Maybe Dad doesn't have to burn the burgers. The $70 Meater accurately tracks the temp of your roast while it cooks and keeps your phone updated via Bluetooth. 

If your dad wants to join the Instant Pot craze, get him the newest model, called the Instant Pot Max. It's slated to be released soon, and it'll have all of the cooking capabilities of older models, plus a bunch of new cooking modes along with a canning feature. 

The Instant Pot is a better bet for most cooking needs, but if your dad wants a handy accessory for cooking wings in his basement bar, this Simple Chef Air Fryer does the trick for a reasonable $70. 

Enough food. Dad also certainly wants to keep his home safe, and the Tapplock One can help. It's a cool $100 padlock that you can unlock via Bluetooth, fingerprints and even Morse code. 

Dad can keep an eye on the porch and the yard with the $200 Ring Spotlight Cam. It's easy to install and has motion sensors and a bright light so you can see what's going on at night. 

To keep the whole home on lockdown, give Dad a $230 SimpliSafe starter kit. SimpliSafe is a well-rounded DIY system with a fancy new look and affordable monitoring. 

The $50 Chamberlain MyQ Home Bridge lets you control your garage door with a voice command through Apple's digital assistant Siri. Especially with the bridge, the feature rich $100 MyQ garage is easy to recommend for adding smarts to your garage. 

If your dad wants help making his garden grow, get him the handy Orbit B-hyve Faucet Timer. Unlike most smart sprinklers, which require a whole in-ground sprinkler system, this $40 Faucet Timer twists onto an ordinary hose and can add weather monitoring and app controls to a simple oscillator.

Say hello to our favorite video doorbell. The $230 Nest Hello lets Dad talk to whoever is at the door via an app. It also recognizes faces and works really well with a Google- or Nest-equipped smart home. 

Maybe your dad doesn't have a lot of smart home devices yet, but is eager to get started. A smart plug is a great first gadget to get, and the $30 TP-Link Kasa is compact and affordable. Add app-enabled smarts to anything you want to plug in, and you'll also be able to control your device with Amazon's digital assistant Alexa or Google's comparable Google Assistant. 

An affordable smart speaker that sounds great, the $200 Sonos One works with Alexa, so your dad can control it via voice commands. It'll even work with Google Assistant soon if he prefers. If you're not familiar, smart speakers can play music, search the web, give driving directions and control smart home devices. They're great devices to put at the center of a smart home and Sonos One combines the two major assistants into one great-sounding speaker. 

If you want to get a smart speaker for your dad but are looking for a more affordable option, check out the $50 Google Home Mini. It certainly won't sound as good at playing music as the Sonos One does, but it delivers all the same smarts for a lot less. 

Finally, if you want to help Dad give his smart home a boost in style, Nanoleaf's colorful light panels look great and sync to a variety of music. The $230 starter kit for the Nanoleaf Aurora Rhythm Edition includes nine panels. In addition to rocking with the music, you can control the lights with Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant.