My workspace is what is apparently called an 'unconditioned space', in that it is a lightly insulated garage with no access to my home's central heating system. In the winter that's a problem, so I've resorted to using an oil-filled electric space heater to make the space habitable. The radiator faces its partner, the infrared blaster (the circle hanging in front of the shelf). Those Delonghi heaters are pretty good at quiet, sustained heat, but the first one I bought used an old-fashioned analogue timer to turn itself on and off, which meant it was constantly ticking, and that made me very unhappy. I bought another one that had a digital timer, but it couldn't tell the difference between weekend and weekdays, which meant I regularly heated the garage on a day I wasn't working, or - worse - opened the door to discovering that I had not turned back the timer and the place was unacceptably cold. After struggling with these problems for a few years, I finally decided to see if I could solve the problem without buying more heaters. Using a smart socket didn't work. My heating does not work when I turn it on after a prolonged power outage. Instead, I bought a $26 Wi-Fi infrared blaster, taught it to speak the language of my heater's included (and rather useless!) infrared remote control, and now I was good to go. (Of course I had to do some work to get the heater and the IR remote to see each other, but after a few trial and error attempts I got that part locked.) Unfortunately my IR blaster doesn't support HomeKit, but you guessed it it already, there's a Homebridge plugin for that. Once I had my heating in the Home app, I was able to use Automations to automatically turn the heating on very early in the morning (it takes hours for the heating to work its magic) and then turn itself off in the afternoon. This worked pretty well, but on a warmer morning the heater would warm things up a little too quickly, and while the Delonghi heater has its own thermostat, I've never found it particularly reliable. But I do have a $35 WiFi thermometer in my office, and it works with HomeKit! That's why I created an additional automation that automatically turns off the Delonghi heating when the garage exceeds 70 degrees. I was hesitant to write about this setup because, honestly, many smart home setups don't stand the test of time. But this is the second cold season where I've automated the heating via HomeKit, and it's worked well every time. When I go on vacation, I turn off that one morning automation, and the heating never comes on. I just have to remember to turn it back on when I get home. Maybe one day I'll find a Wi-Fi controlled space heater that I like. Until then, this one is doing fine. If you appreciate articles like this, please support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories and a dedicated community.