Plan Your Smart Home Right From The Start
May 14, 2024
I’ve been working on our smart home capabilities for 7 years now and have deployed most of the different types of tech. Some great, some not so great.
The best approach is having as defined a concept of the smart home environment you want to build your plan around. This will save you a lot of time, frustration and money in the long run. By aligning your technology in ways that allow for interoperability, ease of use and maintaining a budget, you will undoubtedly enjoy the benefits of smart home much more.
Integrating smart home tech into an existing home, like Debbie and I did originally, can be an exciting and intimidating endeavor all in one. But building a smart home from scratch can be downright terrifying, especially if you’re new to smart home technology. Granted, I jumped into the smart home world initially with the advantage of having worked in technology and deploying it in stadiums and arenas during my career. But as we plan our new home build project, we’re not only working to make sure we are accommodating all the infrastructure necessary to support all the smart home tech but also allow for future flexibility for new tech.
So, I’ve put on my sports venue building hat and approached our home build project in a similar way by asking a lot of questions. How do I address network or home to connect all the devices? How does WiFi play a role in operations and guest experience? How do we address security — network and physical? How do we make the technology as frictionless and seamless as possible for the users and guests? The number of questions can be endless.
Let’s look at some of the things you’ll want to consider when planning your smart home so you can be better prepared.
Do Your Homework on Smart Home Platforms Before Starting
One of the aspects of smart home I learned early on is there are a multitude of different directions the technology can take you. One of those directions is platform. There are three major platforms currently available to select from: Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. If you’re really going to have a consolidated, interoperable smart home ecosystem, this is a major question you should answer before you start building your smart home.
Selecting a smart home platform is a major choice as the platform will be used to control and interact with devices from different manufacturers. A smart home platform can also tie together different devices with automation and voice control. You should pick a platform to start with and stick with that choice. That will help prevent frustration and cost overruns down the road.
Each of the major platforms has advantages and disadvantages, so make sure to find the best one for your home. While the Matter protocol is a standard slowly changing smart home technology by acting as the glue that ties various ecosystems together, it’s best to start with a single smart home platform. This may depend on the devices you already have.
For Debbie and I, first stating out, we didn’t have any devices so that simplified things. But I researched the different platforms. I see this as the foundational stage of our smart home journey. And just like the physical structure of a home, a strong foundation sets the stage for future success and longevity of the structure.
At the time, Amazon had a clear lead in smart home through their own devices, like Alexa, along with integrations with hundreds of other products and manufacturers. Google Home was pretty far behind at the time but they have gained ground on Amazon over the last few years in leaps and bounds. And Apple HomeKit wasn’t even a thing then. And they still struggle a bit to be considered a serious contender due to their proprietary nature and lack of integrations. But it’s still a popular platform for the hard-core Apple folks out there and Apple’s starting to really open up their ecosystem.
Debbie and I decided on Amazon Alexa and haven’t looked back.
Not Everything in Your House Needs to be ‘Smart’
Creating an entire smart home can be overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the technology. Not to mention the expense. Instead of laboring over adding technology to your entire home, try starting your smart home journey with just a single room or device type. This is how Debbie and I started. Our first step into smart home was with smart bulbs — simple, easy and fairly cheap — as we weren’t sure what we were doing or how to do it.
And not everything needs to be ‘smart.’ For our home build project, I’m trying to cover all of our technical and automation needs but there are still ‘analog’ options that more than cover some needs. One example is lighting in guest bedroom and hall closets. It would be easy to add smart switches that turn on lights via motion. But an even simpler and cheaper solution that takes even manually flipping a switch out of the equation is door jamb switches. You’re probably familiar with these — small, spring-loaded contact switches built into the door frame that open and close the light circuit as you open and close the door.
There are a few reasons to start slow. You won’t be overwhelmed by the technology and all of its different capabilities. It also allows you to start with very simple smart home devices — like smart bulbs — so you can get more familiar with the technology and how to best use it. After starting with just a single room or device, you can branch out to other areas in your home add other device types. This will build confidence, technical experience and start to formulate a vision of what you want your smart home to be.
