In addition to housing a light source, the smart nightlight 170 houses an occupancy sensor, such as an ultrasonic or passive IR sensor, and an ambient light sensor, such as a photo resistor or a single pixel sensor that measures light in the room. In some implementations, the smart nightlight 170 is configured to activate the light source when its ambient light sensor detects that the room is dark and when its occupancy sensor detects that someone is in the room. In other implementations, the smart nightlight 170 is simply configured to activate the light source when its ambient light sensor detects that the room is dark. Further, in some implementations, the smart nightlight 170 includes a low power wireless communication chip e. g. , a ZigBee chip that regularly sends out messages regarding the occupancy of the room and the amount of light in the room, including instantaneous messages coincident with the occupancy sensor detecting the presence of a person in the room. As mentioned above, these messages may be sent wirelessly e. g. , using the mesh network from node to node i. e. , smart device to smart device within the smart home network 202 as well as over the Internet 162 to the server system 164.