How to set your smarthome up for a spooky halloween

Published October 20, 2021

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Smart-home devices can help you save energy, make your home more secure, and even protect against catastrophe. But they’re also just a lot of fun, especially when it comes to putting the trick in trick-or-treat. Here’s our advice for enhancing your Halloween night using smart gear you might already have at home.

Bathe your entryway in bloodcurdling lighting

The trick: When costumed kiddies approach, have the front porch or doorway area automatically turn blood red.

What you need: Color smart bulbs, any Amazon Alexa device, and a video doorbell. (If you have a lengthy driveway, outdoor cameras would be great, too.)

How you do it: If you have any Alexa device (I like the Echo Dot because it’s the cheapest), you can easily conjure up this creepy effect using cameras or motion sensors. Just launch the Alexa app, tap More at the bottom, and then tap Routines. After you hit the plus sign in the upper-right corner, the app walks you through creating rules that will change the color of the bulbs as someone approaches and then put them back to normal after the visitor leaves. The motion sensor on each of my EufyCam 2 Pro Wireless outdoor cameras triggers my Routine to turn two porch-based Philips Wiz color smart bulbs red. I also have a separate Routine that changes them back to white if our Ring Video Doorbell Wired hasn’t sensed anyone’s presence for two minutes.

If you don’t have an outdoor camera, note that all video doorbells have motion detection, which can trigger the same effect when someone approaches the door or pushes the bell. For those without cameras, another option is to link a smart motion sensor to turn on smart bulbs.

Summon a thunderstorm in your entryway

The trick: Spawn a bone-chilling tempest for visitors on your porch, your walkway, or even inside, with convincing lights and sounds evoking lightning strikes, driving rain, and rumbling thunder.

What you need: Philips Hue color bulbs (any variety), the Thunderstorm for Hue iOS app or Android app, and one or more AirPlay or Bluetooth speakers.

How to do it: Install the Hue and Thunderstorm apps. Place your Hue bulb or bulbs—the effect works great with one bulb but gets even more powerful with a few—where you hope to mimic a thunderstorm. To make setup easier, in your Hue app create a Group of all your bulbs and name it something like “Halloween” or “death from above.” Place your speaker or speakers in the same area. If you’re using AirPlay, you can also group your speakers rather than selecting them individually.

Using your smartphone, select your speaker or speaker Group via Bluetooth or AirPlay. Open the Thunderstorm app, select Lights or Groups and pick which bulbs you want. Then select Storms and toggle on your desired type of storm, from a heavy thunderstorm to a light rain. Tapping the settings gear icon brings up a menu to tweak a variety of settings, such as the length of the storm cycle, the frequency of the lightning strikes, the color of the light, and more.

Turn a fake skull or jack-o’-lantern into a screaming head

The trick: Make your guests feel truly unwelcome by greeting them with a screaming skull (a plastic jack-o’-lantern works, too) as soon as they dare to press your doorbell with their greedy little claws.

What you need: A plastic Halloween skull or jack-o’-lantern, an older Echo Dot (the current-generation Dot is too big for most skulls), and a doorbell camera that works with Alexa Routines.

How you do it: If you happen to have a spare skull lying around, as well as a small smart speaker (I used a second-generation Echo Dot) and a smart doorbell camera to act as a trigger, you can greet visitors with a talking head. First, be sure to integrate your doorbell camera with the Alexa app—I used a Eufy wireless model, but other brands’ doorbell cameras will work, as well. (Some may require an Alexa Skill for this.) Next, cut a hole in the bottom of the skull or jack-o’-lantern that will allow you to hide the Echo Dot inside. Be sure to turn the Dot’s volume all the way up, because the skull may muffle the sound. Choose one of the several available Halloween sound effects in the Skills section of the Alexa app, and then create a Routine that activates the ghastly scream whenever someone presses the doorbell button. Place Mr. Bones on a table on your porch, preferably near the candy bowl. Use it in tandem with one of the lighting effects described above to make your porch especially unwelcoming.

If you don’t have a doorbell camera, an outdoor security camera or a motion sensor can also serve as the trigger. Also, if you don’t have a porch outlet to plug in your Echo Dot, you can use a small portable Bluetooth speaker like the Tribit XSound Go and wirelessly connect it to an Echo speaker inside the house, as long as it’s within Bluetooth range.

Have visitors trigger spooky whispers

The trick: Make your video doorbell completely creep out anyone standing on your front stoop.

What you need: Any video doorbell and an Amazon Alexa device, depending on the doorbell you have.

How you do it: Many of our video doorbell picks allow you to enable this trick in one way or another. Last year, I created a Routine in the Alexa app that would play wolf sounds on an Echo Dot in the window whenever someone rang my Arlo Video Doorbell. To access these effects, tap Sounds and Animals in the Alexa app. You can find creaky door effects, too. If you want something even more special, the Eufy Security Video Doorbell 2K (Wired) allows you to customize responses by tapping Doorbell Settings, then Quick Response. From there, you can record screams or even the Halloween theme, but you’ll need to manually enable them from the app whenever someone rings the doorbell. Before conjuring up any special spells, though, check your app: In the past, the Google Nest Doorbell (Wired), for example, allowed you to change the bell tone to Halloween sounds right in the Nest app.

If you don’t have a video doorbell, you can set up an outdoor camera to trigger sounds on an Echo Dot using Alexa Routines and the camera’s embedded motion detector. If you don’t want to spy on Halloweeners with any video devices, a smart motion sensor on the stairs or by the front door can trigger sounds instead.

With the spooky season just around the corner, you’re probably already thinking about how to throw the killer Halloween party — one that strikes a perfect balance between scary and delightful. Smart home tech can lend a hand and trigger effects that add to the atmosphere — or even send shivers down the spines of trick-or-treaters who dare to come to your doorstep.

Whatever your goal this Halloween, you don’t have to invest in a lot of gadgets to make it happen. If you have a basic smart home setup, you might already have everything you need to add some chills and fun to your next monster mash.

Use motion sensors to trigger spooky sounds

Have a smart home security system? Then you can probably rig up your motion sensors to play a spooky noise. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a motion sensor, either — your smart camera can trigger other devices in your smart home when it detects motion.

Just place a speaker on your porch, perhaps tucked away behind a pumpkin or a bit of straw. When a group of unsuspecting kids show up to ask for candy, they set off the motion sensor on the camera, which triggers the speaker to play the sound of a zombie’s moan or the cackle of a witch. Bonus points if you set up an animatronic hand to rise up out of the straw.

Let smart lights set the mood

Thanks to your smart lights, you can cast a ghastly glow over your entire home. The moment guests walk in the door, they’ll be greeted by the glow of your lights. You could even set up the lights in one particular room to glow red.

Smart lights let you take things even further. Almost all smart lights have special effects you can use to cause them to flicker. Implement these effects throughout your home to immerse party guests deeper into the theme of your party. If you have an individual smart light that you can plug in through an extension cord, you can even use them to light up your pumpkins.

Let Alexa suggest a movie for you

Your Echo can serve as the control center for your entire party, changing the lights as needed to keep up the mood. At the same time, you can ask Alexa to suggest a movie for you. If you’re not a fan of over-the-top scary movies and prefer something a bit more lighthearted, just ask.

There are numerous Alexa Skills like Movie Recommender, MovieBot, and others that can suggest a movie to you. If a Scooby Doo marathon sounds more up your alley than a Scream marathon, Alexa can help you find the perfect flick that won’t have you sleeping with the lights on.

Rock the night away with the Rocky Horror soundtrack

A good party is comprised of several different elements: Tasty food, the proper atmosphere, and great sound. You’ll want background music of some kind playing at your party, especially if you don’t have movies showing. It can be tough to find the right music for a Halloween party, but thanks to services like Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and more, you can play the soundtracks of your favorite movies.

There are also numerous fan-made playlists you can tap into. After all, what’s a Halloween party without someone playing Thriller at max volume?

Use smart plugs to power up fog machines

It might not be a dark and stormy night in your neck of the woods, but it sure can be a foggy one. If you use a smoke machine to make the environment just a bit spookier, a smart plug is the perfect way to control the machine. You can activate it from your phone.

Even better, you could have the plug turn on when someone triggers a motion sensor in a different room. Imagine starting to walk down a hallway, only for it to be flooded with fog. It makes it easy for you to turn your home into a haunted house in the best possible way (minus all the actual ghosts.)

October is just around the corner, and with it comes the perfect time to celebrate your love of the macabre. Let your smart home help you throw the perfect Halloween party this year or make your porch the spookiest one in the neighborhood.

