The A to Z connected home

If you’ve walked into a JB Hi Fi or a Good Guys store recently you will see a new Connected Home category with several brands now vying to deliver a new generation of SmartHouse technology.

One of the drivers in the expansion of Connected Home technology is voice activation and a host of devices that react to a voice command, whether it be via Alexa or Google Voice.

At this stage, I believe the jury is out on what the future will hold, with several questions needing answers.

The big question is whether it’s time to jettison cable, will Wi-Fi be able to handle 8K streaming, and can you do away with a control system like Control 4 altogether.

Or will the future be all about 5G connectivity?

There is a big difference between technologies for a small apartment over a three-storey house.

I have built two houses, renovated a third and am about to build another, so I am well aware of the issues associated with futureproofing a house with technology spanning lighting, security, device management, as well as the value that this technology can bring to a property investment.

Today, a smart home doesn’t have to mean completely new technology.

What we are seeing right now is an explosion of smart light bulbs, smart thermostats, smart security systems and more.

What you do have to get right is the basics.

Networking

One thing that is critical is your broadband connectivity and Wi-Fi router.

Having a good router at home, especially a MIMO W6 router, is essential if you are going to load up your home Wi-Fi network with attached devices.

Brands such as Netgear, D-Link and Linksys are the brands that you need to invest in, as these devices are what deliver a lot of capability, especially in a house or large apartment.

A fast and efficient router is not just about connecting your phone and your computer to WiFi anymore, it’s about the streaming of content from Foxtel or Stan, or using your Fetch TV box. It’s also about the quality of the images streamed from your security camera, and above all, the number of devices that can be attached to a network before it starts to struggle.

Automation is great but it must work seamlessly.

Today, you can control everything in real-time, either from an app on your smartphone or tablet, or through a voicecontrolled smart speaker.

You can also control smart home gadgets while getting easy access to your smart security camera feeds. Or, perhaps even, energy – smart meters and energy monitors that tell you (and your utility provider) how much electricity and gas you’re getting through.

Everything comes down to your budget, time and how much you are prepared to invest in tech.

I for one now believe the ideal combination for a truly automated home with multiple rooms is a master control system, with ethernet cable to select rooms, Wi-Fi, Voice Activation and powerline technology, which I will explain shortly.

Top-end home control system manufacturers, such as Savant or Lutron, are now integrating a capability that allows Zigbee devices to be connected to their master control systems. Sometimes this is done via third party apps.

The three big innovators over the past three years have been, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and to a lesser degree, Apple with their HomeKit. This technology has led to an explosion in SmartHouse technology.

Earlier this week, Apple moved to restructure, and to a degree, rebuild their HomeKit platform due to poor acceptance of the platform, as well as Siri as a voice option.

So, how are you supposed to decide which smart home system is best for you?

Having a good router at home - especially a MIMO W6 router - is essential.

Get Started With the Smart Home How to Build Your Smart Home System

Once you have chosen your smart home hub or controller, what’s next? A good way to think about building your system is to pick a home category, then look around for products that work with the ecosystem you’ve chosen.

The most popular categories in the smart home right now are kitchen appliances, baby monitors, cameras, doorbells, garden, lighting, networking, security systems, speakers and thermostats. So, a good move is to dig into one of those and see what looks like a good fit using our buyers’ guides:

• Best Smart Light Bulb

• Best Smart Thermostat

• Best Smart Speakers

• Best Smart Security Camera

• Best Smart Video Doorbell

• Best Smart TV

• Best Smart Lock

• Best Multi-Room Speakers

• Best Robot Vacuum Cleaners

• Best Smart Baby Monitor

While ecosystems like Google Assistant or Amazon can pull all your devices together, there are still other ecosystems of devices.

But, if you’ve chosen an ecosystem, you can use our guides to find what devices are compatible. We’ve got dedicated pages covering what smart home devices work with Alexa – which will also give you some inspiration if you’re taking the plunge with an Echo speaker. Plus, we’ve also got features on what smart home devices are compatible with both Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit compatible devices.

While ecosystems like Google Assistant or Amazon can pull all your devices together, there are still other ecosystems of devices – a prime example is Nest. Luckily, we’ve got a full guide to the system for your perusal.

This is a good choice for anyone with a bit more cash and are happy to pay for a polished, all-round system – comprising a thermostat, protect smoke alarm, Cam and Cam IQ security cameras and the secure alarm system – all of which work with a lot of other products.

Explainers: What is Zigbee? & What is Z-Wave?

The Nest, slightly confusingly, is owned by Google and is being folded back into its parent company, so, over time; these two will become one super-ecosystem. It’s also likely that Google will hold some of the better features back for its own assistant, as its battle with Alexa heats up.

If one device doesn’t quite play nice with another, or you end up with a mixture of compatible products, investigate a smart home hub or an app-based hub like IFTTT or Yonomi. These are free platforms that are very handy for setting up automation scenes and for plugging the gaps, while manufacturers get their act together and make everything work with everything.

