Since last autumn I’ve been engaged in a Smart Home project of my own, with the purpose of understanding what exactly in my home can be made “smarter” at a reasonable cost and effort. A key element of any Smart Home project is choosing what platform to build upon. For me it was a choice between Google Home and Apple HomeKit, because Google’s and Apple’s ecosystems are the ones I’m most familiar with.
Eventually I chose Google Home, not because it had a larger number of compatible devices to pick from, but for the simple reason that Google Assistant actually understands me and gets things done. Siri, I’m sorry to say, still has a lot to learn.
Currently my Smart Home setup has all the typical stuff like smart lighting (by Philips Hue), smart radiator valves with thermostats (by Netatmo), and smart fire/smoke alarms (by Nest). In each room there’s a Google / Nest Mini, which work as smart speakers and give access to Google Assistant. And yes, there’s one also close to the sauna.
My Sauna. Nothing fancy and quite typical for a Finnish apartment. Photo by NR.
When I tell people about having a virtual assistant in my sauna, there are typically two reactions. On the one hand, people not so familiar with the Nordics are amazed over the fact that I actually have a sauna in my home, completely ignoring the Google aspect of it. This, by the way, is quite funny because in Finland it’s very common to have a sauna of your own. My fellow Finns, on the other hand, are shocked over the sacrilege of having this kind of technology creeping into a sauna.
Having now been able to access Google Assistant from my sauna for a couple of months, I can vouch that it’s absolutely great! There’s the entertainment aspect of it, mainly thanks to music and podcasts, but you can also ask Google about whatever happens to come in your mind. You can also send notes to yourself and set reminders, or even dictate parts of your next blog post. And if you want your sauna session to be a meditative and mindful experience, you can always play a guided meditation, or just ignore the damn thing and sweat in silence.
Oh, one final thing people often ask about: Doesn’t the temperature and humidity kill a gadget like this? Well, apparently not, though I wouldn’t recommend having the device inside the sauna, where the temperature will typically reach about 80°C. Just have it right outside the sauna so that your virtual sauna buddy can hear you and vice versa.