There’s no doubt that the number one reason for converting your dwelling into a smart home is convenience. That being said, there’s a heck of a lot of fun you can have with all those smart devices as well. For those of us that love Halloween, there’s no better time to turn a connected home into a thematic playland. Here are some of the best ideas for a Halloween smart home.

Halloween smart home lighting

This is probably the first thing that comes to mind when brainstorming Halloween smart home ideas. However, there may be more to it than you think. Certainly, you can do the basics—set lights to turn on or off at a certain time, and if you have the right smart lights, choose the color as well. The real fun comes when you set things up for a proper scare.

Use motion sensors to have indoor or outdoor lights turn on and cast an eerie glow as people approach. Or perhaps even better, turn off. Phillips Hue lights are a favorite this time of year thanks to pre-programmed scary routines in the official Hue app and those of third-party developers. And the Hue Go portable smart lamp is perfect for sticking in pumpkins or tucking away in a spot no one would ever expect a sudden burst of eerie light. Remember, you don’t need to break the bank on an army of new smart lights; a batch of smart outlets can allow you to plan spooky lighting scares with conventional lighting as well.

Halloween smart home sounds

A change in light can make your scare-victim nervous, but it’s often that eerie noise that’ll elicit a satisfying scream. So what do we do to redefine the term “scary smart?” How about synchronizing a smart speaker to your lights so that as your quarry walks into the room, the lights go off and a blood-curdling scream rings out? (Sorry Mom, you knew what you were getting into when you decided to visit our Halloween smart home on October 31.) If you’re just hoping to create a general air of Halloween scare, a simple “Hey Google, get spooky,” or “Alexa, play spooky sounds/music,” will give you just the right soundtrack.

Ghoulish greetings

With the exception of security devices, most of our smart devices tend to be indoors. Some of the most fun you can have on Halloween, though, is delighting trick or treaters. No problem; we just need to get a bit creative with those Halloween smart home ideas.

Just like the aforementioned pumpkins, you can light up your tombstones and skeletons with portable smart lights (you’ll want to disguise them and the fact they’re portable so as not to attract sticky-fingered passers-by). And what’s a graveyard without some fog? An affordable fog machine and an outdoor-safe smart outlet will help you create a perfectly timed terrifying experience for your visitors.

The experience doesn’t have to be over when they get to the door. If you’ve got a smart doorbell like Ring or Google’s Nest Hello, you can replace your soothing chime with something more fiendishly fitting for trick-or-treaters.

Get your smart assistant in on the fun

Your smart assistants are just dying to help make your Halloween an unforgettable one. They’ve got far more to offer than turning on lights and spooky sounds. Ask your Amazon Echo, Google Nest or other assistant to tell you a Halloween joke for a good helping of on-theme cheese. Find out where the closest costume store is for that last-minute Halloween party.

Alexa really shines here, because thanks to its host of addable Skills, everything from spooky stories to choose your own adventure games is just a voice command away.

You can also make trick-or-treating a zero-contact affair using your smart speaker’s intercom feature ( Just use the“Hey, Google – Broadcast” command with Google Nest or the Drop In feature with Alexa) to communicate with trick-or-treaters. Get alerted to trick-or-treaters’ arrival by your smart camera, then direct them to the candy (or make them earn it with an unexpected, “Boo!”)

Why Ting Internet is the best for spooky smart homes

Ting Internet’s fast fiber internet is perfect for powering your Halloween smart home. With plenty of bandwidth, there’s no such thing as too many devices, regardless of how many household members are streaming the best Halloween movies or pre-downloading spooky shows and music. The reliability of fiber also means you won’t have to worry about dropouts and service interruptions. Ready to upgrade and future-proof your internet? Choose your town and check your address to see if Ting Internet is available in your neighborhood!

Halloween season is approaching and you may be wondering how to incorporate smart Halloween decorations into your home this year. Everything from smart lights to Halloween projectors can elevate your Halloween decorations to a new level of fright and fun. And if you have smart home devices, you can enhance your spook factor even more with compatible smart decor.

Here are our eight favorite smart Halloween decorations for this year.

1. Spook Guests With a Musical Pumpkin

First impressions matter. And you can create a spine-chilling experience for your guests as they step up to your porch. Simply place a portable speaker inside your outdoor jack-o’-lantern and stream your spooky Halloween playlist.

Just make sure the speaker is small enough to fit inside a pumpkin, is charged, and waterproof.

2. Program a Halloween Sound on Your Ring Doorbell

Another thing you can do to scare your guests is to set chilling sounds on your Ring doorbell. Two of the spookiest sounds available include the Scream and Addams Family Chime tones. These sounds are sure to give your guests the feeling of visiting a haunted home.

Here’s how to set a Halloween sound on your Ring doorbell:

1. Open the Ring app and tap the three lines on the top left of the screen.
2. Tap “Devices” and select your doorbell.
3. Tap the “Audio Settings” icon and select “Chime Tones.”
4. Select your preferred Chime Tone.
5. Tap the “Save Changes” button to set it.

3. Set the Mood With Philips Hue Lights

The next thing you can do to up your smart Halloween decorations game is to invest in smart lights. Philips Hue is a line of smart light bulbs and light strips that you can operate with your smartphone or your voice assistant.

The Philips Hue light bulbs help you create a perfect Halloween ambience with 16 million colors to choose from. These smart light bulbs allow you to set custom scenes, including eerie lighting for your windows or walkways.

For example, you can replace the normal light bulbs in your lamps with Philips Hue light bulbs, then place the lamps near windows to create a ghostly glow at night visible from outside.

Alternatively for a ghoulish interior atmosphere, you can choose a color like Blood Moon to set the mood for your Halloween party or horror movie marathon.

4. Host a Haunted Smart Home Experience With Smart Assistants

If you connect the smart lights to your Google Assistant, Siri, or Alexa, you can prompt the assistant to start your mysterious playlist and flicker your smart lights. Just set the automation first, and then, depending on which device you have, say:

• “Ok, Google, let’s get spooky.”
• “Hey Siri, let’s get spooky.”
• “Alexa, let’s get spooky.”

5. Tell Scary Stories With Alexa

Though this one isn’t technically a Halloween decoration, it can still help you set the perfect Halloween mood. Whether you’re all alone at home this Halloween or have guests over, you can ask Alexa to tell you a scary story. The scary story library Alexa has is perfectly frightening and tailored to a variety of scare levels and age groups, which makes it ideal for the whole family.

Then, when the kids go to sleep, you can ask Alexa to tell stories that are even scarier. To do so, enable the Boo Bot skill on your Alexa, and then say, “Alexa, ask Boo Bot for a scary story.”

6. Create a Scary Scene With a Smart Projector

Nebula Capsule is one of the best options for a portable mini projector that you can control with your iOS- or Android-powered device. You can also connect the projector to a computer using USB or HDMI cables to watch movies from your memory card. Or, you can create a scary scene by streaming a Halloween favorite from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, or more.

What’s more, Nebula Capsule will project an image up to 100 inches. This feature of Nebula Capsule enables you to do some cool things like play a family-friendly Halloween movie in your front yard for trick-or-treaters.

7. Activate a Motion Sensor to Scare Trick-or-Treaters

With the Philips motion sensor, you can trigger your Halloween decorations to scare at just the right moment, making trick-or-treaters drop their candy in fright. This sensor eliminates the hassle of manually turning a decoration on and off, and instead lets you set up an automation to activate a smart decoration.

For example, you can command the motion sensor to:

• Start a light show
• Turn on a fog machine
• Play music

8. Project AtmosFX Halloween Decorations for Animated Fun

AtmosFX is a Seattle-based company producing different Halloween-themed characters in digital Halloween decorations. Once you purchase your preferred set of animated projections, you can play them on your TV, PC, or project them onto your windows, walls, side of your house, or front porch. You can even use a motion sensor device to enable your characters to jump out to scare your guests.

For example, the Bone Chillers digital decoration collection is a set of short-movie animations that tell different stories featuring boisterous skeletons. You can project the skeletons dancing, playing music or generally creating a Halloween ruckus.

Ready to Bring a Spooky Experience into Your Home?

Smart Halloween decorations are not only fun but they last a long time, too. Buying a projector may seem like an investment, but with the proper care and storage, you should have it for many Halloweens to come. Plus, when it comes to projectors, smart lights, and portable speakers, you can also use them to decorate for other holidays and events. Let the smart spooky season begin!

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With so many tools at your disposal, it’s now easier than ever to spook your friends and family with a haunted smart home this Halloween. Take advantage of smart lighting and sound effects to startle guests, program your smart home assistant to play silly tricks, and utilize smart plugs to set things in motion via your smartphone or tablet.

