Smart Home rules to make your life easier

When designing a smart home, or making changes to your system, there are a number of things that can go wrong.

Over a number of years of being involved in Smart Home devices, I wrote some basic rules for myself that I found made my (and my family’s) life easier. I’ll run through these and their reasons:

• Smart devices (bulbs, smart sockets etc) need to have a fail condition where they work the same as their dumb equivalent. This means that if your smart hub, or Home Assistant installation was to fail for any reason or your internet goes down, the lights will still work, the smart plugs will still turn things on and off.
• People within your home should not need to learn something new. If you’re installing smart lights and they come with a smart light switch, it should be obvious what the functions are (on/off, dimming). Replace the original light switch or blank it off, but have a fallback option that works. Some lights allow a switch to be ‘bound’ to them, allowing operation directly.
• Unless it’s impossible, never rely on Cloud based services. If you lose your internet connection or the cloud provider goes down, or they go out of business, your devices stop working. Either buy something where the firmware can be flashed to a locally working equivalent, or use local protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wifi but only if local control is possible).
• The device needs to be reliable. If it isn’t, then either the device is rubbish or faulty. If it’s not making your life easier, then remove it.
• The fewer apps/dashboards needed to run your smart home the better. Ideally one app or dashboard. This is where Smartthings – https://amzn.to/34ebx9E or Home Assistant is useful.
• If you are using Wifi devices, then your Wifi needs to be very reliable. If you’re using a cheap/free no-name router from your ISP you’re going to have problems. Exceptions to this are the BT (EE/Plusnet) Home Hubs or the Virgin Hub. If you’re looking to upgrade your Wifi, consider a mesh system (BT, Netgear, Google Wifi etc) or look at Unifi – https://amzn.to/34ebx9E (expensive but worth it).
• Smart devices should not cost considerably more than their ‘dumb’ equivalents or competitor’s offerings. For example, Philips Hue bulbs work very well, but cost 2-3 times more than their nearest competitor with no difference in quality.
• Avoid anything that needs its own special hub to work. If the device uses Zigbee or Z-Wave, then the device should work with other hubs such as Smartthings, or Home Assistant (with the relevant USB dongle). Wifi also, but only if local control is possible (so it doesn’t rely on a cloud provider or the internet being available). Exceptions to this are RF or infrared devices – however the Broadlink hub should work with these.
• Avoid solutions that involve modifying your house wiring. If changes are needed, get an electrician to do it. Only attempt if qualified or competent, and even then treat an isolated circuit as live until you’re able to test it. Changes to wiring may also have insurance implications.