By Adrian Justins
Building a smart home can be a daunting prospect, and there are many pitfalls to be aware of. In the first part In this series, we have focused on using a professional custom installer. Here, we look at the alternative: do it yourself.
Taking the professional route requires more money and will often involve routing cables through walls and ceilings. Installing smart devices yourself can be much easier – most will use wireless communication and many will run on battery rather than mains power – but some devices will still need to be permanently bolted in place. Unfortunately, setting it up is more complex than simply plugging in your new gadgets and sitting around while they monitor your energy usage or tell you who’s at the door.
The best approach is to start by adding one or two devices at a time. This will allow you to get used to the process and how the devices communicate. Setup usually takes quite a while to download a different app for each product and add devices to your WiFi network. (Tip: Make sure your phone’s operating system is up to date.)
Not all products use Wi-Fi for wireless communication. Alternatives include Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave and Thread. Uniquely, the latter does not require a hardware controller (commonly called a hub or bridge): threaded devices can “talk” to each other directly via the Internet but using a radio frequency.
You can use smart home devices made by several brands: Nanoleaf smart lights with Arlo security cameras, a Google Nest thermostat and a Amazon ring doorbell, for example. But rather than taking a product-driven approach, it might make more sense to choose a smart home control platform (or ecosystem) that will make it easier to sync and add more devices.
There are four main ecosystems: Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit and Samsung SmartThings (main image, top). All communicate wirelessly with individual smart devices using a hub, allowing you to control multiple gadgets through a single app on your phone. Google and Samsung make dedicated hubs (Google Nest Hub and Samsung SmartThings hub, respectively), but like Amazon and Apple, they also offer smart home controllers built into other devices. These include smart speakers (Amazon Echo, Google Nest, Apple HomePod), smart displays (Amazon Echo), streaming devices (Amazon Fire TV Cube and some Apple TVs), and iPads that can function as HomeKit hubs. Some Samsung TVs and refrigerators can act as a SmartThings hub.
There are ways around single ecosystem restrictions. One is with Homey, a hub (priced at £69) that is compatible with all major control platforms. Operated using a subscription-free app, Homey charges a £2.99 monthly fee for systems with more than five smart devices. Alternatively, this year, thanks to a new universal standard called Matter, many devices are being updated with software that makes them compatible with other major platforms. Someone with an Apple HomeKit system, for example, could control a Google Home camera from within the Apple Home app.
While many existing smart home devices will be updated to be compatible with Matter, older ones are unlikely to be updated, and the rollout has been slow. (The Verge tech site has a list of all Matter devices Here.) Matter uses Thread for multi-device communication, so you’ll also need a device called a Thread border router, although more and more Matter controllers/hubs are being sold with Thread routing built in. However, reviews of early Matter-enabled devices have found the setup process complicated and even unreliable — it seems the promise of a frictionless smart home isn’t yet within reach.
In the next part of this series, we will take a detailed look at the differences between ecosystems and explain how automated routines work
Photography: Samsung SmartThings; Apple; Welcoming; Nanoleaf
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