Make Sure Your Smart Home is User Friendly
If you live with others, always make sure to take into consideration what they want and how they might use smart home technology. This is especially true if you live with people who are technology challenged. It’s a good idea to consult with them on preferences, keep them informed of what you’re installing and then show them how to use the devices.
Keeping this in mind, but still benefiting from smart technology in your home, look for opportunities where the devices can also be operated as analog. A great example of this are smart switches. As Debbie and I anticipate entertaining guests in our new home, we don’t want the technology to be overwhelming. With smart switches, guests will be able to enjoy their stay using familiar manual switching to turn lights on and off without the hassle of having to know room or light names. But this also gives me the capabilities to automate lighting as needed or when we’re traveling.
A smart speaker is a great way for everyone to interact with your smart home. If you have a larger budget, you might even consider purchasing a smart home control panel, like the Amazon Echo Hub. A control panel can be mounted on the wall, or placed in a location with high traffic so anyone can control smart home devices via a touch screen. This is also in our plan which will give a simple graphical dashboard for us and guests to use to control lighting, temperature, vacuums, cameras and media, like music.
Set a Budget Before Starting
This should be an obvious one, but it’s not something we considered when first getting started with smart home tech. But I quickly learned that it’s crucial to create a budget. It’s been great to watch smart home technology mature and become more capable. Today you can find the device you’re looking for to solve a challenge, fill a need or to enhance a current device in multiple price ranges.
Set a budget so that you have a better idea of how much technology you can add before getting started. Doing that will also help set your expectations on what the technology is capable of. If you’re willing to pay for it, there is some truly amazing smart home technology. But like Debbie and I initially, newcomers may just want a taste of how a smart home can change their day-to-day routine. As mentioned above, the first easy — and fairly inexpensive — step into smart home for us was smart bulbs.
Obviously, once your comfort level with smart home grows, so can your budget. Do what you feel is best for your needs without breaking the bank. Debbie and I have come a long way in our smart home journey and have a pretty robust plan in place for our home build. This also comes with a price which I’m constantly tweaking until we reach the ‘pencils down’ stage and get started.
Understand Your Network Needs
A critical aspect of smart home is connectivity. And I’m not just talking about internet access or speed.
The wired and wireless networks are a vital part of any smart home. I’ve relied a lot on my experience building out networks to support stadiums and arenas in our smart home planning. This may sound a little intimidating to the smart home beginner but keeping in mind some simple guidelines can set your smart home up to run smoothly for a long time.
The first thing to do is figure out what you’re doing, or want to do, with your smart home and take inventory of all of it. This will give you a picture of the scale of your smart home which will also help determine your connectivity needs. My first rule is to connect everything you can to the network physically — meaning plug an Ethernet cable into it. For someone living in an apartment that could mean plugging smart TVs and gaming consoles into an Ethernet port on the back of the WiFi router. In our case, we’ll be installing an Ethernet network throughout the new house to plug in TVs, smart speakers, cameras, smart home control panels and more. The basic idea is ‘if we can plug it in, we will.’ This might sound a little crazy in a world where everything seems to be connected wirelessly but there’s a good technical reason for it.
There will be a lot of other devices that can’t connect to the network physically and will rely on WiFi. So preserving bandwidth for those devices, and accommodating a guest WiFi network that doesn’t have access to anything but the internet is a good idea. It’s also a good idea regarding network security.
While some devices use other communication protocols like Bluetooth, Zigbee, or device-to-device connectivity via Thread, WiFi can tie your network together. And the more smart home technology you add, the more strain you will put on your existing wireless network.
WiFi also has a tendency to have dead, or slow, spots around homes. This likely means that your smart home devices will have issues. A strong wireless signal is vital for whole-home coverage, particularly when it comes to devices like video doorbells which may exist at the edge of wireless range — a great reason to connect via Ethernet if you can.
For smaller networks or in places that you can’t run Ethernet cabling, you can improve your WiFi signal by upgrading to a mesh WiFi network. This is what we currently use to provide a strong signal everywhere around our home. Our plan for our house build however is to deploy an centrally managed WiFi solution with Wireless Access Points (WAPs) located throughout the house, connected to the Ethernet network, for maximum coverage and throughput.
