Anyone who tells you that smart home is easy is lying to you. Indeed, building a smart home—well, a smart apartment in my case—has been one of the trickiest tech endeavors I’ve ever taken on, given all the makes, models, connectivity standards, and interoperability issues that need juggling.
So yes, I’ve made mistakes—lots of them. Some were small (like the smart candelabra bulb that wouldn’t fit in a regular light socket) and some were fundamental. (Who has two thumbs and mixes Alexa speakers with Google Home displays? This guy. More on that in a moment.)
Luckily, we learn from our mistakes, and I’m ticking off my six biggest smart home foul-ups in the hopes you won’t repeat them.
Skimping on smart plugs (or on smart anything, for that matter)
It’s tempting to snag cheap smart plugs on Amazon for a steep discount; heck, who would turn their nose up at a four-pack of Wi-Fi smart plugs for $9.99? For that price, you can make all the outlets in your home smart without breaking a sweat.
Well, I’ve learned the hard way that a useless smart plug is no bargain, regardless of the discount. My home is riddled with cheap smart plugs that either can’t maintain a steady connection or simply don’t work at all.
This Eve Energy smart plug costs a pricey $40, but in four years it’s never let me down.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
One off-brand Zigbee smart plug likes to conk out roughly once a week; unplugging it and plugging it back in seems to fix it, although never for long. Another cheap HomeKit smart plug lost connectivity with the Apple Home app long ago, and I just control it manually now. (I’ll get around to replacing it, eventually.) What those iffy smart plugs have in common is that they all cost about $10 each.
Now, if you find a cheap smart plug that works consistently (and we have found a few), more power to you. But the smart plugs I spend more money on (more like $30 each), like these from Eve Energy and Philips, have been rock-solid, and consequently I never give them much thought. Yes, they were pricier, but at least I wasn’t throwing my money away.
Forgetting to (temporarily) switch my Wi-Fi to single-band mode
Many Wi-Fi-enabled smart home products are designed to only work on the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum. It makes sense; after all, a dual-band Wi-Fi light bulb seems like overkill given the limited networking it requires.
But sometimes, single-band Wi-Fi devices have trouble connecting to dual-band Wi-Fi networks, and that’s where the headaches come. See, when you’re setting up a Wi-Fi smart device for the first time and it trips on your dual-band wireless router, it often won’t tell you that that’s the problem.
Instead, you may wind up banging your head against the wall, trying one troubleshooting step after another, until you finally realize it’s the dual-band network that’s to blame. Make the switch from dual-band Wi-Fi to single-band, and more often than not, your smart device setup problems will disappear.
Forgetting to switch my Wi-Fi back to dual-band
Of course, the other Wi-Fi snafu that can arise with smart home is the mirror image of the previous one: forgetting to switch your Wi-Fi network back to dual-band after putting it into single-band mode.
I just committed that error a couple of weeks ago, and my family and I spent a few days scratching our heads wondering why our Wi-Fi speeds had plummeted. Finally it hit me: I’d forgotten to switch our TP-Link mesh router back to dual-band mode after installing a new smart gadget. Oops.
Getting security cameras that require subscription plans
This is more of a regret than a full-on blunder, but it’s worth mentioning it here anyway. I have a long-in-the-tooth Wyze Cam v2 guarding the back door in our basement, while a Ring Battery Doorbell Plus keeps an eye on our front doorstep. Both devices have served us well over the years, but they also need monthly fees to unlock their best features.
For the Ring doorbell, I pay $50 a year (there’s also a $5-a-month option) for three months of video storage, along with person detection and other assorted features; without the plan, I’d only be able to view a live feed from the doorbell, which lacks local storage. And while the Wyze cam does offer local storage, you must pay a monthly fee for people detection. I stopped paying for a Wyze plan years ago, meaning I get motion alerts for everything—spiderwebs, my robot vacuum scooting around, you name it.
The Tapo RoomCam 360 (pictured here next to my old Wyze Cam v2) does AI-powered object detection and more, all without a subscription plan.
Ben Patterson/Foundry
I regret not having considered security cameras and doorbells with free, on-device AI object detection plus local storage. Such onboard AI and storage options are becoming increasingly common (like on this TP-Link Tapo can I recently tested), and while local video storage has its drawbacks—what if someone steals the camera?—it’s a heck of a lot cheaper in the long run than paying a monthly fee.
Not upgrading my robot vacuum sooner
For years, I made do with a bump-and-run robot vacuum—namely, the budget-priced iRobot Roomba 694—and figured that was pretty much all there was to robot vacuums.
Every few weeks or so, I’d prep for a Roomba run by tidying up the floors and blocking the stairway with a bench, all to ensure my robot didn’t eat socks or get flummoxed by the steps as it ping-ponged from one wall to another. It was a bit of a pain, but better than vacuuming my floors manually, I figured.
Boy, was I wrong. A little more than a year ago, I finally ponied up the cash for a vastly superior Roomba model, complete with a self-emptying dock, the ability to map rooms, and—best of all—a camera-based obstacle avoidance system that allows the robot to spot and navigate around socks, pet poop (eww), and other obstacles in its path.
My new Roomba i7+ (which has since been supplanted by new and even more advanced models) was a game changer. No longer was running my robot vac a chore—instead, it became a joy, as I watched the bot navigate my floors like a pro and easily dodge shoes, chairs, and other items without my having to lift a finger.
With elaborate cleaning schedules in place plus the self-empty dock, I was able to go weeks without giving my busy Roomba any assistance. Why hadn’t I made the change earlier?
Mixing and matching smart speakers
OK, this one I can chalk up to being a smart home reviewer who must test different makes and models of smart devices. Still, there’s nothing quite as dumb as having an Alexa smart speaker sitting next to a Google Nest display, or a Nest display cozied up beside an Apple HomePod, and that’s precisely the situation in my household.
“Hey Google—I mean, hey Siri,” is a common refrain in our kitchen, which naturally sparks squabbles between the duelling assistants as they respond to each other’s voices (“Hey there, I’m Alexa, not Siri,” “I think you have me confused with someone else”). There are also competing smart routines, smart devices that are connected to one smart assistant but not another…in a word, chaos.
Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake I made. Just pick a brand of smart speaker you like and stick with it. Your family will thank you.
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