And, the best part of all – with all the help you get from your smart home scaring up a reaction from your nearest and dearest, you’ll have plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the show when all of your hard work pays off!

Here are a few of our favorite ideas to help turn your space into the ultimate Halloween smart home.

Smart Sound Effects

How can you play scary sound effects in your Halloween smart home? Let us count the ways!

Turn your guests ghostly pale with a mixture of creepy sounds and haunting music (we love this award-winning Halloween soundtrack by Cinema Braille), using the Google Home or Sonos Play smart speakers to play the scary soundtrack from a hidden corner.

Or, simply tuck a portable Bluetooth speaker indoors or out, and pair it with your smartphone to fire up the sound when an unsuspecting victim walks by.

We love using a smart speaker, because not only can you control the soundtrack with your voice or phone app, but you can also issue commands to your smart lighting setup, smart plugs, and any other smart devices, as well.

Google Home, Alexa or Samsung SmartThings can also be paired up with the Philips Hue lighting system, so you can sync up your smart lights with your Halloween soundtrack for a horrifying effect. Watch as the lights flicker with each scary footstep or creepy door squeak, and dim along with the rising and falling music.

Spooky Smart Lighting

You can set the mood with spooky lighting virtually anywhere, thanks to the Philips Hue Go portable smart light. The Philips Hue Go can be plugged in for regular use, but where it really shines is in its versatility.

Unplug the Philips Hue Go and tuck it inside a jack-o-lantern, behind a shower curtain, or in any other area of your choice, and it’ll give you up to three hours of rechargeable ambient lighting that will really put the scare in your guests.

These portable lamps pair with the rest of the Philips Hue smart lighting system, so you’ll have them connected to your Philips Hue bridge via your WiFi connection. This means you’ll be able to control the Philips Hue Go’s virtually infinite array of creepy colors right from your smartphone or tablet, as well as sync it up with other Philips Hue lighting in your haunted smart home.

Of course your Philips Hue lighting setup can be installed in regular lighting fixtures already in your home. Simply screw in the A19 light bulbs from the Philips Hue starter kit, pair them with the hub, and you’ll be able to control an array of scary settings through the Philips Hue app.

Paired with the Philips Hue dimmer or motion sensor, the scary surprises you can pull off are endless. Plus, the Philips Hue smart lighting system easily connects with your Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, as well as your Nest or Samsung SmartThings systems.

Smart safety this Halloween

Keep an eye on trick-or-treaters, and make sure that this Halloween is safe (as well as fun), with an easily-installed Ring smart doorbell or Nest camera.

Halloween can give usthe jitters – but it’s easy to avoid scary surprises when you’ve got an eye in the sky. With real-time streaming video to your smartphone,tablet, or even right to your television via your smart home hub, you can see who’s at the door each time the bell rings, and even communicate with visitors via the two-way microphone.

Are vampires really real? Who’s to say? But you can set your mind at ease when you check out what’s going on outside your home – after all, could a real vampire be that adorable?

Puls is There for All Your Halloween Needs

Whether it’s by mounting your TV, installing smart devices or fixing your shattered phone on the fly, Puls is there to support and facilitate all your technological needs this Halloween. Our expert technicians will come to you in a flash – within the same day – so you can relax and enjoy the Halloween festivities without worry.

Book a smart home installation online anytime and let our technicians help you make the most of of your Halloween experience. Click here to get $10 off your first service with us.

This post is in partnership with Amazon Devices. All opinions are our own.

Spooky season is here! Halloween will be our first holiday in our new home and our first Halloween living in a neighborhood with lots of kids, so we were stoked to get our Halloween decorations all set. It took us a second to find the right balance between “fun spooky” and “terrifying spooky”—you know, making sure we don’t completely terrify the adorable kids across the street. I had to return several quarts of fake blood but I think we succeeded!

We used pumpkins and gourds to create a natural fall vibe, and Matt made a ghost & pumpkin garland out of card stock for a cute factor. We also included some classics like webs and spiders, and brought it all to life with a few of our Amazon Devices.

We put Halloween-themed string lights around the perimeter of our large living room windows and plugged them into an Amazon Smart Plug so we could set them up on voice control and to turn on as part of a routine.

Our porch is already set up with Philips Hue multicolor light bulbs, so we were able to change the color to a ghoulish red for a little added

. We created an Alexa Routine with our Echo Dot (check out the all new dot here!) where all we say is “Alexa make it spooky” and the lights come right on to showcase the decor.

We kept the decorations to the front of the house only, but the whole time we were getting it all set up we talked about how much fun it will be whenever we have kids to just have Halloween decorations creeping throughout the home. Like, a little haunted house in the spare room brought to life with these devices would be incredible. One day!

We’ve got more photos of our spooky set up below for you. Have a happy Halloween!

– Oct. 8th 2021 9:00 am PT

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Halloween is almost here, and HomeKit provides a lot of fun ways to automate your Halloween decorations to offer a little “cyber spooking” to trick or treaters as they come knocking.

HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.

Outdoor motion sensors

One of the simplest ways to add a bit of smart home flair to your Halloween decorations is to leverage outdoor motion sensors to switch on something spooky when someone turns up on your porch. Typically, you’d use outdoor motion sensors to provide light for someone as they walked up to your front porch. However, on Halloween, you want it to be the opposite. You’ll want it pitch black as they approach, and right when they hit the steps, a HomeKit motion sensor would detect them and flip on the light to something scary.

There are a handful of outdoor motion sensors, so it’ll depend on your current setup. I have a Hue bridge for my indoor Hue bulbs, so I use the Hue outdoor motion sensor. If you aren’t in the Hue ecosystem yet, you could use a HomeKit camera from Eve as a motion sensor. A bonus reason to use a camera is that you can capture some fun hysterics when kids scream. If you want to opt for the battery camera route, you can use one of the eufy HomeKit kits to record and act as a HomeKit motion sensor. Regardless of which way you go, having the motion sensor is the integral first piece of your fun.

Set the stage

Once you have your motion sensor in place, you’ll need to build out the second way to give a “trick” when unsuspecting trick or treaters approach. You’ll need to set up an outdoor HomeKit plug that can be configured to come on by detecting motion.

Once the plug is in place, you’ll need to source some scary decorations. What you’ll need is going to depend on your budget and porch setup, but you could go with a Ghost theme or a Grim Reaper. If you’ve placed the motion sensor in your yard, you can go more significant on the decorations.

You could even go with a two-prong approach and scare kids as they come through your yard, and get them again once they’re on the porch using something like this scary ghost decoration. The possibilities are endless. As long as the decorations are powered by a traditional power outlet and have an instant-on capability, you can pair anything.

Gear needed to build a HomeKit Halloween setup

To put this into place, here’s a list of the gear you’ll need. For the motion sensor, you’ll either need a Gue motion sensor or a HomeKit camera that can act as a motion sensor – not both.

• Hue Motion Sensor – requires bridge
• Eve cam – doesn’t require a bridge
• Outdoor HomeKit plug

If you plan to put this into place, I’d love to see how it turns out. Let me know on Twitter @bradleychambers

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Use Whole House Audio and Other Smart Tech To Spook Up Your Home

It’s that time of the year when ghouls emerge from the shadows and humanity’s fears are made manifest. Or that time of the year when kids dress up like superheroes and cartoon characters and give everyone a reason to gorge on candy. However you view Halloween, it’s a holiday that gives you a lot of opportunities to have fun decorating your home and tapping into the scarier side of your creativity.

Nothing says Halloween like a haunted house costume party, but you don’t need to build your home on sacred burial grounds to give it creepy Halloween vibes. You can turn your Westlake Village home into a den of terror with a smart home automation system that allows you to dramatically alter the atmosphere of your space with the push of a button.

This Halloween, set your front door passcode to 666 and invite friends and family over for a wild ride driven by smart home automation. Read on to learn how whole home audio and video, lighting control, and smart security allow you to create an immersive, entertaining haunted house experience.

Whole Home Audio and Video

Whole home audio and video allows you to play scary music and movies in any room, and you can choose what media to play where from a single control interface on your smartphone or tablet. A media distribution system makes it easier than ever to create spooky spaces. Have each room play an audio track that creates a specific ambiance, whether it’s the clanking of chains, the screams of the damned, or the sound of roaring flames. If you have a themed haunted house, TVs throughout the house can all play different movies in that category so guests are surrounded by horror media.

