Guide to home automation — Part I
Recently I started an effort to automating my house. I learnt several things along the way, which I would like to share. Of course, I will never be as resourceful as my friend, who automated his house with his bare hands, writing programs and all, before Home Automation was even a thing. So whatever I learn on this topic, my first nod always goes to him.
The biggest challenge today concerning home automation is the availability of any standard. Thankfully, you don’t have to get all-geeky about the standards aspect — you just have to pick an ‘ecosystem’ that best works for you, and make sure everything you buy is compatible with the ecosystem. The ecosystems, of course, are Alexa, Google and HomeKit.
Turning your lights on or off, with a voice command is not home automation. Of course, it is a good milestone to have — since at that point, you have enabled your utilities for automation. Home automation is all about routines — or scripts — which can orchestrate multiple actions based on a super-action. For example, if I said ‘Alexa, Good Night’, I want all my lights to go off, my doors to lock, night lamps to turn on, home security to turn on and much more. Or ‘Okay Google, Good Morning’, will disarm my security system, turn on lights of my choice, start my kettle and reads the weather for the day.
Home security can include many aspects like operating simple loads (lights, fans etc..), complex loads (dryer, microwave, kettles etc..), home security (doors, doorbells, home security). Across all these areas 2 things soon become important — context sensitivity and usage insights.
In every case, the first investment you make is on good quality WiFi. Single-router solutions are out, mesh routers are in. But not every house needs a mesh. What you do need is good quality reception on the 2.4 GHz channel (most automation devices do not support 5GHz, I don’t yet know why)
The second step is to maybe call an electrician to survey your house and tell you what’s what. At the most basic level, you’ll want to know where the breaker panels are located, which breaker goes to which part of your house, 1/3/4/5 way lines, wiring standards (most devices require the Neutral) etc..You may not get anything done during this visit, but this is very necessary to build your shopping list.
The third step is to identify what doesnt need automation. For example, I dont need Alexa to turn on my bathroom switch. Its right there. If I need Alexa for my night lamp to come on, I am over-doing it. I may need a non-connected, but smart solution like a motion sensor, occupancy sensor, vacancy sensor, sound sensor, photo sensor etc. These can get the job done without having to connect them to the world.
If you have come this far, you know what it takes to automation-enable your house. People think smart devices are expensive. I too used to think that and postponed my home automation passion for years. Currently I am about half-way, if not more, into automation-enabling meaningful chunk of my loads. I can say with first hand conviction that devices spend is dwarfed by labor spend. Electricians are expensive, good electricians are more expensive, electricians with knowledge of home automation are even harder to come by. The ones that know this a little bit insist you buy the brand THEY are familiar with. Don’t fall for it. Stick with the requirements, but buy devices that provide you good value at the price point.
At this point, you should know 2 things. If you are buying a device which needs its own master/ bridge/ hub, you are probably going down the unwise path. Stick to devices that can directly work with Alexa or Siri or Google. Of course, the pre-req for this is that you have good wifi. If you cannot possibly have good 2.4GHz throughout your house, then choose hub based solutions, which communicate outside wifi. If you do buy devices that dont need a hub, also know that many devices can work with multiple ecosystems — if you choose them, it may not be impossible to ditch Google in favor of Alexa or Alexa in favor of Siri at a later date.
So you have bought the devices, called the electrician, assuming the breakers are well-documented and your electrician is worth his weight in copper, you can get all the switches swapped out in less than few hours. Your electrician doesnt know the first thing about smart devices? No problem. If you have chosen the products well, and if the switches do what they do in a traditional way (like a switch toggle), he has done his part of the job. Everything else — you have to do by using the right apps etc. Generally speaking, each device brand (a la Leviton, Wemo, SmartLife and the likes) require you to have your own account on their websites/ apps, and then you are basically federating access from your device account to the ecosystem account. For example, when I installed the Leviton smartswitch, Alexa doesn’t know about it, not directly anyways. You setup the Leviton switch in your Leviton account, and provide Alexa access to your Leviton account.
I wanted to keep this first part intentionally conceptual and generic. I would love to know what you have tried, and what you’d like to know about. Based on which I will write my 2nd part. Thank you for reading.
