Avoiding Common Mistakes with Smart Home Installs
Learn how to avoid common mistakes with smart home installs by choosing the right devices, ensuring proper setup, and maximizing system performance.
Smart home technology has come a long way in the mainstream in the last ten years. In this time, the systems have gone from niche and underrepresented to well-loved and accepted pieces of technology, and they're only growing more popular. The success of smart homes can drive us to go out and invest, but like with any home upgrade, there are some common mistakes that we need to address first.
Why Adopt Smart Home Tech?
Before looking at the potential problems of smart tech, it’s worth quickly mentioning why smart home tech has become so widespread. Firstly, being able to control your home appliances and temperature from anywhere is incredibly convenient. Arriving home on a freezing night to a heated living room is a fantastic feeling, and that’s just the beginning.
Smart homes can also help save money, both in the long and short term. In the short term, being able to automate systems and power them off can help keep electricity costs low. In the long term, properly installed smart home tech can aid with home valuation come sales time. If I value my house with Sold or adjacent services, for example, any smart home upgrades will be taken into account. Combined with features like no hidden fees and free cash offers, modern real-estate platforms can help sellers get more from their smart home investments.
Potential Issues to Avoid
The first issue that we’ve seen arise with smart home installs isn’t the fault of users at all, it's down to developers of the hardware and software. Many pieces of smart home tech operate as paid ongoing services, which means they're tied into a single company's infrastructure. Consequently, if a company decides to stop supporting what you paid for, as Google did, as reported here by Ars Technica, it can lose functionality altogether. Solving this problem means looking into open-source supported platforms, which are community-backed, so they avoid the offline problem.
Next up is a lack of Wi-Fi, which can cause smart homes to disconnect. Smart home tech communicates through your home network, which means you'll need strong Wi-Fi signals for every smart home appliance. Fortunately, this one can be easy to solve with systems like the powerline adapters covered at Overclockers, so every corner of your house is connected.
Another complication we've seen with smart home tech is when people rush out to overhaul everything at once. While you can eventually replace many pieces of your home with smart alternatives, it's usually a good idea to start slowly. This way, you can get used to how the systems are installed and operated, and you can replace any systems that are frustrating to use with more user-friendly alternatives.
Our final piece of advice with smart home tech is to take the time to teach everyone how to use it. Simple written instructions can work well here, or you can record videos on your phone that you can share with anyone in the house who needs access.
Getting used to smart home technology can be a slow process, but the systems are now developed enough that anyone can learn them. Follow the above tips, don't be intimidated, and like with the TV remote, you could soon be wondering how you ever managed without them.
Stay up to date with our latest ideas!