Lighting Control

Lighting is an essential element of any haunted house, and you can customize your lighting configurations with your smart home control system. With full-spectrum LED smart bulbs, you can color your rooms any shade you want, and adjust the brightness to create a darker, more ominous environment. If you’re going for a slasher theme, you can paint rooms bloody red. Add yellows and oranges to create a fiery hellscape. Maybe you want to go with monochromatic black-and-white lighting for a Hitchcock haunted house. Thanks to streamlined smart home control, you can adjust these lighting designs from the same app that controls your multi-room A/V.

Smart Security

If you have a haunted house open to neighborhood kids, you want to make sure that your guests and your home are both safe and secure. If some areas are off-limits, surveillance cameras or motion sensors send you an alert if they detect activity in those spots.

You can set a custom door code for when your home is in haunted house mode, but when the Halloween fun is over, it will revert to your family’s standard code. Smart home automation makes this process quick and easy so that you can throw a big Halloween bash without any worries.

The best part about your smart home automation system is that, unlike all those haunted house decorations, you’ll still be using it on November 1. You can learn about the year-round design, entertainment, and security benefits of whole home audio and other smart home technology by reaching out to one of our experts at (877) 248-2878 or by clicking here.

By Christine Hunsaker

Have a safe and spooky halloween with a little Smart Home magic from Control4!

Halloween Harmonies for Smart Home Streaming

By Crystal Watts

. So it seemed fitting that with Halloween just a few nights away, we give you quick-access to some streaming stations that we have cherry-picked for you—all complete with scary (or fun) sounds and songs to play for your door-to-door tricksters or party-goers. Here are a few soundtracks and playlists from Pandora, Rhapsody, TIDAL & TuneIn—sorry Deezer-lovers, the service isn’t available in the states just yet, so we weren’t able to help with your playlist picking, but I’m sure you’ll find some good picks below!

Automation Turned “Hauntomation”

By Crystal Watts

We’ve heard about some pretty cool things—besides the home—that people around the world are automating, such as spas and salons, car dealerships, fitness centers, driving ranges and bowling alleys, a super cool equestrian center, and the list goes on and on. But one of the more ironic ones we’ve seen was a project that popped up on our radar just this month in our own backyard. It’s called the “Scared Haunt,” and it’s a fully-automated haunted house that.

Using Your Home Automation System to Make this Halloween Scary-Smart

By Crystal Watts

Thanks to our newest issue of Home Smart Home, we have some pretty cool home automation tricks-and-treats to share with you this Halloween that will make your Control4 system scary-smart. Below are a few suggestions for October, but click on the image below to see ideas for November and December as well, just in time for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

Halloween Edition – How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse: Control4 Style

We all know it’s inevitable, and only a matter of time..No not for another Frankenstorm or a Republican in office again, but the Zombie Apocalypse. Assuming there isn’t a massive outbreak of the T Virus, and our Zombies resemble that of Shaun of the Dead,

Halloween is just around the corner. And while it’s meant to be a bit of fun, a recent study we ran revealed that lots of you have genuine concerns about home security at this time of year. Over a fifth of Brits (22%) worry that their house will fall prey to vandals taking Halloween tricks too far. And 19% of you are scared about opening the door to people in fancy dress (we’ve got every nineties horror film to thank for that).

Either way, whether you’re a Halloween lover or loather, we’ve got some tips to help keep your family safe and home protected. As well as some ways you can use smart tech to get your home all Halloweened up.

Protect your home with a smart camera

If you’re worried about protecting your home, a smart security camera is a great way to put your mind at ease.

First up, having one on the outside of your house acts as a deterrent before it’s even put to use. And as soon as your camera detects movement, it will send an alert straight to your smartphone. You can then use your phone to watch a live stream and see whether it’s anything suspicious. So whether you’re out trick or treating with the kids or away for the weekend, you can quickly check everything’s ok back home.

With facial recognition and night vision our smart camera is also a great way to see who’s at the front door. Use the two-way audio feature and you won’t even need to open the door to speak to any dressed-up revellers on your doorstep. You can even recommend that they collect a sweet from the pumpkin all from the safety and comfort of your own home.

Use smart lights to trick anyone snooping where they shouldn’t

Lots of us leave lights on to make it look like someone’s home – it’s a simple way to help avoid a burglary. But setting up Hive Lights and Mimic mode makes thing much more believable.

Hive’s Mimic mode turns your lights on automatically in a random, slightly different pattern each evening. It’s ideal for distracting trick or treaters up to anything more sinister than looking for sweets, while you’re out.

Halloween lover? Set up smart lights for some fright-night fun

If, on the other hand, you DO love Halloween, smart tech isn’t just for protecting your children and home – it’s great for getting into the spooky spirit of things too. If you’re hosting a Halloween party, for example, how about using some smart lights to transform your home?

Our special coloured smart lights glow in 16 million colours, all of which can be controlled straight from your smartphone. So it’s really easy to turn your kitchen a gruesome red or your sitting room a zombie green.

Use smart sensors to spook your guests

And if you have more than one Hive device, you can use Hive Actions to easily connect devices, so they can work together to create the ultimate haunted house experience.

For instance, hook your speakers up to a smart plug, link it to a motion sensor in the hallway and it will play spooky sounds every time someone walks past. Or link a smart sensor to your lights and they will come on automatically. Sensors are really easy to set up and are a great way to have a bit of fun with your friends and family this Halloween.

Our security packs contain all the products you need to protect your home – no magic spells required. Check them out on the Home Security page.

It’s getting dark and spooky outside and the ghosts and goblins will soon descend to trick or treat at your door. If you’re a tech person, it’s time to step up your game beyond window decals and pictures of black cats. I’ve rounded up 10 easy gadgets that will help kick your Halloween decor up a notch.

1. Phillps Hue – This is a fun customizable way to light up your home. Phillips has starter kits that include LED color bulbs and the Hue Bridge. You can use light strips and even motion detector sensors to trigger your spooky Halloween scenes. Use the Phillips Halloween scenes or get the mobile app to crate and fine tune your own scenes and light schedules.
2. Wyze Sense + Smart Plug
   If you know the Wyze name, it’s because they are the company who has $20 home security cameras. But the company has expanded to some smart plugs, lights and sensors. Use the Wyze Sense kit and the Wyze Plug, you can use the motion sensor to turn the plug on and off, triggering anything…something to turn on, laugh, jump out, or even a bullhorn if you’re feeling truly evil.
3. Sonos Speakers
   Spooky music or sounds always give me goosebumps. Sonos speakers sound amazing and integrate with other steaming devices (which all now have Halloween inspired sons and horror sound effects). Any Sonos will do, but some are small enough to hide right around the corner and are discrete like the One SL.
4. Ring’s Addams Family Chime
   Originally released to promote the “The Addams Family,” movie last year the Addams Family chime works on any of Ring’s video cameras or doorbells. Set it up and when the cameras detect motion or when someone rings your doorbell you can have it sound like the bell in the Addams Family. You can also choose to use the two-way audio feature on the Ring cameras to scare people as they walk past. You know, if you’re into that kind of thing.
5. NanoLeaf
   The Nanoleaf arranges for light panels in creative patters to be on the wall. Fine tune the colors or use voice control like Alexa, Siri, or Google assistant to turn them on or off.
6. Ultimate Ears Wonderboom2
   A rugged, portable speaker that can be left outside. Best of all, it can fit into a pumpkin and is waterproof with a 13-hour battery life. Buy two and work in stereo or just use on to steam spooky sounds or the Monster Mash!
7. Samsung SmartThings Wifi Smart Plug
   Plug in lights, a speaker, animatronics or whatever you want! This product integrates with the rest of the SmartThings Platform without a hub. You can set timers, schedules and control the plug via the app.
8. LIFX color lighting
   These bulbs feature tiles that are similar to the Nanoleaf, along with colored bulbs that work much like the Phillips Huge- but don’t require a bridge! There is also a mini colored light bulb that will set you back $34.99!
9. Nest Hello
   You can sit and watch “The Shining”, or “The Exorcist” confident to when your next trick or treater is on their way with the Nest Hello. Just ask Google to show your front door and a live feed from the doorbell will appear. This product will also keep an eye on decorations and pumpkins after you have gone to bed…no toilet papering of your house!
10. Anker Nebula Capsule Projector
    Blast your favorite horror flicks on your garage door for all to watch using the Nebula Capsule projector. The $299.99 Nebula Capsule runs Android, connects via Wi-Fi and will stream directly from Netflix or YouTube. It will project an image up to 100 inches and is built for outdoor use. If you have a collection of movies you want to play, you can connect a computer to it using USB or HDMI.

The best part about using smart home products to spice up your Halloween décor is that you don’ have to buy these items and use them once. You can use these year round for all of your holiday fun, or just to create a get together or party atmosphere.

