I’ve been covering smart home and security products for years, and I’ve written about and reviewed scores of smart devices. Yet I can count on one hand (plus an extra finger or two) the number of smart devices that my family and I actually depend on.

Sure, I have plenty of smart gadgets in my house that are nice-to-haves. I like the air quality monitor in our finished basement, good for keeping tabs on the VOC and CO2 levels in our downstairs living room. There’s also a Google Nest Hub in our kitchen that displays family photos, while an Amazon Echo Dot in my daughter’s bedroom occasionally blurts out the weather.

But while those devices certainly come in handy, they’re also expendable. If something went wrong with the Google display (which we really only use for its photo frame abilitie

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