After years of experience building a smart home, I know what most people should do and, more importantly, what not to do. So I’ve come up with three simple goals of what my ideal smart home should be, and I think you’ll agree. Number one: it should be invisible, working so seamlessly in the background that you forget it’s even there. Second is high spouse approval – basically, anyone living in your house or guest visiting should not be annoyed by your smart home.
The last goal is to have long-term reliability; you don’t want it breaking a few months down the road and turning into a time and money pit. So I’m going to show you how to build the ideal smart home with those goals in mind, and at the end, I’m going to answer a bunch of questions that were submitted. It’s going to be super helpful and packed with info.
Choosing the Right Control Method
First, one of the most important parts about building a smart home is knowing how you’re going to control it. You might think, “Oh, I’ll just put a bunch of smart speakers around the house and use voice commands for everything.” This might seem like a good idea when you’re first starting; I know that’s what I did when I first started. But now, guess what?
I hardly even speak to these things. It’s been 84 years because it’s difficult and clunky to remember what to say. So yeah, not really in line with seamlessly running in the background and family-friendly, so I wouldn’t plan on controlling your entire smart home with voice commands. Maybe just a handful of voice commands you use on the couch is more reasonable. I mainly use Smart speakers to listen to music and play voice notifications.
Another way you might want to control your smart home is with a bunch of smart home apps on your phone, but don’t do that. It’s just too much. Only use these individual smart home apps to occasionally adjust settings. Trust me, the better way is to use a dashboard that combines all your smart devices so they’re organized in one spot. You can quickly access them on your phone, or family members can control things on a shared tablet.
At least, I thought it was a great idea to do this; you’re going to need to combine all your smart home devices into one smart home system, and more on that in a minute. But this is great because there’s always going to be times where you’re going to need to manually control something, and this just makes it so easy.
Harnessing the Power of Sensors
So dashboards are convenient, but the ideal way to control your smart home is with sensors. They make it so you can go about your day while your smart home adjusts based on your everyday activities like walking into a room, using a kitchen counter, or the garage door opens. And sensors make it possible to hit all three of those goals for the ideal smart home. When you think of smart home sensors, you might think of the classic contact and motion sensor, but it goes beyond that.
Many of these sensors can actually be other smart home devices like if the doorbell detects a person, your smart home can do an action. The last way to control your smart home is with smart buttons; these are for weird corner cases that you want something to happen quickly, like the button in our bathroom that will send the robot vacuum to clean this specific room. The timing of this is sporadic, so sensors wouldn’t work.
I don’t want to remember a voice command, and I don’t need a full-on dashboard in the bathroom. Wait, maybe I do. Wait, what? No, Reed, no, on second thought, a smart button is a perfect solution for situations like this. So now we know the best way to control your smart home, now we need a system to make it all happen.
Choosing the Right Smart Home System
This will allow you to combine all your devices into one dashboard, connect sensors, and act like the brains of your smart home. I recently made a video about the best smart home system, and I’ll link it down below if you want to check it out. But here are a few things you might want to keep in mind when picking out the right system for you. Number one: an easy, simple system might not always be better. In fact, it can be the opposite.
For example, say you have a few Amazon Echo you’ve collected over the years, so you want Amazon to be your smart home system. It’s easy to use, so it makes sense, right? Well, you’re going to run into issues with all three of those goals for the ideal smart home because you’re limited on how much customization is possible. Say you don’t want motion lights to turn on if the TV is on, or you don’t want certain automations to run if visitors are over.
With Amazon, this isn’t possible. Yes, it’s easier to use, but you’ll be limited in what you can do, what sensors are compatible, dashboard options, and the list goes on. So it seems counterintuitive, but a more advanced smart home system can actually be more family-friendly because you can customize it exactly how your family needs it to work. The other thing to consider when picking a smart home system is what kind of sensors and devices you want to use. There are thread, zigby, Z-Wave, and Wi-Fi to choose from. Wi-Fi is pretty self-explanatory, but the other three are their own protocols.
They build out mesh networks of threads, zig, or Z-Wave devices to expand across your house and not clog up your Wi-Fi bandwidth. One thing to watch out for is if you go with a smart home system that’s only compatible with thread; you could bump into some problems because thread is still fairly new, so you might run into some more issues than something like zig. Also, many thread devices cost more than their zigby counterparts. Besides Wi-Fi, the majority of devices in my house are zig, it gives me the widest selection, lots of inexpensive options, and it’s been very reliable. I’ll link some of my favorite zigby devices down below, and I’m planning on doing another sensor video to find the best, so hit that subscribe button to not miss it.
I know that’s a lot to go over, but there’s one more thing to think about when choosing a smart home system: how much tinkering do you want to do? Like, do you want to customize everything to your heart’s content, or are you fine just letting the system do it for you? Home assistant is open source, which means it’s free and not owned by some big tech company, but it does require some tinkering to keep it working. It’s gotten way easier over the years, but it’s definitely more work.
Here are some of the smart home systems I recommend: home assistant is the clear winner for me, but for lots of people, tinkering isn’t ideal, which is completely fine. I personally don’t mind tinkering, let’s see, building something in my quiet garage and getting a break from this, yeah, I’ll take as long as I need. Okay, now you know the best way to control your smart home and the system to make it happen.