Best Smart Home Treats to Trick your Halloween Guests Android Central 2022

Halloween may seem like an old-school holiday, filled with bedroom sheet ghosts, dollar-store candy corn, and fog machines that never seem to work right, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. Halloween is a holiday where the bleeding edge of smart home tech proves that you don’t need buckets of fake syrupy blood to scare your guests’ socks off. Whether you’re looking to scare trick-or-treaters away and keep all that candy to yourself or want to spook guests at your mysterious masquerade, there are a lot of tools at your disposal.

Hide-able helper : Nest Mini

For blending into your spiderweb-covered foyers and controlling your “haunted” home, the new and improved Nest Mini is perfect. Google Assistant is compatible with over 10,000 smart devices, and the Mini has dozens of mounts, covers, and bases to hide it away or dress it up.

Pump the party : Amazon Echo (3rd gen)

Amazon’s updates have made the 3rd gen Echo sound almost as good as the Echo Plus while giving it a plusher look that blends in better with your decor. This speaker can easily keep the tunes flowing or some spooky sounds like a thundering storm.

Durable dead-raising beats : Tronsmart Force

Few smart speakers are portable or waterproof, but they can pair with Bluetooth speakers that are both, like this one! We threw this one four stories into a pool, so it should be able to stand up to most of the undead insanity your party has planned. It also charges over USB-C, which is a real treat!

Pint-size spook-er : Braven BRV-Mini

This smaller-than-a-soda speaker gets a surprisingly loud sound out of its waterproof little housing, making it perfect for pranks. Just hide it behind one of your skeletons and watch kids run away in terror when you broadcast your loudest evil laugh to it via a paired Nest Mini!

Let there be (creepy) light! : Philips Hue Starter Kit

Philips Hue lights are easy to set up, easy to control via Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, and this kit will give you a Hue Bridge and two A19 color bulbs to use in any standard socket. Ditch boring white for ghoulish green and poison purple glows in and out of your home.

Strip down your lighting : Nexlux LED Strip Lights

If Hue lights are a bit much for your wallet, no problem! This kit is more affordable, and strip lights are also easier to roll out your spooky lighting covertly, mounting them under the edge of your roof or under the edges of cabinets. They make great lights for cookie-making parties, too!

Old-school goes new-school : TP-Link Kasa Smart Outdoor Plug

Smart plugs can control just about any old-school Halloween effect that operates off a traditional plug, and this name-brand smart plug is a two-fer. You get two smart plugs off one outlet, and its IP64 water-resistant for using with outdoor effects, like that inflatable hydra on the front lawn.

Light the way : Ring Smart Lights Pathlight Starter Kit

Ring offers a variety of different Smart Light options that you can pick from, but the pathlights are especially useful for lighting up the walkway to your front door for kiddos in clunky costumes and vision-obscuring masks. Ring’s smart lights are motion-activated and battery-powered.

Ding Dong DOOOOOOOM : Google Nest Hello Video Doorbell

The Google Nest Hello Video Doorbell is the smartest video doorbell you can buy. Aside from the Spooky Sounds package, Nest Hello pairs perfectly with Google Assistant, making it easy to watch tricksters and treaters through your smart displays or Chromecast.

Spooks, surprises, and sweet technological treats

Lights are a surprisingly important part of a holiday that’s all about the dark. Even if you don’t want to go whole-hog with Philips Hue, the Nexlux strip lights are a fun way to spook up a room. You can evem control them with the new and improved Nest Mini speaker from across the room during your Halloween masquerade.

If you’ve got a Nest Hello doorbell, scaring trick-or-treaters is as easy as setting the new Spooky Sounds theme. Once Halloween’s over, you’ll be able to swap it out for one of four festive winter themes for Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, or “generic winter sounds.” A Nest Hellow doorbell is also a worthwhile investment as we head into the holiday shipping season, as Halloween pirates are cute, but porch pirates are not.

We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.

These are the best smart plugs that work with Google Home and Alexa

Save on your energy costs with the best smart plugs for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Here are some of our favorites compatible with multiple smart voice assistants.

The best smart locks that support Google Home and Assistant in 2021

Smart locks are great tools for keeping your home safe, and if you’ve got a Google Assistant speaker, these can be controlled by just using your voice.

Believe it or not, Philips Hue is not the only smart bulb you can buy

The are plenty of smart lights available similar to Philips Hue bulbs at nearly half the cost. Most offer easy management from a designated app on your smartphone or tablet, too.

Ara Wagoner

Ara Wagoner is a Writer at Android Central. She themes phones and pokes YouTube Music with a stick. When she’s not writing about cases, Chromebooks, or customization, she’s wandering around Walt Disney World. If you see her without headphones, RUN. You can follow her on Twitter at @arawagco.

Your Chime can now scream, and your doorbell can talk back with attitude

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Share All sharing options for: Ring’s Halloween doorbell ringtones are back along with new spooky quick replies

Ring brings spooky ringtones to its video doorbells in time for Halloween. Image: Ring

Following in the now annual tradition of the spooky smart home, Ring has released its seasonal ding dongs. In honor of the festive season, you can turn your Ring Video Doorbell’s interior Chime’s tone to a screeching cat, a creaky door, or my personal favorite, the creepy laugh, for the month of October. There are a handful of other scary tones also, nine in total, which is eight more than Google is offering on its Nest doorbell.

To up the spooky ante this year, Ring has a new trick as an extra treat: a selection of Halloween-themed Quick Replies, a free feature that lets your doorbell answer for you. Now, when a visitor presses the Ring buzzer, it can talk back to them with these additions to the standard preset responses:

“Tell us what brings you here. or we’ll put a spell on you!”

“Boo! Leave us a message if you dare [evil laugh].”

“Just a minute! Feel free to park your broom.”

“Please leave the package (and any hocus pocus) outside.

Personally, I’d like one that says, “All the candy is gone, move along now.”

Billed by Ring as the busiest doorbell day of the year, Halloween is definitely a day when a video doorbell shines. I’ve had hours of fun scaring trick or treaters — or UPS delivery drivers — in years past when the seasonal tones roll around. (Pro tip: plug the Chime in right by the front door, as the ringtone on the doorbell itself doesn’t change). Although, sadly, it seems the scare factor is wearing off somewhat as doorbell cameras become more ubiquitous.

However, the new Quick Replies come right from the doorbell itself, not through the Ring Chime, so they might have a bit more of fright factor. These launched today (the ringtones arrived in mid-September) and will be replaced by winter holiday-themed options at the end of this month.

Ring wants to help you decorate your front door this season. Image: Ring

The Quick Replies feature is available on all Ring doorbells other than the base model Ring Video Doorbell Wired. If you have a Ring Protect Plan, you can use it as an answering machine and view the recorded video and audio of the visitor in the app, but you don’t need a subscription for the replies themselves. You set up Quick Replies in the Ring App, which is also where you can change the ringtone on your Chime.

How to scare trick-or-treaters when they come knocking at your door

Halloween is right around the corner and now is the time to break out the decorations and horror flick marathons. While spiderwebs, pumpkins and costume makeup are great ways to decorate your home for the night of fright, why not change things up this year by adding new technology that can provide over the top experiences for the soon-to-be trick-or-treaters. Here are some ideas we came up with to make your smart home the talk of the neighborhood. Check out these new smart devices and system which are easy to setup and get you into the Halloween spirit this year.

Decorative Video Doorbells

If you own a Ring video doorbell or Google Nest Doorbell, you have options to help you get ready for Halloween. For Ring users, you have three ways to get into the spirit, the company is bringing new themed face plates, chime tones and quick replies to your Ring Video Doorbells. They announced Ring Video Doorbell owners can purchase or add Halloween customizations to their Ring devices starting October 11, 2021. In case you don’t know, Quick Replies are part of the interactive answering machine experience for Ring video doorbells. Every time someone pushes your Ring Video Doorbell, and you can’t answer the door, a quick reply can play. For Halloween, Ring has created six preset Halloween themed responses for users to choose from and play on their Ring Video doorbell. You can also buy Halloween themed faceplates or replace the famous Ring “Ding Dong” sound to scarier chime tone, like a screeching cat or creaky door all in the Ring app.

For Google Nest Doorbell owners, (this includes Nest Hello and new Google Nest Doorbell – battery) you can get Halloween themed tones like skeleton dance, skeleton dance, a spooky raven, a ghostly boo or my favorite, a howling werewolf. Just go to your Google Home app and tap on your doorbell. Then select settings and doorbell theme. Then you can choose your seasonal doorbell therm. Note you need to make sure your Google Home app is the latest version (2.44.1.8), and the Halloween theme is only available until November 1st.

