As more and more of our everyday life becomes automated, homes are following suit. After all, if you can automatically start your car before you get in the car, track how many steps you take in a day, and carry the internet in your pocket, why shouldn’t you also be able to control the lighting, temperature, and security of your home from the headquarters of your couch?
If you want to build a smart home or convert your current home into one, you’ve come to the right place. We will look at everything you need to know about installing and implementing smart technology around the house.
First things first: what exactly is a “smart home”.
With numerous options out there, it’s difficult to choose what’s best, so we’ve put together a simplified buying guide to help you find the right option.
What Is a Smart Home?
A smart home is a home equipped with intuitive technology that can be automated to perform tasks for you. Examples:
- A coffee machine that brews your coffee at a certain time of day.
- Motion sensors that track movement inside and outside your house.
- A smart thermostat (e.g., Google Nest) that monitors and adjusts the temperature in your home based on past usage during different times of day.
- Video doorbells that are accessible from your phone or laptop while you’re out of the house (and that can alert you to suspicious activity).
- Smart light bulbs, like Philips Hue smart bulbs, that can be adjusted from your phone without the use of dimmer switches.
These and many other popular smart home features work by using the Internet of Things (IoT) to automate daily tasks around your home and thereby make life easier. The IoT connects electronic systems—including sensors, software, and other data-collecting technology—to a centralized hub that you can access and control with your smartphone.
Smart bulbs offer you the next level of lighting—remote control over all the lighting in your home.
What Are the Benefits of Having a Smart Home?
Are the benefits of installing smart technology in your house worth the costs, the trouble of maintaining a constantly reliable internet connection, and the security risks associated with such technology.
One advantage of automating everyday tasks is the time you save. You don’t have to adjust utilities, appliances, and security as separate units each day. Instead, control it all from your smartphone—any time, anywhere. You can even customize the daily controls for each part of your home so that it’s a one-time setup.
Using smart technology around your home also helps you keep your energy consumption in check. In wintertime, standard heating methods often overheat your home. A Nest or other smart-home device can prevent overheating while saving you a lot of money over time.
There’s also the advantage of being able to control security from a remote location. If you have scheduled an inspection, installation, or repair, you can disarm your security system or unlock your doors with the touch of a button while you’re on the go. Nobody living in the house has to wait around for a technician or repairman to show up or worry about leaving the door unlocked for any stray passersby. Only the right person will have access. Control it all from your smart-home hub.
With so many products in the marketplace, it’s best to understand all of your options before purchasing a smart video doorbell.
How to Build Your Smart Home
If you’re building a smart home from scratch, you need to consider which smart-home gadgets and features are really worth installing. Which will you use the most? Which will you give you the most bang for your buck? You don’t have to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Decide which features are right for you and start with those.
The most common components of a smart home include smart lighting, smart speakers, temperature control, and security. You can even install smart window blinds, which would set the room temperature based on the weather outdoors; automatic feeders, for pets and plants; and multiroom audio technology that transcends the average entertainment system. All of this can be monitored and controlled from smart displays. The sky’s pretty much the limit when it comes to smart-ifying your home.
Building a smart home from the ground up means that you can centralize all of the automated systems instead of being stuck with separate controls for each. Smart-home ecosystems like those of Google Home and Amazon Alexa make it easy to integrate smart technology with a new home. Such systems will use one or a few primary sensors to control a range of tasks.
You may also wish to install several separate systems and smart products. These products can still be controlled from one smartphone app even though they are manufactured by different companies. But this kind of installation may be more expensive than using one main smart system and associated products.
Installing this kind of technology won’t be cheap. Installation may cost around 5 percent of the total cost of a smart home setup. In the case of customizable smart systems and products, the installation cost may be as high as 15% or the total cost of the setup.
Two options for improving your online experience are Wi-Fi mesh systems and Wi-Fi range extenders. In this blog, we’ll compare and contrast these solutions.
How’s Your Internet and Wi-Fi?
Smart homes rely on your internet to run and run properly. If your Wi-Fi network crashes, so will all of your smart technology, which can be a huge inconvenience. Frequently dropped connections can be even more annoying, as they can mean a constant game of touch and go with your temperature, lamp, sound, and appliance controls.
