Summary
Hive Home's family of products is focused on a complete, easy to use solution. In today's DIY (Do-It-Yourself) smart home technology market, people buy different products and then struggle with getting them to communicate with each other. Too much technology is not always a good thing!
Hive's connected home system is designed from the ground up to work together. As a seamless solution, their products work together excellently for home security and monitoring.
Overall rating : 4.5 / 5
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DIY Smart Home Technology
Many homeowners these days require a smart home system to keep their homes safe. They don't necessarily need automatic blinds, sprinklers or fancy outdoor lighting scenes for different times of the day.
They want to be able to monitor their home, check for appliances left on, or even make sure that they turned down the thermostat before they went to work.
The best solution would be to monitor their home using video cameras. If someone unexpected shows up at their front door while they are gone, they could see them and also communicate with them by voice.
All this sounds great!. However, paying for these kinds of systems today can be expensive. The only solution for most people is the do-it-yourself route. However, getting all these products working together can be daunting for most people.
What is a Smart Home?
A smart home is a connected home. Great, what's a connected home?
A connected home is where all the different smart devices in your home communicate seamlessly together. Generally, this requires a smart hub to coordinate all these electronic activities.
Getting different smart devices to work together is tough. The big companies. i.e., Google, have tried, using Works With Nest program. But even that project is proving to be difficult, and their latest announcements see them backing off a bit from providing a one-size-fits-all solution.
What's a homeowner to do if the big guys can't easily do it?
What Is Hive Home?
Hive Home answers these questions with a complete suite of smart home devices along with an award-winning smartphone app you can use to manage these devices.
About Hive Home
Hive's goal is, "We help you make more time for the stuff you love by making daily living easier."
Their family of smart products works together, making your daily life more comfortable.
Hive's Connected Home
Not only do Hive's smart products work together, but you can control them from external devices. This functionality does require you to have the Hive Hub installed at your home.
These external devices include:
Amazon Echo
Echo is a smart speaker from Amazon that responds to your voice. With it, you can "talk" to your home system and tell it to turn off lights, etc.
Google Home
Similar to Amazon's Echo, Google's Home is a voice-activated speaker that you can use to control your lights. It can also let you dim your Hive Active lights or change the colors.
IFTTT
IFTT stands for If This, Then That. This is a free platform you can use to get all of your different smart devices to work together.
IFTT provides a wealth of opportunities for you to connect your own smart home to the rest of the world. It gives you the ability to control your thermostat using a weather app — so many different combinations.
The best part is, you don't need to make use of IFTTT to have a smart home from Hive. When you are ready, it provides you the opportunity to expand beyond. Hive does not limit your intelligent home options.
OhmControl
OhmControl is for California residents. It provides you a way to connect Hive with the OhmControl app so that you can reduce energy usage during peak times of the day.
Also, OhmConnect customers receive 20% off select Hive smart home bundles and products. So this kind of partnership pays dividends in more ways than one.
Philips Hue
Philips Hue is a popular smart home lighting bulb and system. Hive devices can now work together with Philips Hue devices. You can control all of your smart bulbs together and bring them to life using Hive Actions.
HomeAdvisor Professional Installation
A different kind of integration Hive provides for installation services using HomeAdvisor.
HomeAdvisor is a digital marketplace that matches trusted service professionals with your home projects. This service helps you to get a quote from a local certified Hive Pro near where you live.
Installing the Hive Thermostat may be a little bit outside your comfort range to do it yourself. The professional installation partnership gives you the option to use HomeAdvisor to find a local professional to do the job instead.
Hive Actions
Hive Actions give you the ability to have your different Hive devices work together. You can control them with your Hive smartphone app.
Using the Hive Sensors, you can do things like have the lights automatically turn off when you shut the door in the morning. Or, have the thermostat turn up the heat when you shut the door when you return home at night.
Quick Actions allow you to control your devices directly. All it takes is one tap on your Hive app home screen to adjust your heating and air conditioning from your sofa.
You can use Hive Actions to adjust depending on the sun. For example:
- 1When: my front door closes,
- 2While: it's dark outside,
- 3Then: turn on my hall light and adjust the heating.
Many other combinations are provided to let you get the most from your Hive products.
Hive Heating & Cooling
Hive Thermostat
Hive's home heating and cooling product is the Hive Thermostat. It works with most HVAC systems.
The Hive thermostat provides you six different time slots for your thermostat to adjust with your daily schedule. Your heating and cooling need only come on when you need it.
Geolocation allows the thermostat to know if you've left the house and left on the heat or A/C. It can send you a reminder to turn it off using your Hive app.
The Hive Thermostat can be self-installed, but you can also find a local pro to do the job using HomeAdvisor. The Hive website provides a seamless link to HomeAdvisor to get a firm quote. The site also provides average cost estimates.
- Hive Heating and Cooling Pack come with (1) Smart Thermostat & (1) Hive Hub; Internet connection recommended: 1.5Mbps or higher, iOS or Android device running an up-to-date operating system.
- Bring your home to life by remotely programming your smart thermostat to run only when your home is occupied or sync with Hive Window/Door Sensors to automatically turn your system off when you leave for the day.
- Connect your Hive devices to Amazon Alexa or Google Home to enable voice-activated commands like "Alexa / Hey Google, set temperature to 75°."
Hive Lighting
Hive's smart lighting products come with three different functionalities, which are three different bulbs. All Active lights are managed from your Hive app, controlled using Hive Actions, or communicated with using Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
The bulbs can be scheduled or controlled at the same time with your other smart bulbs. Hive Actions can trigger your lights on or off using Hive Sensors.
