We decided to put the home of the sausage sanga to the test: can we build a smart home using only devices sold at Bunnings?
We’re using the kit available via the Bunnings online marketplace to build this smart home, but a lot of it (if not all of it) can be purchased in-store.
Building a Bunnings smart home
The internet
For any smart home, you first need internet. Does Bunnings sell internet? No, but it sells modems/routers. Assuming you already have internet, but your modem/router is trash, you can get a new one from Bunnings.
In total, it has five, four TP-Link and one D-Link. The cheapest is the TP-Link Archer C20 Wi-Fi Router, which will set you back $59.95. It will do the job, but not brilliantly. With the Archer C20, you will get simultaneous 300 Mbps at 2.4 GHz and 433 Mbps at 5 GHz for 733 Mbps total available bandwidth. You can get the more recent Archer C50 Wi-Fi Router for $20 more, your available bandwidth will up to 1200 Mbps if you opt for the C50.
The most expensive is the three-pack TP-Link Deco M5 Dual-Band Mesh Wi-Fi Router. You should consider if a mesh router setup is right for you before opting for this as it’s not the same as a standard modem-router.
If you need to extend your Wi-Fi range to connect smart home devices in all of your rooms, Bunnings has a bunch of extenders, too. The cheapest extender is the TP-Link 300Mbps Universal Wi-Fi Range Extender, for $31.46, and the most expensive is the D-Link 8 Port Gigabit PoE Unmanaged Switch. It’s $315 and likely well above your needs if you just want your smart speaker in the loungeroom to receive the signal from your modem at the other end of your apartment. The other sub-$100 extenders will likely do the trick.
Smart home hub
Now the internet is sorted, you’re going to want a smart home hub. Bunnings, what have you got by way of a smart home hub?
Let’s start with shopping giant Amazon. For $54 you can get the 3rd-gen Amazon Alexa and the gen-4 Echo for $119s. All of these Alexa-enabled speakers are capable of switching lights on/off, playing music, answering questions – everything Amazon has taught Alexa to do. But, there isn’t a control ‘hub’ element to these, so you’re limited to what your voice can do.
In the smart home hub space, however, Bunnings has some more Alexas. The gen-2 Echo Show 5 will cost $119 and the gen-2 Echo Show 8 will set you back $147. Both of these allow you to select buttons on the screen and watch stuff like Amazon Prime and Netflix, control lighting, power outlets, etc.
Google Assistants (which I personally prefer) are also available at Bunnings. The 2nd-gen Google Nest Hub will cost $88.95 (this isn’t the one with sleep tracking), or $127 if you don’t want charcoal colour and prefer chalk (white), but you can also pick up the Google Nest Mini for $69 and the Google Nest Audio Smart Speaker for $124 which although aren’t hubs, allow you to use your voice to make demands like “turn off the lights”.
The purpose of a hub is for it to be, well, the hub of your smart home. Both the Echo Show and the Nest Hub have a wide range of third-party products that interact with each, too. While you can use the physical screen on the Echo Show and the Google Nest Hub, you’re going to benefit from having the Alexa app or the Google Home app on your phone. Which brings us to…
Phones and tablets
No, Bunnings doesn’t sell smartphones. It does, however, have a super cute rotary telephone for $99.95. But that’s not going to help us build a Bunnings smart home. It also doesn’t sell iPads or Android equivalents. So, let’s assume you already have at least a tablet or a smartphone. The next thing we need is some smart lights.
Smart lighting
Under the header of ‘smart light bulbs’, Bunnings has over 50, ranging from flood lights to the standard light bulb you would use in your bedroom, RGB strip lighting and Nanoleaf coloured globes. You’ll obviously pay more for a flood light, but for the standard globes you’d put around your home, you’ll expect to pay $11 through $35 for one (with the latter giving you colour options). You can also get fun stuff like Nanoleaf shapes.
Other smart stuff
This includes motion sensors for both indoor or outdoor (which would notify you when movement is sensed or you can even trigger a specific light to illuminate). The cheapest one is $22.85 from Arlec. I haven’t used any Arlec kit before, so I can’t comment on the quality, but the brand Brilliant is available at Bunnings for $34.86 and Mirabella for $29.
Bunnings also sells Google Nest Smoke Alarms, which have a piercing alarm sound, but a soothing voice that tells you an alarm is coming and that it’s loud.
There’s also a tonne of security cameras, seriously, too many to list, the cheapest is $47 and the most expensive is $499. With those, you’ll get the quality of the stream that you pay for. And smart doorbells, there’s a tonne of those, too. If your device isn’t smart, such as a bedside table lamp, you can make it smart by connecting smart plug in between the outlet and your device.
Can you build a Bunnings smart home?
You can. But you need to purchase your internet or smartphone or tablet elsewhere. And you likely already have them.
So, providing we have a phone, and internet we don’t need to extend, if we got a 2nd-gen Google Nest Hub for the kitchen ($88.95), a Google Nest Mini as a second speaker in the office ($69), a smart lightswitch for the lamp in the bedroom ($27), a smart light globe for the loungeroom ($12.90) and a Ring doorbell with inbuilt security camera ($148), we’d have a basic smart home set up for a one-off fee (not including running costs) of $345. With that, we could listen to music, ask the Google Assistant to turn off lights, set up lighting cues for if someone is at the front door and monitor via a camera who that person is.
You can easily omit the doorbell if you’re in an apartment, and that takes us down to $197. It’s not a complete set up, but it’ll do.
Who woulda thought? Lowest prices really are just the beginning.
This article has been updated since it was first published.