22 Smart Gadgets That Will Add Convenience And Ease To Your Garage

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Sometimes smart home gadgets are a bit over the top, but in a garage or workshop you can often find uses for the technology that you might not expect. Garage gadgets can do all the everyday stuff, of course — manage lighting, security, and environmental factors, for example. But they’re also useful for things you don’t necessarily need in the rest of the home, such as handling dust collection, helping with DIY projects, and telling you where to park. This takes a lot of forms, but you can do much of it with the barebones kit of some sensors, smart plugs, and a voice assistant.

In an environment as idiosyncratic as the modern garage or workshop, it’s a good idea to look for devices that aren’t tied to a particular smart home ecosystem, but which can be controlled by a hub. You don’t want to control everything with a separate (and usually terrible) vendor-created mobile app, but you also don’t want to lock yourself into a particular platform and its limitations. And, as always, it’s ideal to avoid smart devices that require cloud services, especially in areas of the home that don’t always have a reliable network connection.

Fairly platform-agnostic devices like Shelly plugs and relays, network-attached storage, temperature/humidity sensors, and the like are great for budget-friendly roll-your-own smart garages. For less fussy integration, there are modules to do the integration work for you… for a price.

Though they’re commonly called “smart plugs,” these basic building blocks of home automation are more like smart outlets, and they’re fundamental to building a smart garage or workshop environment that isn’t run by a zillion different apps. The best will let you switch the power on and off, schedule it to cycle at particular times, and can be controlled by a smart home hub and integrated with other devices and routines. The Shelly Plus Plug ($22.99) is a capable Wi-Fi-enabled smart plug, and it features a 15-amp load… important for a garage full of high-amperage power tools.

Switches are another smart home building block, the flip-side of the smart plug coin. At its most basic, a smart plug is controlled by a dumb switch; a dumb plug is controlled by a smart switch. But a smart switch can also control a Wi-Fi- or Bluetooth-enabled switch. Control lights, ventilation, and more in your garage with a Kasa Smart light switch that features voice assistant integration, scheduling and other features, or integrate a smart relay into your existing switches. Take note of which switches require a neutral wire, and which of your home’s existing switches include one.

“Hey Google, can you hear any better in here than Alexa can?” A garage can be a noisy place, especially if it’s the hub of a DIY project or band practice. If you’ve tied key functionality to your smart home ecosystem — turning on lights, say, or opening the garage door — voice assistants and elaborate automation routines can be a bit unreliable in a pinch. For those critical functions, it’s a good idea to have a backup like the Aqara Zigbee wireless mini-switch ($15.29) that connects to your hub and can trigger just about any action.

Smart light fixtures and bulbs come with an impressive array of capabilities that are useful in the garage. Integrate smart lights with routines that turn a light on when you enter a room. And while they’re perhaps most useful to turn off lights in an empty room, don’t set up a system that leaves you in the dark while leaning over a running table saw. WiZ LED smart light bulbs (like many of the best smart bulbs on Amazon) include scheduling capabilities, motion detection, and voice assistant or app control.

High humidity can be a problem in un-air-conditioned spaces like a garage, and the moisture can damage tools from chisels to saw tabletops to electronics. And if you’ve never experienced the inconvenience of rusted tools, then you should get a dehumidifier so it stays that way. The simplest way to control a dehumidifier is with a smart switch or outlet; just be sure that your unit can be powered on and then controlled by turning power to its cord on and off. More expensive devices like Midea’s 50-pint Cube dehumidifier ($299.99) can also be controlled directly via smart home hub integrations.

Between the vehicles and the projects in a garage, you’ll find the space has plenty of room for improved air quality. Whether the issue is VOCs from a car or when you’re using adhesives, finishes, etc., or simply sawdust, the start of a solution is a smart air quality monitor. Standalone monitors like the Airgradient One can measure both chemicals and particulate matter. Or if you’re building a more customized system, you can buy inexpensive sensor modules for particulates, gases, and VOCs then integrate them yourself.

Dust is another enemy of your equipment, and it’s a common problem in garages that are left open a lot and workshops which house a lot of sawdust. Automating dust collection is an important part of some DIY projects and makes it more likely that you’ll actually complete them . There are many levels of smart dust collection, from smart switches that turn on a vacuum when you turn on a tool to commercial solutions like iVac motorized blast gates to open and close dust collection ductwork.

Making things happen automatically can be magical, but sometimes the most practical way to control things in a garage when your hands are busy is by using a smart voice assistant like Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Home Assistant Assist. Most serve as interfaces to a full-blown home automation hub, and can be used to create useful routines like a “goodnight” routing that makes sure your power tools are properly shutdown at a certain point in the day or evening.

For most homeowners, their garage door remote control is all they need, but there are good reasons to consider attaching your door opener to something like the Tailwind iQ3 smart garage door controller ($99.99), which turns the most basic opener smart. Then you can get inventive with automation: receiving a notification when the door has been open longer than usual, turning on a light inside the home whenever the door is open, or flashing lights when both the garage door and the garage’s walk-through door are open to warn drivers that a child might be present.

