If you’re only interested in dipping your toe in the smart home waters and don’t mind starting off in a walled garden, TP-Link’s Tapo H100 Smart Hub with Chime can automate lighting, alert you when motion is detected in a room or if doors or windows are opened when they should be closed, and even trigger a local alarm. That’s a lot of features for a $23 central hub, plus motion and contact sensors that cost $20 each. These components can also work in conjunction with other Tapo smart home devices, including smart plugs and light bulbs.
This news is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart home systems.
Tapo H100 Smart Home Hub users can create sensor-triggered automations using other Tapo smart home devices.
TP-Link
This system could be all you need to transform your home and gain some rudimentary security features. TP-Link has one color smart bulb and six LED light strips in its catalog, along with three models of smart plugs (including one Matter-certified model). Using the hub and a Tapo T100 Smart Motion Sensor or Tapo T110 Smart Contact Sensor, you should be able to write a routine that turns on one or more lights in response to motion or when a door or window opens. You could also configure the system to activate a siren on the Tapo H100 Smart Hub with Chime and send an alert to your smartphone at the same time.
Just remember that you’re buying into a walled garden. These components are not Matter or HomeKit certified; they only work with Tapo-brand smart home devices. That will significantly limit how far you can take your smart home. You should also know that the hub is limited to connecting to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks, and it can control a maximum of 64 devices. That might seem like a lot until you count the number of doors and windows you wish to monitor, all the locations where you want to deploy motion sensors, and how many lights and small appliances you want to control.
All that said, this could be one of the least-expensive paths to a smart home yet. We’ll have an in-depth review of these new Tapo smart home products as soon as we get our hands on samples.
Author: Michael Brown, Executive Editor, TechHive
Michael is TechHive's lead editor, with 30+ years of experience covering smart homes, home networking, and home audio/home theater. He holds a BA in Multimedia Journalism, authored the book Desktop Video Production, and was awarded Best Online Review by the Computer Press Association. Michael built a smart home in 2007 and used it as a real-world product-testing lab. Now living in the Pacific Northwest, he is converting his 1890 Victorian bungalow into a modern smart home. Michael has worked at CNET, PCWorld, Electronic Musician, and Maximum PC. As a freelancer, he contributed to New Media, Camcorder, MacWeek, and more.