Mistakes To Watch Out For With Your Smart Home
April 3, 2022
Debbie and I first started incorporating smart home technology in our Minnesota home 6 years ago. I took the approach of developing my smart home plan from head-end to end-user — head-end defined as where the internet was terminated for use.
As it was an existing home we purchased, having some wiring infrastructure already in place was a great start — and I added to it where I could. But I understood wifi would be the supporting technology to drive functionality in our home.
Check out these steps to consider in putting together your smart home solution that will not only improve quality of life but drive efficiency and reduce costs.
Not Starting With A Plan
It wasn’t as apparent 6 years ago but with our new build it’s glaringly obvious that planning is crucial. Ironically I’ve found creating a smart home is very similar to the stadium, arena and practice facility construction projects I’ve done technology planning for during my sports technology career. My plan is to take the same approach with our home build but just at scale as the technologies are almost identical.
I’ve started by documenting the goals for our smart home. There are numerous elements that smart home technology bring to the table — energy savings, automation options, safety/security improvements, convenience, entertainment, etc. The next step is planning out how you will implement smart home that aligns with what your goals are. For example, if one of your goals is to save energy, then installing a smart thermostat that includes an automated setback feature makes perfect sense. Without a well thought out plan, you will probably spend more money on the smart home than you had planned and still won’t achieve your goals.
This isn’t to say that there can’t be additional phases to your smart home plan when you expand your goals due to upgrades, new technologies, lifestyle changes, etc. As a matter of fact, smart home being technology, my expectation is that our plan will evolve over time versus being a ‘set it and forget it’ exercise. However, when you set goals and put a plan in place, you need to show discipline and stay the course. There will come a point, known as ‘pencils down’ when you will have to stop planning and implement that plan. This can be driven by timeline, budget or your goals.
Not Starting With A Robust And Secure Network
The smart home products that you install are going to rely on the home’s network to operate. While many smart home products use Z-Wave and Zigbee to communicate with each other wirelessly, they still are going to communicate with a hub that sits on a home network. Unless you have a robust and secure network, you are going to have system reliability challenges — both wifi and wired. The latest version of wifi (Wifi 6E) includes new capabilities designed for smart homes that help it handle more concurrently operating devices that are typical of a smart home. Last year Linksys was the first to launch a Wifi 6E compatible mesh router, the tri-band AXE8400.
A good rule of thumb is, despite new wireless technologies, to connect everything you can to wiring to maximize bandwidth. Many current smart home technologies that rely on wifi connectivity use the 2.4gHz spectrum which can become quickly congested. Wiring what you can help reduce or eliminate this issue.
In addition to having a network that is robust enough to handle all the smart home devices you plan to install, the network must be secure. For most smart home users, wifi is the primary or only way to connect their smart home devices. Very often these are routers or the newer mesh wifi devices. In our case I’m planning on a more ‘prosumer’ or commercial solution for wifi with a Ubiquiti star topology design — security gateway, core switch and access points.
For the wifi router users, first choose a router with a strong firewall from a reliable manufacturer. Buying a cheap, used router on eBay or Craig’s List is simply not a good idea. Your computer network is the foundation of your smart home, so investing in high-quality network hardware makes sense.
Next, the username/password of the router must be changed from any defaults provided by the manufacturer to a much stronger one. The first thing a hacker will do is try to break into a router using common, default usernames and passwords.
Not Starting Small
There is a natural tendency to jump in and automate everything right from the start. Unfortunately, this approach will be a painful one. There is a lot to learn about smart home technology that can’t be gained from reading. The best approach is to start small and learn by doing as we have. We started with smart bulbs and integrated those with our Amazon Alexa voice assistants. It didn’t take long for us to find out that smart bulbs can be problematic which has steered our lighting plans to smart switches instead.
This is going to save us a lot of money and trouble in the long run. Unless you are 100% decided on certain technologies, platforms or manufacturers for whatever reason, I’d suggest starting with limited investment in hardware and giving it some time to prove its worth.
Avoiding Incompatibilities Between Devices
Unfortunately, there are a wide variety of smart home technologies that don’t communicate with each other. Unless you research each product that you choose for your home carefully, you may find that, for example, the smart light bulbs you chose won’t communicate with your hub, and you can’t control them. There is a lack of standards that would let all smart devices communicate with each other, so it is up to the homeowner, or integrator, to make sure that all the products that are chosen for a smart home system are compatible.
One positive to this is that standardization is on the horizon. The smart home community has realized it’s been a bit of the ‘wild west’ regarding smart home and is working on correcting that with Matter. Matter has two goals. First, it wants to make manufacturing secure and cross-compatible smart devices easier. Second, it wants to make smart devices more accessible to consumers. That means most of the work will be in the background. Just like you don’t pay attention to how your car engine works, or how your wifi network works, you won’t pay attention to how your smart lock communicates with your smart lights.
Choosing Products From Companies That Go Out Of Business
If the company that manufactured a chair you bought goes out of business, it isn’t a big deal. On the other hand, many smart home products leverage computer programming running on cloud servers. If the company goes out of business, these cloud servers go away and your smart home device turns into a brick.
For this reason, that cool, new light switch being sold on Kickstarter by a startup company comes with significant risk. That company could become the next Google or Facebook. On the other hand, the company may never survive the process of developing their product and you could lose your investment. It is important to not only research the products you use in your smart home to make sure they fulfill your requirements but to also research the manufacturers to make sure they are going to continue operating and provide ongoing support for the products you purchase from them.
