The Trouble with Smart Home

This year I used the extra COVID time at home to experiment with smart home products. The goal was to identify rooms and spaces I used often, make them smart~ish, then simply live with it for a while and develop an opinion on the product space (e.g. setup, maintenance, reliability, troubleshooting, value-add, etc). There are plenty of obvious drawbacks to the tech including fragmented apps to control the devices and cost to name a couple. However, I found three limiting factors that no one warned me about but make these products no smarter or superior to the items replaced: my wife and two kids.

The primary selling point for smart lights is that they can be remotely dimmed/brightened and turned on/off. However, that functionality assumes the light switch that controls them is always in the “on” position. While I myself am willing to go around the house controlling the lights by voice and remote only, my wife and kids are not. So literally all the lights I replaced in the house have the switches in the “off” position when I want to use them. The same thing goes with smart plugs, I have to ensure the plugs are in outlets that are not controlled with switches otherwise they are no longer smart. If the dependencies of these products are not met, namely power, the products are not only “dumb” they are more frustrating to use as product expectations are not met.

So, my wife and kids are the limitations of smart home devices. There are quite a few virtues of the devices though when the dependencies are met, starting with the ability to turn your lights on and off from anywhere with an internet connection. Telling Alexa to “start my day”, then having her turn on the lights to the office, read me my news, tell me the weather, etc. is undoubtedly convenient. Being able to turn on the lights inside and outside the house before arriving home is also convenient, as I often enter the house with three arms worth of kids stuff or groceries. The biggest value-add I’ve found with the lights however is the circadian functionality, adjusting both colors and brightness for different times of the day. I very much appreciate the bright white light during the day when I am working and the soft yellow incandescent light at night. Having the light automatically shift those settings for me throughout the day is downright clever.

The second virtue is with smart plugs. On the surface, these devices don’t offer any features that a “clapper” from the 90s can’t take care of. However, now that it is winter in Canada and the absolute last thing I want to do at 11 p.m. is venture outside and turn off the Christmas lights, I’ve come to appreciate being able to control the Christmas lights from inside the house. Coupled with the ability to group all these lights into a single category for Alexa, by saying “Alexa, turn off the Christmas lights” I’ve saved myself the hassle of walking around both the inside and outside of the house in freezing weather.

The last virtue I’ve found is in connecting multiple Alexas around the house, then setting up phrases that kick off various actions in the locations needed. For example, “Alexa, I’m going to go workout.” tells her to stream Spotify downstairs for my workout (and pretty soon turn on the lights in the gym). “Alexa, turn off the Christmas lights” turns them off both inside and outside the house. Once I expand the project a bit, “Alexa, I’m going in the hot tub.” will turn on all the lights in the back yard (I’m not quite willing to invest in a smart hot tub just yet). It’s nice to use these natural phrases instead of giving Alexa a string of commands that include both the action to perform as well as the device location.

Given the limitation to the technology, namely my family, I’m not willing to make any major expenditures on smart home devices just yet. For example, I’m not going to spend buckets of money on Alexa enabled blinds or a smart hot tub, unless the products I were to buy were already both high quality and highly rated products. But for now, I’ll keep progressing this project bit by bit to see if my opinions change.