People are shifting more towards smart homes instead of traditional ones despite the cost. The reason is that everyone wants to enjoy freedom, convenience, ease, and accessibility in today’s connected world.
According to the Digital Market Outlook, “the number of smart homes by 2025 is forecasted to be 481.9 million” (Source)
Building a smart home isn’t a normal thing for many especially for those who aren’t tech-savvy. A long adventure comes with fear and excitement at the same time. You put up your hard saved money to build a smart home and deploy state of the art technology to have convenience in the coming days. Moreover, a onetime investment goes long haul into saving you money and offering you security – just think for a while a smart lock that offers you security and smart thermostat that saves energy and reduces utility bills.
An expedition to building a smart home is not an easy task. You have to consider several factors including what kind of smart home you are looking for. Moreover, as the number of connected devices will increase, you need to have a high-speed internet connection. Depending on your location, you can opt for service providers like Optimum, Spectrum, AT&T, or Cox.
Without further ado, let’s start our journey to building a smart home that fulfills your desire. Make sure to read this guide with attention because you won’t like to get things messed up. Stay tuned.
Analyze Your Surroundings
Just like building a home, you need to plan things out. The same process goes with transforming your old fashioned home into a smart home. Firstly, look around your house and find what devices and appliances you would like to see automated. Inspect each room from the living room to the guest room and kitchen to the bathroom. You will be surprised to know that there are plenty of ways to transform your traditional home into a smart home.
You are not alone in your home, so make sure to involve other family members as well to take an opinion of what should be automated. Enlist those items on a piece of paper. You can take an idea about the cost you need to incur to build a smart home. Luckily, if someone in your neighbor or your friend has taken the initiative to build a smart home, it would likely be a good source of information and help.
Invest Time in Research
Building a smart home is not only hard but also fun as well. For instance, if you want to install smart home security at your home, then you need some time to research in finding the best products sold online. There are plenty of ways to find experts’ opinions on what you are going to buy. For instance, websites like PCMag, TechCrunch, and Cnet are authoritative websites with a bunch of tech experts that offer you some useful advice.
Moreover, if you can’t read too much text, simply head on to YouTube and search for reviews. Once you have finally decided on the product, make sure to have a look at Amazon customer reviews to decide whether it works as expected or not.
First Things You Need to Get is a Good Router
As discussed previously you need to have more connected devices than normal if you are on a smart home expedition. Unless you are not having a stable and high-speed internet connection, you are not going to enjoy automation. But for that, you need to have a good router as well for better Wi-Fi signals. With all the connected devices such as smartphones, smart TV, security devices, and smart thermostats, you need to have a better connection than ever.
If you having an average Wi-Fi router, it may have a limited range, lower data rates, and slower connection. To run a smart home seamlessly, you need to invest in a new router that offers high data rates and can run multiple devices simultaneously.
Don’t Compromise Quality over Price
You may have heard it many times “you get what you pay for”. Don’t ignore this saying at the time when you are building a smart home. Smart home products also come in various qualities from cheap to moderate and high priced. If you want to save money, make sure to invest more to avoid any defects and repairs. Stop wasting money on cheap smart home products because they are going to be a headache and may not function as much as your expectations.
For instance, you will find many cheap products selling online with nice presentation and some sugar-coated words to entice consumers. Don’t get trapped in the marketing gimmicks unless you haven’t read the reviews of existing customers and tech experts.
You need to spend a lot more time on research than buying. Make sure you also ask your close friends and neighbors to help you out in picking the best ones. Else, get ready for paying more without any reason.
Invest Some Time before Buying in Bulk
Excitement for building a smart home is real and no one can stop you from getting things done. You are excited and want to spend everything at once to buy all the smart home products you have decided. But don’t commit mistakes as most people do – buying everything at once. You can’t afford to have stuff sitting around in the storeroom.
Building a smart home should be in haste. You need to buy smart home products gradually. Of course, you need some time to set it up and running. Start slow, take your time, and buy one or two products in one go.
Summing Up
Building a smart home requires a good amount of time to research and finalize everything from planning to installing and running. One of the things that matters the most is the amount of time you spend to research and plan to automate your home. Building a smart home is a step towards a green and friendly environment. Don’t ruin your plan and start doing things the right way.
