Smart Home: Overview

Brad Fitzgerald Brad Fitzgerald

Although I now have plenty of smart home devices, I would say that I started out as a skeptic. A lot of my reasoning came down to “It’s not that hard to just [walk over and flip the switch, run upstairs and check the windows, walk over to the thermostat, etc] now, so why would I need a $40+ smart device to do that?”

In reality, I still agree, but as smart home devices become cheaper the cost/benefit ratio changes drastically. It’s hard not to give into the cool factor of controlling your home devices from your smartphone or via voice. Outside of that “coolness” factor, there are definite real-life, practical uses for a smart home.

One of my first smart home automations was to have the lights turn on in my living room when I arrived home after dark. The way my house is constructed, I enter through my back door and there are no lights on that path, so a smart home automation quickly solved a problem that would have normally required an electrician and/or some construction.

I added a smart light and combined it with a HomeKit rule that would detect when I was close to my home and turn the lights on after sunset. This solution was simple and easy to implement. With this one solution, I embarked on a smart home journey that continues to this day. The landscape has changed a lot in the last 5 years, but the fundamentals have not.

Below, I have laid out what I think are the fundamentals of the smart home ecosystem and made some basic recommendations for you to get started.

Platforms

To help understand the smart home landscape, it’s best to think of the world in two areas – platforms and products. The platforms are the systems that will control your smart home and allow you to create automations. There are three main players:

  • Apple HomeKit
  • Google Assistant
  • Amazon Alexa
smart home logos

Your choice will likely be influenced by which smartphone universe you are in — Apple vs Android. My tech world is Apple-centric so I try to buy products that support HomeKit, but I have plenty of Google Nest devices too. Google and Alexa do seem to be pretty universally supported by all vendors, but many vendors support all three.

Tip: Whenever possible, buy products that support more than one platform. It will give you flexibility as your needs change. It will be a bit more expensive up front, buy you won’t have to re-purchase things later on.

Products and Reviews

The list of vendors is long but are a few areas general areas:

  • Smart Lighting – Philips Hue and Lutron Caseta are the two big names in this area, but there are plenty of others.
  • Smart Plugs – This is probably the most crowded of segments in the smart home area. There are about a million vendors, but Eve, Wemo, Koogeek, and iDevices are a few that come to mind.
  • Smart Doors Locks – Most big tech vendors as well as traditional lock hardware vendors are operating in this space (e.g. August, Yale, Kwikset, and Schlage).
  • Smart Thermostats – Google Nest and Ecobee are two of the main players.
    • Ecobee Thermostat – Overview Coming Soon
  • Smart Cameras – Another quickly growing segment includes Google Nest, Ring, and Eufy. Some of these have local storage of video while nearly all have a paid cloud storage version. This segment is changing quickly and is part of the evolving DIY home security trend.
    • Google Nest Cameras and Doorbell – Overview Coming Soon
  • Other Devices – This catch all includes a ton of devices like garage door openers, smart smoke detectors, door and windows sensors, temperature sensors, flood sensors, etc.

One thing to note is that most of these vendors operates in multiple categories. For example, Philips Hue makes smart plugs in addition to smart lights, so you have the advantage of seeing that smart plug within the Philips Hue app. This does provide some advantages, but in reality its not necessary since the underlying platform (HomeKit, Google Assistant, Alexa, etc) provides that same advantage as long as the devices are compatible with your chosen platform.

Uses/Scenarios

There are a million scenarios that run the gamut from the mundane to the quirky. For the most part, whatever you can dream up can be done as long as your devices connect to the same platform. Here are few examples from my own experience:

  • Turn on the living room lights when I arrive home
  • As Siri to set the Movie scene lights
  • Scan an NFC tag to turn off the bedroom lights
  • Automatically turn on the bedroom lights when the motion sensor detects motion and turns the lights off when there is no motion for 3 minutes
  • Turn off all lights when I leave the house
  • Set the table lamp color to blue one hour before the Notre Dame football game
  • Turn the table lamp red when my Domino’s pizza is out for delivery
  • Set a warm light setting when I watch TV after sunset
  • Set lights to turn on and off to simulate occupancy when away on vacation

Most of these scenarios require integration across several devices, but since they are all part of the same ecosystem/platform, it’s easy.

Getting Started

Getting started depends on your budget and your level of technical skill, but my best recommendation is to start with two devices:

  • a smart plug connected to a “dumb” device (e.g. fan, lamp, Christmas tree, etc.)
  • Philips Hue starter kit

These two products are very easy to install and you can get started with a few simple automations. For example:

  • Ask your smart assistant (Siri, Google Home, Alexa) to turn on the Christmas tree (via smart plug)
  • Create a movie lighting scene
  • Turn your lights on when you arrive home and off when you leave

This setup will cost you less than $200 and as low as $70. The biggest expense here is the Philips Hue starter kit which includes a hub and some lights. The colored lights are the most expensive and worth it if you can afford it, but if you are cost-conscious, I’d recommend the White Ambiance bulbs because you can set any color along the white spectrum from bright white to a warm orange hue.

I’ve embedded some reviews into this article, and will update them as I get them completed. I hope you find them helpful.