It’s crucial, then, that you have high-speed internet and a strong Wi-Fi connection that extends throughout your house. The most reliable options are usually local cable internet and fiber-optic internet. Whichever option you choose, make sure that it has the capacity to support several wireless functions simultaneously. How smoothly your smart home functions will largely depend on how consistent and powerful your Wi-Fi signal is.
To achieve a highly effective and stable Wi-Fi connection throughout your home, consider investing in a mesh network instead of relying on just one or two routers to do all the heavy lifting. Better yet, do away with Wi-Fi and its vulnerabilities and invest in a hub.
Functioning only locally, a hub uses wireless platforms like Zigbee or Z-Wave to connect to your smart devices. To go completely offline, look into options like Hubitat, which will enable you to combine the open-source software Home Assistant with Z-Wave. Connecting both of these to your PC will form a manual mesh network that sends signals to any smart device you want to activate.
Start With a Voice-Controlled Smart Speaker
Perhaps the most common smart-home gadget—often a part of homes that aren’t smart across the board—is a voice-controlled speaker like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. These smart speakers can control a wide range of activity. They turn lights on and off, order food, call people on your smartphone. Except for the most complex tasks, having a voice-controlled speaker enables you to run your home much like a full-fledged smart home.
Some smart speakers are better suited for certain tasks than others. So before selecting one, do some research to learn what would best serve your needs. If you’re most interested in high-quality sound for playing music, Sonos is your best bet. For basic voice commands and help with daily tasks around the house, Alexa has the edge. For scheduling and agenda reminders, there’s Google’s Home Assistant. Of course, most smart speakers can do all of these things, at least to a degree; it’s simply a matter of finding what works best for you.
Most major voice-controlled speakers are compatible with both Apple and Android smartphones. But speakers manufactured by one company aren’t likely to work with devices manufactured by another. Siri, for instance, is incompatible with Android devices. The good news is that no matter which major-brand smartphone or other device you use, there’s a corresponding smart speaker.
- Siri is compatible with Apple products like the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.
- Google Home Assistant is compatible with Samsung, Windows, and Apple products.
- Amazon Echo and Amazon Alexa are compatible with Samsung, Windows, and Apple products.
- Sonos is compatible with all major music apps and with Samsung, Windows, and Apple products.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a smart home cost?
Costs to build or convert an existing home into a smart home vary. If your plans for smartify-ing your home involve installing a complete system that replaces a voice-controlled speaker, you could be looking at around $7,000 or more tacked onto home-building or renovation costs. The single cost of installing smart lighting in a small house can easily exceed $1,000 if enough bulbs are replaced.
Expect to spend $2,000 or more for system supplies and installation services, which would cover basic wiring throughout an average-sized home. Your options include hardwired, wireless, and hybrid systems; each has different installation fees. A hardwired system is the most reliable. Setting up a wireless system requires only a single outlet. A hybrid system entails a blend of both.
Spend some time researching to determine which wiring system would work best for your home given your requirements.
Do I need a smart-home hub?
Usually, a smart home hub is unnecessary. But it depends on how extensively you want to automate your home. If you want to install a comprehensive system that will automate as many functions as possible, a hub is worth looking into—especially if you have spotty Wi-Fi coverage. A hub ensures that your house keeps running during any Wi-Fi outages.
The hub can enable many automated tasks at once by sending instructions to many smart devices at once. You can use it to set morning and evening routines that play music, dim lights, roll up the blinds, etc.
Hubs aren’t particularly expensive, but the set-up time can be significant. If you decide to get a hub, here are some in-depth reviews and recommendations to help you select the right one.
Is your smart home safe?
Smart homes are generally safe when set up and used correctly. But the technological benefits do come with some risks to privacy and security. If improperly secured, smart homes that rely on wireless hubs are vulnerable to hackers who may steal your personal information and gain access to cameras and monitors around your home, giving them the ability to see what goes on inside your house. They may even gain easy entrance to your house if your home uses smart locks.
Various security measures will make your home as safe from such intrusions as possible. One thing you can do is set up your home network separately from other networks you use to establish an extra layer of safety in case you are hacked. But you can probably prevent the hacking to begin with by paying attention to passwords. Use long, complex passwords on phone lock screens and PCs, and change the username and password on your router to something abstract and complex enough that hackers can’t possibly guess them.