Philips

Light up the night

Nothing says spooky like dark and decorative lighting. To amp up the mood, try installing some Philips dimmable color light strips in the living room and outside. You can choose from 16 million colors — including purples, oranges and reds — all of which you can control with timers, smart controls and voice control. Don’t forget to purchase some individuals smart lights as well to place inside your jack-o’-lanterns and other decorations to take them to the next level. Also, Hue has an array of smart outdoor lighting products, including spotlights, light bars, spot lights, wall light extension and pathway lights which can be linked together using the Hue app or voice commands using compatible Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant enabled smart devices. (Check out The GearBrain, our smart home compatibility find engine to see the other compatible products that work with Philips Hue smart lights.)

iStock

Set the foggy scene

Halloween can’t get too far along without eerie fog seeping out of the woodworks. If you are looking to add some ghostly appearances to your living room and/or door step, a wireless fog machine is the way to go. There are hundreds of great options for this particular product, but if you want to control your hauntingly decorated home from your smart phone, consider a fog machine like the Antari WiFi 800 fog machine or Theefun Fog Machine with Wireless and Wired controls. Antari is compatible with iPhones and Androids and Theefun comes with a remote control so users can determine how much fog they want to produce and for how long.

iStock

Alexa provides tricks, treats and everything in between

Alexa is the ultimate sidekick for Halloween this year. She not only plays just about any creepy tune, from “Monster Mash” to the sounds of ghouls and goblins for your Halloween party, but she can also help you with creating the scariest atmosphere yet. Alexa’s skills have been upgraded to play pranks on the other people in your home, provide fun facts and games, yell spooky screams, tell scary stories, and even help you pick out the perfect Halloween costume.

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Sense the scare

Halloween is all about expecting the unexpected. With the Philips Hue Motion Sensor, you can sync up your Philips lights, Alexa and many other devices to set off a startling show when trick-or-treaters arrive at your door. You can also time sounds, lights and other effects to turn on and off at various moments if you don’t plan on being home Halloween night, or control their intensity and frequency straight from a hiding spot indoors. Regardless of where you plan on setting up your haunted shop Oct. 31, you can control your decorations all night long.

iStock

Project your fear

For more interactive Halloween effects, try getting ahold of a wireless projector, such as the Anker Nebula Capsule Smart Wi-Fi Mini Projector. You can download various moving graphic videos to the device, such as howling ghosts, that you can then play around various parts of your home. Project the Halloween creatures on your walls, hang up a sheet in the doorway for an entryway addition, or even project through the inside of your window and turn off the lights for people on the street to see your home’s hauntings.

Show us your Halloween with Hue!

Have you transformed your home into a haunted house with Philips Hue? Share your setup on Instagram using #philipshue for a chance to be featured on social media!

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White and color ambiance

Lightstrip Outdoor 2 meter

• 1 x 2 meter lightstrip
• 1 x power supply unit
• White and colored light

White and color ambiance

Go portable light (latest model)

• Integrated LED and battery
• Bluetooth control via app
• Control with app or voice*
• Add Hue bridge to unlock more

Greet (or scare) your guests

The same smart lights that create a warm, welcoming doorstep can do just the opposite on Halloween — so here’s what you can do!

Hue outdoor sensor

Give trick-or-treaters a fright by setting your outdoor sensor to turn the lights on to creepy colors as they walk up the sidewalk.

Hue outdoor lightstrip

Outline your front door with an outdoor lightstrip to give your porch a super-spooky feel. Don’t forget the cobwebs!

Hue Go

Placing a Hue Go into a hollowed-out pumpkin gives off a ghastly glow — just don’t forget to take it inside when the night is over.

Get the look

Choose your color scheme

Halloween is the perfect time to use the deepest, richest colors of light.

· Place red lights in windows with hair-raising Halloween silhouettes

· Group purple and green lights with orange accent lights

· Cover bushes with white sheets, then shine blue light from below

Add sound effects

On Halloween, light and sound go together like thunder and lightning.

· Let your outdoor lights react to spooky sounds with Philips Hue + Spotify

· Hide a wireless speaker and smart light next to the door

· Play creepy music and let a Hue outdoor sensor trigger the lights as people walk up

Set it all up in the app

The Philips Hue app has all the features to personalize and automate

· Use dynamic scenes to bring your house alive with lights that slowly change color

· Automate your outdoor lights to turn on to different Halloween settings at night

· Browse the Hue scene gallery for preset scenes such as Blood moon

These handy hacks will make yours the best Halloween house in town

Looking to creep out trick or treaters (or just the mailman) this Halloween season ? Connect a smoke machine to an outdoor switch and a motion detector . When visitors approach, they’ll be greeted with an atmospheric fog.

Creepy Glow

Hanging some lights to go with the jack-o-lantern? Pair them with a smart, outdoor-ready outlet that can turn them on and off at a specific time each day, or even by voice command when paired with a smart speaker .

Chime to Die

Surprise visitors all month long with spooky door chimes. The Ring video doorbell is known for releasing special chimes for holidays, and Halloween is no exception. Set the doorbell sound as close—or far—from the 31st as you like, and enjoy the reactions of guests or passersby.

Spine-Tingling Serenade

Keep the Halloween party going all night long with spooky sounds delivered through a smart speaker . The new Sonos One has Alexa built in, so you and your guests can ask for a new song without having to grab the phone and change it manually. Don’t worry, there’s no limit on the number of times you can request “Thriller.”

Scary Movie Night

Set the mood for a scary movie marathon with the touch of a button. Caseta and Serena Shades by Lutron allow you to turn off the lights and close the shades simultaneously from your phone. Plus, easily turn that hallway light back on when you swear you hear a sound from the basement.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Worried about the tricksters this Halloween? Keep at eye out with a smart security system . Try SimpliSafe’s system , which allows you to customize which sensors you want for the areas you’re most worried about, whether it’s the kitchen window or the back door. Plus, when movie night gives you the willies, you can make sure those strange noises were all in your imagination just by checking an app.

– October is here!

(Pocket-lint) – Not to be outdone by Google’s new Halloween ringtones for Nest doorbells, Amazon is rolling out its own bit of spooky fun for its Ring doorbells, including Halloween-themed chime tones, quick replies, and decorative faceplates. Here’s how to get all of them.

How to change your Ring doorbell chime tone

Halloween chime tones

This Halloween, Ring is letting you choose from all-new “chime tones”, such as bats, ghosts, howl, scream, organ tones, a creepy laugh, a screeching cat, and a creaky door. To change your doorbell chime, you’ll need to open the latest version of the Ring app on your mobile device and then follow these steps:

1. Tap the three lines on the left.
2. Select Devices.
3. Pick the doorbell that you want to set up.
4. Tap the Audio Settings icon.
5. Under Audio Settings, tap Chime Tones.
6. Choose the Chime Tone you desire.
7. Hit Save Changes.

How to set up Ring doorbell quick replies

Halloween quick replies

Ring’s “Quick Reply” feature allows you to send an automated response to guests if you’re unable to answer the door (including standard replies such as “We can’t answer the door right now. ” or “Please leave the package outside. “). But, now, Ring is adding four more options specifically for Halloweentime:

• “Tell us what brings you here. or we’ll put a spell on you!”
• “Boo! Leave us a message if you dare [evil laugh].”
• “Just a minute! Feel free to park your broom.”
• “Please leave the package (and any hocus pocus) outside.”

To set up quick replies for your doorbell, you’ll need to open the latest version of the Ring app on your mobile device and then follow these steps:

1. Tap the three lines on the left.
2. Select Devices.
3. Pick the doorbell that you want to set up.
4. Tap the Smart Assistant tile below the doorbell.
5. Tap Quick Replies.
6. Tap the Enable Autoreply button on the bottom of the screen.
7. Choose the message you desire.
8. Set your message delay time (from Right away to 20 seconds).
9. Hit Got It! to finish.

How to get a holiday faceplate for your Ring doorbell

Halloween faceplates

Last but not least, those of you who are truly festive can go all out and decorate your Ring doorbell with a new faceplate for All Hallows’ Eve. Ring is selling a new bat-themed plate and a spiderweb design for the Ring Video Doorbell 2 and a pumpkin/candy corn plate and an autumn design for the Doorbell 3, 3 Plus, and 4. All the Halloween faceplates are priced at $15 each and are available to purchase now from Ring’s US website.

The vacuum could free up loads of time for you at home.

Whether you’re dressing up in costumes, carving pumpkins, or handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, most people will agree Halloween is just plain fun.

