Lastly, the Aqara Magic Switch S1E with a touchscreen – this choice of screen design seems to be a favourite amongst our clients.

Many of our customers have wondered what the Aqara S1E is for – essentially, it’s a touchscreen dashboard you can customize. Each page can contain a maximum of 9 tiles, and there’s a maximum of 6 pages, for a total of 54 tiles. Each tile can be assigned to an action or device. For example, you could have a page full of tiles of all the different smart lights in the room. Or assign tiles to curtains, scenes, and other smart switches. Bigger tiles allow you to add slider controls where you can dim smart lights or control their colour temperature directly from the screen!

In our clients’ home, this last option works well as they have a lot of smart lighting through their home.

Take this lights behind the mirror as an example. It’s a big, round, beautiful mirror near the entryway, mounted atop a fluted panel. There’s a line of Aqara Smart LED strips running behind the mirror, and the reflection of the lights against the dark wood of the fluted panel casts off a beautiful, warm glow.

They also have smart LED strips running in their cove, and our Aqara Smart Downlights in their false ceilings for general illumination.

With this range of smart lighting through their home, our clients are able to actively dim, brighten, or adjust their lights from yellowish-warm to bluish-cool. But in their case, it makes more sense to create lighting scenes.

A scene is a collection of devices being activated together at the same time, bringing about an effect that was preconfigured. Our clients had a normal daylight scene, where darker areas of the home without natural lighting were lit up, in sufficient brightness, and set to a cooler light that matches the daylight outside. Other scenes were evening scenes (still bright, but warmer), night scenes (dimmed and warm), good night scenes (almost all turned off), and movie time scenes (just some accent lighting left on).

The good thing about scenes is how quick and easy it is to activate, and how many devices can respond in kind. Our clients appreciated not having to fumble and walk around flipping switches whenever they want to do something that would benefit from having different lighting.

But that’s not all – besides lighting, scenes can control other devices, such as curtains, blinds, and air-conditioners. And for our clients, they were able to include both their day and night curtains into their scenes.

By implementing Aqara Smart Curtains into their living room – both for day and night curtains – our clients has distinct control over each set of curtains, and can include either (or both) into their living room scenes. The movie time scene, for example, would close both.

Besides controlling their devices with scenes, our clients also could control their devices with voice, via their HomePods (which were also working as their TV speaker system!).

They also had a motion sensor which could automate devices, such as turning on the pendant light when someone sits at the dining table.

Moving on to the bedroom, you’ll see a different design!

White switches! And a white water heater switch – all on a rose wall. Their bedroom also has a mix of smart lighting and smart curtains.

All of which can be controlled with the Aqara Home and Apple Home apps.

Here’s a quick tally of smart devices:

• Smart home hub (M2)
• Air-con control (M2)
• Smart Curtains
• Smart Light Switches
• Smart Heater Switches
• Smart Downlights
• Smart LED Strips
• Smart Video Doorbell
• Smart Door Lock
• Wireless Mini Switch
• Wireless Knob Switch
• Motion Sensor
• TVOC Sensor
• Vibration Sensor
• Temperature Sensor

While the list seems long, we wouldn’t consider this crammed full of tech – instead, it’s a nice, sensible amount that can make a meaningful difference to your home living. Especially when considering that most of these devices are natively integrated and unified into a single app, controls, automations, and scenes can be managed very simply and intuitively. Add Apple Home into the mix, and you have a home that’s a joy to control.

At HomeSmart.sg, we’re always looking out for ways to improve our clients’ homes and lives through smart technology. If you’re thinking of ways to integrate smart devices into your home (even if it’s just one or two devices), get in touch with us and we’ll make sure to take care of you!