The old garage trick of hanging a tennis ball from the ceiling remains a great way of telling a driver where to stop when parking, but the modern version is to use a red laser dot aimed at where your car’s dash should stop. The OxGord laser-guided garage parking aid ($29.95) is activated by a passive infrared (PIR) sensor that detects motion and turns the laser on. YouTuber @SmartHomeSolver set his up so that the laser turns off when the garage door is still open to keep kids from accidentally exposing their eyes to the harmful beams .

Door sensors are usually little wired magnets called reed switches that communicate to a system when the door is ajar. Smart home versions like Sonoff’s SenseGuard door and window contact sensors cost a little more ($34.71 for a four-pack) but give you integration with systems like SmartThings, Alexa, and Home Assistant with no soldering to microcontrollers required. Use them on garage doors and walk-through doors to keep track of when villains come in without permission, when smallish family members go out without permission, or when you have your own permission and want to have the lights come on automatically.

There are good security reasons to have cameras outside your home, and good reasons not to have them inside. But what about the garage? We often keep very expensive cars and tools there, but pay little attention to securing the garage door, and many people don’t even lock the door between the garage and the home. This makes it a prime spot for indoor cameras like the 1080P TP-Link Tapo security camera ($17.99). As a bonus, garage cameras are also a great way to keep an eye on CNC, 3D printer, and laser cutter/engraver jobs in progress.

The most important security device for your garage, by a mile, is a good lock. And since you’ll be entering and leaving, either in a car or with full hands, it makes sense to consider a smart lock for the walk-through door between your garage and the interior of your house. The garage door should have access control built in, but you have lots of options for the interior door… from basic keypad locks to elaborate systems like the Veise VE017 fingerprint smart door lock ($49.98), featuring a fingerprint reader, app control, RFID, keypad, and more.

If your garage has any plumbing — a utility sink, for example, and especially a main water entry line — this is the right place for a water leak sensor. These are most often battery-powered pucks that are placed on the floor near water lines. They can integrate with smart home hubs, and some even include valves that can shut off the water automatically in case of a leak. The Aeotec SmartThings water leak sensor does all this, plus temperature monitoring.

There are good reasons to integrate your garage’s smoke detector with your smart home ecosystem. In case one of your DIYs go the fiery route, automated alerts and notifications are only the beginning of it; a solid smoke detector-triggered routine can shut down ventilation and HVAC system, unlock doors, and set off alarms. Devices like the Zooz ZEN55 DC signal sensor are a good way to integrate older analog smoke detector and carbon monoxide technology into your smart garage setup.

Smart labels QR code stickers ($19.95 for the stickers and free version of the app) are, indeed, quite smart… if a bit self-contained compared to most smart home gadgets. This is an app-driven product that lets you photograph your storage boxes and then uses AI image analysis to figure out what’s in there. You then print color-coded QR code labels so you can track down the box you need readily.

A television in the garage? Well, this isn’t for your grandfather’s idea of TV… three channels and no remote. What a shop needs is a monitor that has access to internet video platforms like YouTube, with a screen just large enough to usefully view tutorials and even plans… something like the 65-inch Insignia 4K smart TV with Alexa Voice Remote. Consider pairing the smart TV with a local media server like JellyFin or Plex to load locally saved images and video. Put the TV up high on a positionable mount.

If your smart garage ends up taking on more of a “man cave” vibe, you might need serious storage for your JellyFin or Plex media server. Enter Network Attached Storage (NAS), basically a device full of disks that lets you store data, files, security footage, downloaded tutorials, backups, etc. on your network. Synology, one of the leading names in NAS technology, offers the entry-level two-bay DiskStation at a very reasonable price ($189.99 without disks). Or you could go with a router that features a USB port for networking a basic USB drive.

Aside from network-attached storage, there are other good reasons to have a dedicated way to distribute network and internet access throughout your garage. Sometimes garages and workshops are a bit off the Wi-Fi beaten path and can make use of wireless mesh networking. Outdoor-rated models like the TP-Link Deco 7 Outdoor are ideal because their higher temperature-tolerance and IP65 dustproof rating make them perfect for an environment that can be a bit much for a standard indoor router or access point.

Your choice of voice assistant will probably drive, or be driven by, your choice of smart home hub … which is essentially synonymous with your smart home ecosystem. So Alexa, goes along with Echo devices and the Echo Hub; Siri with Apple Home; Google Assistant with Nest; SmartThings with Aeotec; and everything with Home Assistant. Your hub glues everything together, often using technologies like Zigbee, Matter, Thread, Z-Wave, and others. If you’ve already committed to an ecosystem inside your home, you should probably carry it into your garage as well.

If you’re curious about how much power your garage or workshop tools are using, you have a few good ways to track energy usage on a device-by-device basis. We tried the Emporia power monitor to unpuzzle a shocking electric bill and liked the device quite a lot, but it’s best suited for tracking power at the circuit breaker. Smart plugs are your best bet here, but Emporia’s don’t handle continuous loads over 10 amps. Try Tapo Wi-Fi smart plugs ($16.99 for a two-pack), which handles 15 amps and work happily with smart home platforms.