To really get into the spirit of Halloween, you’ve got to set the mood. If you have a smart home, you have a plethora of tools at your fingertips that will help you trick out your home from the inside out.

Check out some of these smart Halloween ideas:

Up the ante on your haunted house with sound effects

Halloween isn’t complete without at least one haunted house experience, so why not try it with your own home? Transform your home into a haunted house by dimming the lights via the Vivint app, adding a few cobwebs, and enlisting some willing participants to pop out and scare your guests at just the right time.

If you really want to add some spook to your haunted house, use your smart home enabled devices to stream scary sound effects like screams, creaky doors, evil laughs, and werewolf howls. There are hundreds of Halloween-themed sounds to stream or download, so be creative and let your imagination run wild.

Cast an eerie glow with spooky lighting

Spooky lighting is one of the best Halloween home décor ideas to set the mood for Halloween, and it’s also one of the easiest.

Don’t limit eerie glows to the inside of your house, either. Once you set up your Halloween decorations outside, you can replace bulbs in your landscape or outdoor lighting with different colors, like green, purple, orange, and even black. You can even start practicing for Christmas by stringing lights made especially for Halloween.

Create killer Halloween decorations outside

Most neighborhoods have that house — the one that goes all out for the holidays with lights and decorations. Some even have full light and sound shows for passersby, thanks to a mixture of smart home technology, software, and a lot of time.

Even if you don’t put on a show, you can create a pretty impressive outdoor display for Halloween. Set up a graveyard with cardboard tombstones in your front yard, stuff old clothes to make a scarecrow or zombie, or hang toy bats and spiders from your front porch. It doesn’t have to be a Hollywood setup to make a clever display.

Set the mood with the right music

Nothing sets the tone for a party or holiday quite like music. With a Google Home or Amazon Echo, you can stream your favorite Halloween playlist. Songs like “Monster Mash” and “Thriller” are sure to get everyone in the spirit.

Need a little inspiration? Use this Halloween music playlist for parties at your Halloween bash:

• “This is Halloween” (from The Nightmare Before Christmas)
• “Monster Mash” (Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers)
• “Thriller” (Michael Jackson)
• “Main Theme” (from Halloween)
• “Somebody’s Watching Me” (Rockwell)
• “Werewolves of London” (Warren Zevon)
• “I Put a Spell On You” (Bette Midler from Hocus Pocus)
• “Ghostbusters” (Ray Parker, Jr. from Ghostbusters)
• “Twilight Zone Theme” (from The Twilight Zone)
• “Love Potion #9” (The Clovers)

Use your doorbell camera to “trick” or “treat”

The best thing about a doorbell camera is the ability to see who’s at your front door. For everyday use, this is both practical and safe. But if you need smart Halloween ideas, a doorbell camera can help you have a little fun.

The doorbell camera’s two-way talk feature comes in handy when trick-or-treaters arrive at your door. Spook them by talking to them from the doorbell or by playing eerie sound effects.

Staying safe with your smart home

While your smart home allows you to be the spookiest, most festive home on the block, it also keeps you safe.

If you are planning on enjoying Halloween festivities from somewhere other than your own home, smart home technology can help ensure the safety of your home — and keep Halloween pranksters at bay — with outdoor cameras and professional security monitoring.

Whatever smart Halloween ideas you choose to set the mood this season, make sure you have fun with it!

Halloween is here and, despite vowing to plan ahead unlike you did last year, your home isn’t decorated in the slightest. Your skeleton is missing its rib cage, the pumpkins remain uncarved, and the only cobwebs adorning your front door were built by actual spiders. To make matters worse, the shelves of every Party City within a 20 mile radius are barren and stripped, leaving you without many options. That is, of course, unless you’re the proud owner of a smart home.

Thanks to devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo, our homes are connected more than ever before. From lights and locks to music and TV, these handy little speakers can control most of your home with a simple voice command. And you don’t have to be a Halloween connoisseur to understand how much fun this kind of control can be when it comes to the spookiest holiday of the year.

If you’re still not picking up what I’m laying down, let me elaborate: I’m going to explain to you how to use your smart home to scare the pants off anyone that dares to enter your home on Halloween. So strap in, it’s going to be a scary ride:

Philips BOO Lights

If you’ve ever heard a scary story, you know the value of a well-placed light. And with Philips Hue lights providing complete and utter control over color, brightness, and location of lights, you’ll be able to scare your guests with a well-timed red light anywhere in your home. If you’re throwing a party, you can even set a schedule to have the lights change, which will do a lot to convince your guests of the ghost living in the circuit box.

It’s a Monster Bash

No party is complete without a little spooky music. Whether you want to create an illusion of spookiness with dramatic haunted house vibes or just blast Monster Mash on full volume until the neighbors call the cops, virtual assistants have the speaker power to fill any room with the spooky sounds you need. Plus, with a well-hidden Bluetooth speaker, you can scare whoever you want in the click of a button.

A Chilling Suggestion

There’s nothing scarier than getting an unfamiliar chill at a haunted house. Did a ghost just pass through you or is a zombie breathing down your neck? Your guests may never know, particularly because you set your Nest Thermostat to cool down particular rooms depending on where people are standing. That’ll certainly have the hair on the back of their necks standing on end.

Read more about gadgets for Halloween at TechCo

• Stephen Fung
• October 21, 2021 3:22 pm

It’s hard to compete with your neighbors. You know the ones. They’ve got the enormous inflatable pumpkins, tombstones, cobwebs, and smoke machines in their front yards. They might even have the Monster Mash cranked up to eleven. But there’s another way to level up your Halloween, and it starts with Philips Hue.

Philips Hue has been offering their connected lighting products since 2012. They provide products that replace your existing lightbulbs allowing you to control them with your smartphone or smart assistant. From LED light strips that tuck effortlessly into tight spaces to lightbulbs that can add colour to any room, it’s easy to get excited about the possibilities for Halloween.

We went to the Philips Hue website, where they offer an impressive array of products on their new online store. It’s a great place to browse for ideas, and they’re also available at retailers like Home Depot, Best Buy and Amazon. We selected a few products that would help us create a next-level spooky Halloween experience in the home.

Check out the video below to see how it all came together!

Isn’t that an incredible transformation? With the ability to better control placement, colours, and even sync to music using Spotify, it’s the ultimate way to make Halloween even more spooky.

Here are the products we selected to make it all come together.

Philips Hue Colour Ambient Starter Kit

Price: $249 CAD Where to Buy: Amazon

The Philips Hue Colour Ambient Starter Kit is a popular way to get your feet wet in ambient coloured lighting. Philips gives you everything in the box, including four white and colour E26 bulbs that fit into your standard light bulb fixtures. The best part about this kit is the inclusion of the Philips Hue Bridge, which allows you to pair all your lights to it, giving you the maximum amount of control as you add more to your setup.

Philips Hue LED Light Strips

Price: $99 CAD Where to Buy: Philips Hue Store

Philips Hue LED Light Strips are a flexible way to add accent lighting to those tight spaces in the home. They are perfect for placement on shelving units and work well as an accent to your fireplace. Cut, shape, and extend them as needed. They dim instantly and are super bright at 1650 lumens. You can control the Hue LED Light Strips via Bluetooth, but they work best when paired with the Philips Hue Bridge, offering full configuration options.

Philips Hue Iris Table Lamp

Price: $129 CAD Where to Buy: Best Buy

Accent walls are often used in homes to bring a splash of colour to the space. But what if you could have a new splash of colour anytime without painting? The Philps Hue Iris Table Lamp can accent a wall in any number of colours, and it also works excellent as a connected table lamp without the colour. It supports Bluetooth and is 100% compatible with the Philips Hue Bridge, letting you use the power of your voice or app for an even more fun experience.

Philips Hue Go Portable

Price: $99 CAD Where to Buy: Philips Hue Store

Affectionately known as the pumpkin light, the Philips Hue Go Portable is a connected lighting product with many fun uses. Because it has a built-in rechargeable battery and a more compact size, we could fit it into a jack-o-lantern. Once there, we can customize the lighting from your conventional flickering candle orange to a multi-colour light show. Their portability offers creative experiences that we haven’t even thought of yet. You can put them under your bed, your closet, basically anywhere that could use a splash of ambience.

Have a Spooky Halloween

It’s incredible how we can transform a standard everyday space inside your home into something truly spooktacular. For us, it was as easy as one, two, three thanks to products from Philips Hue. From adding some flare to those jack-o-lanterns to giving your walls that burst of ambient colour, these Philips Hue products work so well together. With additional scenes and customizations in the app, you can make any setup your own.