Don’t Buy (Only) the Cheapest Smart Home Devices
While you should create a budget when looking to start equipping your smart home, you shouldn’t always default to the cheapest devices. Less expensive devices can often have reliability issues, shorter warranties, and inferior technical support. They also tend to have fewer integrations with other smart home devices — you’ll discover this by starting with a plan. Depending on the smart home device, there will likely be a mid-tier solution that provides exactly what you need and that will hold up over time without blowing the budget.
As I mentioned above, we started with inexpensive smart bulbs but they proved to be problematic with integrations and power outages. Lesson learned and why we won’t be deploying them in our new home.
Smart Speakers Are the Way to Go
While a smartphone is a great way to control smart home technology, a smart speaker is an essential part of any smart home. Many smart home commands, like turning off a light or unlocking a door, take just a few seconds — so much more efficient than carrying around a smartphone to do those simple tasks. With a smart speaker and a simple voice command, you can interact with all of your connected devices.
The good news is that each of the three major smart home platforms has a smart speaker that can be used to control smart home devices. Amazon Alexa can be used with a wide variety of Echo smart speakers. The Echo Show line even has a touchscreen. Google Home has both audio-only and touchscreen options. Apple HomeKit and Siri are limited to the HomePod and HomePod mini.
As I mentioned above, when Debbie and I got started with smart home, we opted for Amazon Alexa. At the time, Amazon had a clear lead in smart home through their own devices, like Alexa, along with integrations with hundreds of other products and manufacturers. But Apple and Google have closed that gap since.
Use a Consistent Naming System for Your Devices
If you’re starting your smart home with a single room, you’ll probably want to add devices to other parts of your home eventually. That’s why thinking through a logical, consistent naming system makes sense ahead of time. Having consistent names is important for many reasons.
This makes controlling different devices and creating unique automations easier when trying to tie everything together using your smart home platform. When issuing a voice command to a smart speaker, you’ll want to remember the difference between your living room and bedroom, for instance.
This can be done by identifying rooms or spaces, types of devices and even directions like north, south, east and west. For example, shutting off a guest bedroom ceiling fan light — ‘Alexa, turn off the south guest bedroom ceiling fan light.’
Don’t Select Smart Home Products You’re Not Comfortable Installing
Simple smart home products, like a smart plug or smart bulb, take just a few minutes to set up and run. But when enhancing your smart home with new device types, there are a wide variety to choose from like smart thermostats, smart locks or smart switches.
Before any purchase, it’s a good idea to head to a manufacturer’s site and read about the installation process. Once you understand the process, make sure you’re comfortable installing the product. Something like a smart thermostat requires a few tools and at least some DIY knowledge. You can always hire a professional to install the products, but factor in the increased costs involved in doing so — sometimes as much or more as the device itself. To help decide, check out my article ‘DIY or Professional Smart Home Installation?’
Update Your Device Firmware and Companion Apps
Just like any technology, very often firmware updates are released after smart home devices ship. That’s why it’s vital to check for firmware updates and apply them during set up and regularly afterwards. Depending on what the product is, there might be different ways to do that. But usually, it’s through the companion smartphone app. Along with eliminating bugs, firmware updates can often also bring new features to smart home devices. Companion apps are a major part of the smart home experience, so be sure to keep these apps updated as well.
It can take some time and money to create a smart home. But it’s worth it as the great thing is it can be whatever you want it to be — large, small, simple, sophisticated. And it can also evolve over time as your skill level or confidence grows, your budget expands or there are new devices you’re interested in deploying. Hopefully this helps define some guidelines to follow and help understand the smart home, especially as a beginner.
I’m curious what your thoughts are around starting or expanding your smart home. If you’ve already started your smart home, did you consider any of the points above? Are there pointers you’d add?
If you’re new to smart home, does this article give you some guidelines that make sense to get started right.
Let Debbie and I know what you think 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.’
SmartHomeOnTheRange.com
In full disclosure, I’m not an affiliate marketer with links to any online retailer on my website. When people read what I’ve written about a particular product and then click on those links and buy something from the retailer, I earn nothing from the retailer. The links are strictly a convenience for my readers.