How to Get Your Smart Home Talking

Once you’ve started finding pieces for your new smart home, you might be wondering how to set everything up and make sure it’s all working

smoothly. We periodically put together guides for all the latest smart home features. We also regularly keep our existing how-to fresh and updated. You can see them all in our dedicated How-To section, which will give you a quick dose of some of the essentials. Here are the handful of how-to’s that’ll quickly get you acclimated:

• Securing Router To Protect Smart Home

• Alexa Smart Home Guide

• Streaming Security Cam Footage To A Google Smart Display

• Updating Apple TV To Get Latest Software On 4K & Older Models

• Setting Up & Using Google Duo With Smartphones & Smart Displays

• Setting Up Philips Hue With Alexa

• PS4 Integration Into The Smart Home

• Controlling Xbox One With Google Assistant & Google Home

• Turn Your Apple TV Into A Tiny Game Console

• How To Delete Voice Recordings From Google Home

Smart Home Privacy Explained

When it comes to privacy, there’s a lot to consider. We’ve got a full guide to smart home privacy that you should check out if you want to know all the details, and how to pick the most private ecosystem.

The main thing to note when you start connecting your home is that you are sharing data about your home habits, and those of your family/flatmates/friends/pets, with tech companies – big or small. There’s no getting around it entirely.

It’s a straightforward transaction – in return for access to this data, you save time or money, get a convenient way to control your gadgets, find out how much energy you’re using, and much more.

Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa offer voice commands to allow you to delete stored recordings of your voice.

What the companies do with your data – which can include audio and video recordings from speakers and cameras – very much depends on their approach to making your information anonymous; their privacy policy, which you should try to skim through before you agree; and their business model. For instance, Amazon and Google make money from selling you things and advertising your things, Apple makes money selling hardware.

The tech company who makes the product or service you are using might also choose to share your data, for example with third party app developers. Or they might explicitly state that this will be anonymous, or they may never sell it.

However, when it come the big players, at least some privacy options are becoming more common, particularly around voice recordings. All of Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa offer voice commands to allow you to delete stored recordings of your voice, for example. To find out how to use these features, check out our guides:

• How to Delete Google Assistant Voice Recordings

• How to Delete Amazon Alexa Voice Recordings

• How to Delete Your Siri Recordings from Apple’s Servers

Despite these options, you might feel more comfortable limiting what information you give to smart home devices, or which rooms they are in. You might also be happier sharing data with a smaller start-up who is putting privacy first, compared to a large corporation. Until policy and laws change, it’s a decision for everyone to think about individually or as a household.

What About Smart Home Security?

We’re not talking about tech that prevents burglaries – we’re referring to hackers breaking in via your smart devices, using them to spy on your home or, in some cases, steal identity or money. It may sound farfetched, but it’s a real thing.

It’s something we’ve been exploring on The Ambient, as we’ve seen several hacks recently. Often these hacks relate to the security of the Wi-Fi network the tech is connected to, so this is something to consider – steps you can take include making sure not to connect to public networks and considering VPN (virtual private network) software.

There's a lot of technical language in the smart home world. Here are a few terms we think you might like explained, to get you started.

Get Started With the Smart Home Jargon Busting

There’s a lot of technical language in the smart home world. Here are a few terms we think you might like explained to get you started. Let us know in the comments if there’s anything else you’d like us to cover.

Actions: Pre-set series of smart home controls mapped to one voice command, delivered via Alexa or Google Assistant.

AirPlay: AirPlay is Apple’s protocol – a kind of gadget language – that allows you to transfer audio and video between devices using Wi-Fi.

Bluetooth LE: Another one of those protocols – Bluetooth LE connects devices that are close to each other (e.g. in the same room) once it is activated and they are paired, such as wearables and speakers. The LE stands for low energy, as it requires very little power.

Controller: How you control your smart home devices. This could be a smartphone app, a voice-powered speaker or a universal remote control.

Geo-Fencing: A virtual fence that can be used to let your devices know you’re close to home, walking in the front door or leaving. It uses GPS or RFID technologies to send an alert when a device, for example your smartphone, crosses a geographic boundary.

Group: When you collect devices together to control them as one group. For example, everything in the bedroom could be switched off with one action, such as a voice command or a swipe on a phone app.

Hub: This one is up for dispute, but at its core, a smart home hub connects various devices, which might be compatible with different protocols, and gives you control over everything via one app, voice assistant or screen-based system.

HVAC: Easy. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

Internet of Things: Also known as IoT – this is the concept of connecting objects to the Internet, including smart home devices and sensors, but also in industry, business and smart cities etc.

Multi-Room Audio: One speaker system that can play the same music – from your phone or another media source – in more than room. This used to require drilling and wiring, but now works via your Wi-Fi network.

Scene (or Routine): Getting into home automation, a scene allows you to send more than one command to more than one device. An easy example is a smart lighting scene that could have one green, one purple and one yellow light, but scenes can also be used across different categories, such as ‘Home’, ‘Bed’ and ‘Holiday’.

Sensor: A useful piece of the smart home puzzle, a sensor is anything that can detect or measure change in its surroundings. This could be movement – as in a window sensor, but also temperature, humidity, air quality, light and noise.

Smart Display: This is basically a smart speaker, but built around a display. The Echo Show and Google Home Hub are smart displays. Confusingly, Google’s line of smart displays running Android Things are branded Smart Displays, with capitalized S and D.

Voice Assistant: The proper name for Alexa or Google Assistant, which are basically interfaces you talk to, rather than use via a screen.

Zigbee and Z-Wave: Two popular smart home protocols. These are a mechanism for different tech devices to communicate, like speaking the same language. Zigbee is known for its speed and low energy use; Z-Wave for its mesh network, which boosts Wi-Fi performance. Other protocols include Insteon, X10 and LightwaveRF.