Want to compete with that Halloween-obsessed neighbour? Philips Hue also offers a wide array of lighting products for the outdoors as well. You can find them all on the Philips Hue online store. Add some tasteful decorations, a fog machine, and Monster Mash synced to your Philips Hue products with the Spotify integration, and your neighbour will be no match for you.

Are you looking for more ways to put the scare into your guests? Go to the Philips Hue Halloween page for more inspirational ideas.

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Smart Home Automation News

Halloween is approaching and it’s time to scare your neighbors! Luckily these days, it’s easier than ever to give house guests a fright with smart home automation. Check out the following DIY smart home Halloween decoration ideas to collect big screams and keep the Halloween fun alive. Muahahaha!

1. Creaky, Creepy Automatic Door

Imagine watching your haunted house guests jump in surprise when they reach to push open a door only to see it start opening by itself! Give them this ghostly experience by setting up an automatic door opener connected to a doormat sensor. You could also add an automatic creaking sound to amp up the creepy factor.

Things you need:

2. Spooky Sounds & Voices

Frighten your trick-or-treaters on Halloween by playing scary sound effects as they approach your front door. You could also self-record a scary story to play back while guests walk through your haunted house, and use a voice changer to spookify your scary story even more.

Things you need:

3. Thriller-Movie Television Static

Conjure up memories of scary movies (like White Noise) and ghosts beyond our dimensions by setting up a television to automatically play static when someone walks in the room. Go even further by preventing them from changing the channel. They may flip it, but it automatically changes back to static! Yikes!

Things you need:

• Television
• Motion sensor
• Computer
• Slingbox (or similar device) to control TV via PC
• Smart home automation software
• Technical support may be required

4. Motion Lights & Electronic Decorations

Flash your lights, turn on your dancing goblins, and present the ultimate Halloween yard show for trick-or-treaters. Just plug all of your Halloween lights and electronic decorations into smart home modules, then set them to turn on by motion-activation.

Things you need:

5. Scheduled Spotlights on Scary Beasts

Do you have big, scary Halloween decorations in your yard, like a giant spider or a funny witch? Make sure trick-or-treaters can see your spooky stuff at night by setting up spotlights. You can put the lights on a smart timer and schedule them to turn on at night and off in the morning.

Things you need:

6. Dark, Foggy Walkway

Clouding the path for your trick-or-treaters could be the perfect touch of creepy to make your Halloween setup seriously spooky. Plug a fog machine into a smart module and program it to turn on when motion is detected.

Things you need:

7. Haunted Dungeon Auto-Locking Door

Let’s set the scene for this idea. Your haunted house guests walk into a dark dungeon-like room. When the door shuts behind them, CLICK, they hear the door lock. Can you imagine the goosebumps rising on their arms? Perfect. To play this little trick, you can either actually lock the door by using a door sensor and an electric door lock to automatically lock the door when it shuts, or you can just play the sound of a locking door by setting up automated sounds (as detailed above).

Things you need:

8. Flying Ghouls & Ghosts

Using a motion sensor and a basic motorized drapery controller ( like the one made by Add-a-Motor ), you can attach ghoulish Halloween decorations to a motorized pulley and automate them to rise upon motion-detection.

Things you need:

Setting Up Your Smart Halloween Decorations

If you need help figuring out which smart home products to buy for your DIY halloween decorations, or you’re not quite sure how to set up one of these ideas, please feel welcome to contact Home Controls customer service . Our friendly team can help you haunt your Halloween guests with the best smart Halloween setup on the block!

Dry ice is a great way to kick up the fear factor for Halloween. Learn how to safely handle it and cool ways to use it.

Related To:

Dry ice adds an extra spooky element to your Halloween decor. The gentle drift of chilly fog gives the feeling that something very scary is just around the corner — but using dry ice doesn’t have to be scary. With the right tools and careful handling, you can safely create Halloween magic.

For safe handling of dry ice, use:

• hammer
• screwdriver or chisel
• tongs
• tray
• safety goggles (recommended)

Dry Ice Tips for Halloween Use

Learn what you need to know for using dry ice for Halloween.

Photo by: Sam Henderson

Use the hammer and chisel or screwdriver to break the block of dry ice into workable pieces. Break it up on a tray with a rim to stop the pieces from scattering too far. Keep the broken pieces in the freezer until ready to use.

Things to consider:

• Dry ice is actually the solid form of carbon dioxide. It’s called ‘dry ice’ because it doesn’t melt like frozen water; instead, it converts into carbon dioxide gas as it breaks down.
• Much colder than water ice, contact with dry ice will, within seconds, cause burns at the site of contact.
• Carbon dioxide gas is heavier than air, causing it to sink to the floor. A high concentration of this gas reduces the available oxygen in the air and can cause breathing problems for pets and small children so only use dry ice in a well-ventilated area. When in doubt, keep pets safely away from the area.
• Before handling, cover yourself appropriately with long sleeves and long pants.
• NEVER touch dry ice with bare hands, always use tongs.
• NEVER ingest dry ice or let it touch your lips or the interior of your mouth.

Fun Dry Ice Ideas

Dry Ice Tips for Halloween Use

Learn what you need to know for using dry ice for Halloween.

Photo by: Sam Henderson

Keep It Cool: Add a smaller serving bowl to a larger serving bowl with about an inch of space between the two. Fill the inside bowl with punch. Place small pieces of dry ice between the two bowls. Just before serving pour warm water between the two bowls to activate the dry ice.

Dry Ice Tips for Halloween Use

Learn what you need to know for using dry ice for Halloween.

Photo by: Sam Henderson

Creepy Cocktails: Drop a small piece of dry ice into a cocktail before serving. The dry ice cannot be ingested, but it sinks to the bottom so small sips are okay while it’s still present. However, guests should be cautioned to not drink the dry ice or wait until it has melted fully before drinking.

Dry Ice Tips for Halloween Use

Learn what you need to know for using dry ice for Halloween.

Photo by: Sam Henderson

Spooky Jack-O’-Lanterns: Place a small, shallow bowl or dish inside a carved pumpkin. Add warm water to the dish to activate the dry ice.

Dry Ice Tips for Halloween Use

Learn what you need to know for using dry ice for Halloween.

Photo by: Sam Henderson

Double, Double Toil and Trouble: Make a mound of small sticks and orange mini-lights. Place a black kettle or cauldron on the sticks. Place a bowl inside the kettle and several pieces of dry ice. Pour warm water over the dry ice to activate it.

Are you planning on using your SmartHome to spook trick or treaters? Perhaps you want your outdoor lights to remain dark, or for some automated spooks to only jump out on Halloween night. We’ve got you covered! Pause your regular automations and enjoy the night of fright to its fullest with these SmartThings Halloween tips.

A Haunted Entry:

Give your front door some scare power using SmartThings! Use a SmartThings Multipurpose Sensors and set up a haunted doorway for trick or treaters to enjoy.

Attach the Multipurpose sensor to your door and your favorite haunted house effects can start automatically when you open it. Use a SmartThings Outlet and set up a speaker to turn on and play spooky sound effects – we suggest a bloodcurdling scream – when the door opens for unsuspecting visitors.

Take it one step further and use an Aeon Labs MultiSensor and an outdoor light – we love the Osram LIGHTIFY Gardenspot Lights – to light up your yard with any color when trick-or-treaters approach.

What you Need:

Know when visitors come knocking:

We know that holidays can be hectic, even All Hallows Eve, so make sure you don’t miss any of the fun with the help of SmartThings. Add a SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor to your front door and set our “Door Knocker SmartApp” to send you a text notification when little ones come knocking. Now you can tend your bubbling cauldron and not miss a chance to bewitch even one trick or treater.

Halloween is spooky, silly, crazy and so fun (for both you and your kids). But between the costumes, decorations, trick-or-treating and food, it can be a lot of work. So we’ve come up with a few of our own easy-to-recreate ideas that make a big impact with minimal effort.

We sat down with Mónica and her two kids, Oliver, 8, and Amaya, 5, to learn about their favourite way to spend the holiday. “I like to make Halloween festive, but I also try to keep the decor fairly simple and put most of my focus on the costumes and treats,” says Mónica. Makes sense to us! To get this look just dip-dye a white table cloth in red colouring and shred or cut the sides for a ragged look. And if you really want to kick things up, stuff a pair of stockings with cotton and tie them together across a broom hung above the table.

Every Halloween Mónica makes a blood-coloured soup for the kids. We added some eery eyeballs (mozzarella balls and pimiento-stuffed olives) for extra creep factor. And boney, green witch fingers are easy to whip up by adding green food colouring to a simple shortbread recipe, topping with almonds for nails.