These control options let you keep your home safe when someone you don't know enters the house. It also keeps your home system flexible to meet your daily needs by turning on lights when you come home at night.
All light bulbs provide a brightness of 806 lumens with a lifetime of 25000 hours.
All lights are rated for indoor use only.
Hive Active Light Dimmable
The Hive Active Light Dimmable bulb can be controlled anywhere using your Hive app.
The color temperature of this bulb is 2700K warm white. It uses only an energy-efficient 9W of electricity.
- Lighting the way: Pair your Hive dynamic lighting with motion sensors to ensure you're never lost in the dark.
- Save energy: turn your bright lights on or off from anywhere with your phone for easy automation.
- Set schedules: turn your smart bulbs on or change their brightness automatically
- Works with Alexa, Google Home, and IFTTT
Hive Active Light Cool to Warm White
This Active light allows you to change the color from a cool white to a warmer tone. The cool, white light helps you to work more efficiently while the warmer tone lets you relax.
The color temperature is 2700K - 6500K. Power consumption is only 9W.
- Use lighting to match your mood: adjust brightness and color temperature from cool white to warm.
- Save energy: turn your bright lights on or off from anywhere with your phone for easy automation.
- Set schedules: turn your smart bulbs on or change their brightness automatically
- Works with Alexa, Google Home, and IFTTT
Hive Active Light Color Changing
Sometimes your mood needs more color than just white or soft-white. Power consumption is only a tiny 9.5W. The color temperature is 2700K - 6500K.
- Create the perfect lighting atmosphere: Choose from 16 million colors
- Save energy: turn your bright lights on or off from anywhere with your phone for easy automation
- Set schedules: turn your smart bulbs on or change their brightness automatically
- Works with Alexa, Google Home, and IFTTT
Hive Home Camera
Hive keeps their camera products simple: One to use outdoors, another one for indoors and then a complete solution to view what your cameras have recorded.
Both cameras include:
Hive View Outdoor
Hive Outdoor can let you monitor deliveries, or it can allow you to see intruders.
You can even carry on a conversion with the person via two-way audio installed on the camera. The person will not even know if you are home or not.
It includes manual pan and tilt options.
Like the thermostat, professional installation is also available for the cameras. You can follow a provided installation guide if you are comfortable with installing it yourself.
Hive View
The Hive View lets you monitor your indoor pets or keep an eye on your kids.
It's available in two different colors: Black & Brushed Copper or White & Champagne Gold.
It also includes up to 1-hours of built-in battery life. This feature allows you to detach it from the base and set it wherever you want.
Hive Video Playback
Twenty-four hours of rolling video storage comes with your camera purchase. You can increase this to 30 days with a Hive Video Playback Membership.
The initial monthly price is very reasonable about the cost of a cup of coffee. The storage option is compatible with up to 5 cameras. The cost however, does increase as you add cameras.
You can access your video footage any time, right from your smartphone.
Hive Sensors
Hive's smart sensors are available as a Motion sensor or Window or Door sensor. Both sensors can be used with Hive Actions to trigger lights on or off.
They're powered by a CR123A Lithium battery, making them easy to install.
Hive Motion Sensor
The Hive motion sensor can detect movement around your home and send you an alert to your smartphone.
Hive Window or Door Sensor
The Window and Door sensors come in two pieces (one on the door, the other on the door jam) with a simple installation.
- Get peace of mind: did you shut the bedroom window? Use the Hive app to check
- Know when your kids get home: your Hive sensor will notify you to keep a history of when the front door is open or closed.
- Save time with easy home automation: link with the Hive plug to turn off appliances when you leave your house.
- Works with Google Home and IFTTT
Hive Plugs
Hive Active Plug
The Hive Active plug lets you control any of your appliances. It works as an adapter: plug it into your wall socket then plug the device into it as usual.
You can turn appliances on or off from your smartphone. Or you can set a schedule.
You can also have it work together with other Hive devices using Hive Actions.
- Control appliances remotely: Don't let your iron or hair straightener ruin your day
- Set daily schedules: Turn appliances on or off with easy automation
- Use Hive actions to connect all of your Hive products
- Works with Alexa, Google Home, and IFTTT
Hive Hubs
Hive Hub 360
The Hive Hub 360 is their most advanced hub. It can detect sounds around your home, such as the smoke alarm or carbon monoxide alarm. If caught, it sends you a notification.
It can also detect sounds like glass breaking, letting you know that there may be an intruder.
The Hub 360 also comes with Wi-Fi, so you don't need to plug it in directly to your router. This feature lets you place it where ever it can best detect irregular sounds.
Hive Hub
The Hive Hub is their standard hub product. You need one to enable remote access to your hive devices. It also has the brains to allow Hive Action to control interactive with your other Hive smart devices.
The standard hub is not wireless. It does require a network connection to your broadband router.
- The Hive hub connects your Hive products and lets you control them from nearly anywhere for easy home automation.
- Set up your Hive hub in minutes. Plug directly into your Broadband Router, link your Hive products, and you're ready to start.
- We have strict security measures to protect your personal information and access to your system.
- Works with Alexa, Google Home, IFTTT, and Philips hue (integration via Hive app)
Hive Accessories
Hive Signal Booster
The Hive Signal Booster lets you keep a strong signal in every room.
Homes are not all built the same. Your internet router may be in a closet or the basement. Or maybe you have a big house. The Hive Signal Booster lets you handle these different situations.
Hive Packs
Hive provides packages allowing you to get started at a reduced cost.
Starter Pack
Welcome Home Pack
Hive Resources
The Hive website has lots of resources to help you with their products.