Not Focusing On Keeping Your Smart Home Devices Secure
Just like your router, the default usernames and passwords on all of your smart home devices need to be changed to very strong ones when you install them. In 2016, hackers installed malware in countless IoT devices whose owners hadn’t bothered to change the default username and passwords. This “botnet” of infected devices was then used for a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that took down large portions of the internet.
These days, most manufacturers don’t include default usernames and passwords, instead requiring the owner to enter their own to start with. But, this isn’t a universal practice, and it is up to homeowners to choose usernames and passwords that can’t be easily guessed.
In addition, every smart home device is a small computer and, just like your laptop, it needs updates to patch vulnerabilities. If you don’t want the video from your security cameras being displayed around the internet, then you need to make sure that the firmware is kept up to date.
Some devices are intelligent enough to automatically update themselves. However, many devices don’t include this feature and require the homeowner to do this manually.
Focusing On Price Over Quality
There are certainly bargains to be found when shopping for smart home devices. However, you always need to make sure that you are buying quality components from a manufacturer that will continue to support their devices over time. There is nothing worse than having problems with a smart home device, calling the manufacturer for support, getting someone in a call center who isn’t helpful at all. At that point you really have little choice other than replacing the device, spending even more money than you would have if you bought a higher quality component in the first place.
Not Anticipating Change
Smart home technology is rapidly evolving. You need to understand that change is inevitable. Parts of your system will become outdated over time and you’ll want or need to replace them. Because of this, you should try to choose products that can easily be replaced. This can be easier for some elements than others — smart light bulbs versus a smart refrigerator with a built-in smart home hub.
The average lifespan of a refrigerator is 17 years. In that timeframe, the smart home hub built into it could become obsolete. This changes the normal dynamic of trading out a refrigerator when a compressor finally fails. And a premium product like a smart refrigerator comes with a premium price tag. You may be better off spending less money on a more conventional refrigerator and placing an inexpensive tablet in your kitchen for smart home control.
Not Understanding The Difference Between Automation And Control
The ultimate goal of a smart home is for it to eventually understand your needs and to automatically take actions to help you. For example, when you enter your home carrying armfuls of groceries, your smart home should turn on pathway lights for safety and convenience and unlock doors to avoid fumbling for your keys. If your smart home only provides for control with voice commands that is not true automation. It is just a substitute for reaching out and manually turning on a light switch or unlocking a door.
Today, it isn’t easy to provide true automation, but that should be the goal if you are truly interested in what a smart home can provide. A great example of a genuine automation would be smart blinds closing on their own based on smart thermostat or temperature sensor data to control heating or air conditioning.
Using Confusing Names
The names you choose for your devices and groups that will be part of a smart home need to be carefully chosen. Voice assistants will pick up on these names. Assigning a new light switch an arbitrary name will lead to a smart home that’s both difficult and frustrating to operate. Especially for guests. Nobody, besides yourself, will ever be able to remember the unique names you give to your smart devices.
This is an aspect of our new home build that Debbie and I will carefully plan and apply as logical a naming convention as possible. Additionally, we’ll use as many ‘more conventional’ smart devices as possible so our guests will have as easy and normal experience in our home as they’re used to. Again, bringing up smart switches — they function like traditional light switches but will also have room specific naming for control and automation. That way our guests can just flip switches to turn lights on/off versus having to ask Alexa to ‘turn on Southwest Bedroom Overhead Light.’
Skimping On Control Points
Different smart home platforms use different types of devices for controlling the smart devices in a home. Professionally installed smart home systems can be controlled through proprietary wall-mounted keypads and touch panels, a smart phone app and voice commands using Amazon Alexa, Google Home or Apple HomeKit smart speakers. While your chosen platform may not support all of these options, it is important to make sure that it is very convenient for everyone in your family to control the smart home. If your family uses voice commands to control your home, then you need to spread smart speakers around the house so they don’t have to walk to another room to adjust the thermostat. If the smart home system doesn’t support voice commands, then distributing tablets that run the smart home app around the home is a good alternative. Just make sure your system is convenient to operate. Luckily there are many options to accomplish this, including smart light switches that incorporate touchscreens for managing other smart home functions.
Not Focusing On Who Will Be Using The System
If you live on your own and developing a smart home where you will be the only user then you can skip this one. Otherwise, designing your smart home with other users in mind, especially family, is critical to ultimate success. If you design your smart home without considering them, then you will inevitably run into problems. These other people are going to be as much users of the system as you are and if they find it confusing and difficult to operate you are never going to escape constantly adjusting things. To avoid having family members reject what you have installed, the best approach is to involve all the people who are going to use the system in its design. It may slow things down as you have to educate everyone on your goals and to some extent the technology you will use. However, the time you spend up front will pay off in the end. I addressed some of this briefly above in ‘Using confusing names.’
As Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘if given 6 hours to chop wood, I’d spend the first 4 hours sharpening the axe.’
This may seem a bit complicated with all of these aspects of setting up your smart home. There are so many smart devices out there it can seem overwhelming. But let’s remember the point about starting small. And also having a plan.
Hopefully, being aware of the potential mistakes you can make when building a smart home will help you avoid them. These steps have work for Debbie and I so far and I anticipate they’ll work for you.
For our smart home enthusiast friends out there we’d love to hear your thoughts on this process for developing your smart home. Have you followed a similar planning route? Have you accomplished your smart home going a different route? What have you done that I didn’t cover above? What step(s) would you leave out?
Let Debbie and I know in the comments, DMs and emails as we really enjoy hearing from you. Thanks again to all those following Debbie and I through our home building journey. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions as we move through the process. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’ Until next week …
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