The tech gadgets you’ll need for the cold, dark winter ahead

Winter is almost upon us and darker, colder days are approaching. But there are some tech gadgets that can help ease our way into the colder weather.

Indoor tech

Smart heating

Perhaps one of the most useful smart home devices that you can have — next to a robot vacuum, in my opinion — is smart heating controls. That means remote access to your home heating and even hot water system through an app on your phone and a control interface in your home.

More control can mean lower bills, because you aren’t stuck with using a timer that can mean a choice of either a freezing house if you were on the side of caution or heating an empty one if your schedule changes. However, it depends on individual circumstances.

In recent years, the choice for homeowners has exploded, with everyone from Google to Bord Gáis getting in on it, and a few smaller Irish companies entering the market too.

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The most well known of the heating controls has to be the Nest Learning Thermostat (€249). The Google-owned device will learn from your schedule and your initial temperature settings and go from there. If you aren’t in the house the temperature will be set to away mode so you aren’t unnecessarily heating your home, and with geofencing the system can use your location to decide when it’s time to turn on the heating so the temperature is just right for when you get home.

Climote is another option and it’s from an Irish company. A built-in sim card means you don’t have to have broadband access at home to use it and you can text commands back to the system to boost the heating if you are coming home unexpectedly. It has a small yearly fee (€19) to cover the sim.

There are other options. Irish-designed Hub Controller claims to save hundreds of euro per year for homeowners on their energy bills, in addition to reducing carbon and energy use.

The Tado system (from £180), meanwhile, allows you to install thermostatic radiator valves (£75) so you can control the heating in individual rooms, effectively creating individual heating zones without needing thermostats all over the house.

Installing any of these systems won’t take too long or cause much disruption as they are simply swapping out the existing thermostats for the new ones. Typically, they can be ready to go in under an hour.

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Lighting

Lighting is something we don’t notice until there’s something wrong. And in winter, as the days get shorter and the nights get longer, you are sure to notice the change. One thing that can help? The right lighting and, in particular, colour temperature.

Work spaces may need a cooler white light to keep you focused, while your bedroom may benefit from a warmer white bulb. But what if, like many people, some of these spaces double up in function?

There are options out there, from dedicated lamps to tuneable bulbs. The Dyson Solarcycle lamps (from €500), for example, can intelligently track daylight in your local area to help support your body clock, taking into account your age and task too, or can be manually changed to whatever colour temperature you need at the time.

But they are quite expensive. So the alternative would be to replace a lightbulb or two with tuneable LED bulbs that can link in with your smart home system such as Google Home, Apple’s HomeKit or Amazon’s Alexa system. These can be either tuneable white bulbs or colour changing ones, but you can pick them up for under €20. Philips Hue lighting offers a range of options, from regular bayonet bulbs to LED strips, while Tapo or Wiz bulbs will give you remote access to your lighting without any extra hubs.

Bedroom

When the temperature drops below a certain threshold, it’s usually time for the winter duvet to come out. If you share a bed, it can also cause a certain amount of debate. What if one of you runs hot and prefers a lighter duvet? Or the other can’t sleep unless swaddled in a stifling cocoon? You could, as many people have, opt for two different duvets.

But tech, as always, has another solution.

If you have a fairly hefty budget and like to put an app on everything, there’s the Smartduvet ($484, plus delivery), a former Kickstarter project. Working with your existing bedding, the larger sizes have dual zone climate controls, so you can have one side toasty and one cooler. It works through a series of air chambers and channels that move conditioned air to each side of the bed, controlled through an app and the control box that needs to be stashed under the bed. It’s also a self-making bed, so there’s that argument out of the picture too.

The company seems to have had some issues with negative customer service reviews though, so it’s worth reading through feedback first.

The slightly less complex way of doing this is through an electric blanket that has multiple control zones on it. Silentnight has the Dual Control Electric Blanket (from €70) with dual controllers, so you can control it from both sides of the bed and heat each side individually — or not. It won’t make the bed for you, but it will do what it’s supposed to and it doesn’t need any extra boxes either.

Work meetings or family distractions have seen countless cups of coffee gone cold. And who wants cold coffee? A high-tech answer to the problem is the Ember mug (€150), which comes with a charging coaster that will allow you to use it all day, if your coffee lasts that long. It also has a built-in battery so you can take it on the move for up to an hour of use, while the travel version (€230) will keep your drink warm for three hours — ideal for the looming winter of standing on sidelines at weekend sports. It’s all controlled via a smartphone app too, so you can customise it to your needs.

Among the less pricey options is the Yeti Rambler mug (€35), which is an insulated coffee mug that will keep your drink hot for hours. It won’t reheat your drink but it will stop you needing to reheat it, which is a better option. It is also more portable than a plug-in USB warmer, which is basically a tiny hot plate and will need access to USB power to work.

Outdoors

Keeping warm is going to be one of the prime concerns this winter. And as heating bills rise, finding ways to do that as economically as possible is a challenge.

The most obvious, as always, is to put a few extra layers on as the temperature falls. But while simple, it’s not always the most practical, depending on how many layers you’ll need to get to your desired temperature.

A few years ago the idea of heated jackets may have had you rolling your eyes and muttering about tech for tech’s sake. But after the past few years of outdoor activities, even in the depths of winter, the idea is less laughable.

Outdoor clothing company Regatta has a range of coats and jackets with heated panels built into them. Powered by a USB battery pack — that comes as extra, by the way — you can dial up the heat from slightly warm to toasty with a small button built into the jacket.

Some of the clothing have three panels which are spread throughout the centre back and chest areas of the jacket, so you get a cosy feeling throughout. Others have a single panel in the back of the jacket. You will need a reasonably powerful battery pack to keep powered though, so the cheap stick that you picked up as a freebie won’t last too long.

They’re not cheap either. The Voltera and Volter waterproof heated jacket can cost up to €320, while the heated parkas cost up to €280. Body warmers are up to €160, though if you shop around they can be considerably less than that.

Just because the weather has gone bad, it doesn’t mean that you want to hole up indoors. There are people who want to keep up the outdoor exercise even in the dark days of winter, while still staying safe.

Carlow-based Bodylite’s safety gear runs from the simple reflective vest (€12) and battery-powered slap bands (€12) to light-up dog leads (€22.50) and a new USB rechargeable lighted vest (price €28) to make sure you are seen on the roads at night. The latter has both flashing and solid LED lights in two different colours, in addition to the regular reflective strips and a pocket where you can stash your phone, keys or money. It’s made of a lightweight mesh, so it is breathable and light.

If you want to stick with the car though, there are some extras out there that won’t break the bank. Newer cars often come with heated seats, giving you a new way to keep warm on colder days, but they can be a pricey extra. If you don’t fancy upgrading your whole car just to get a toasty rear end on a winter morning, there is a cheaper alternative: heated seat cushions. The Toasty Heated Seat Cushion (€26, MicksGarage) plugs into the 12w charger port — known to everyone over a certain age as the cigarette lighter — and heats your seat (and anything in it) to a nice temperature. Plus it can be moved around the car — or to a different vehicle — as needed.