When Google released its first Home smart speaker, I was immediately all in. I had been following the smart home scene for years and couldn’t wait to start implementing some of it; the timing was perfect, too, with my husband and me moving into our own apartment and finally free to install, change, and test everything we wanted.
Although I lived in Lebanon and had to pay to ship and import everything to me, while trying to reconcile between the abundance of US-made smart gadgets versus my EU wall plugs and 220-240V electricity, I figured a way around it. It started with a few Wemo smart plugs, a Wink Hub with some Aeotec Z-Wave accessories, a Logitech Harmony remote, and a Canary smart camera — all brands that now feel like a memory from a distant past.