Not everyone is as excited about your smart home as you are. While automating devices and routines has its upsides, this is a nerdy hobby. For most, a functional home is all that really matters.
At times, you may face some pushback, but it’s important to take this as a learning experience and make sure you’re designing a smart home that everyone wants to live in.
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Make it invisible
There’s a growing trend among Home Assistant enthusiasts to create wall-mounted displays. Much of the time, these take the form of tablets or cheap touchscreens, letting anyone control your smart home simply by tapping a few buttons on a display. This is all good and well, but your smart home absolutely shouldn’t hinge on this sort of device.
You should be aiming to design an “invisible” smart home. It should be based on the idea that your home anticipates your next move. The best automations are additive, rather than transformative. For example, building a mailbox alert using an infrared sensor that sends you a notification when the mail arrives is genuinely useful, but you can just as easily ignore it.
Placing water leak sensors underneath your sinks and water heater (or anywhere else you’re worried about moisture doing damage) is something you might never need. If all goes to plan, these sensors will sit there, year after year, battery change after battery change, doing absolutely nothing.
Do you always turn a light on at the same time each day? Get it to turn on automatically so that everyone in the house thinks someone else already did it. Do you have a porch light that you only use whenever you take the bins out at night? Stick a sensor there and automate it.
Don’t sacrifice functionality
While we’re talking about what you should do, it’s also good to be mindful of things you should avoid doing. Ultimately, a smart home should be a smarter version of a regular “dumb” home. If you’re taking away functionality, you’re probably doing it wrong.
The classic example here is replacing all of your light bulbs with smart versions, which requires that you now keep the light switch “on” at all times. Whether you’re 8 or 80, reaching for the light switch is an ingrained behavior that takes a while to break. Though I’ve got a dirty hack for solving the smart bulb problem, the right way to go about this is to use smart switches instead.
The same is true for lights that are automated via motion sensors. Sometimes you just want a light to come on, and stay on, and having a smart switch override comes in very handy. I’ve managed to reliably integrate my garage door into my Home Assistant setup after some teething issues, but I’ve still got a garage door opener remote on my car keys.
Solve problems
There’s no better way to get people on board with your vision of a helpful connected home than by solving household problems. Take a moment to identify problems, then explore how you can use automations or basic connectivity to overcome them.
A simple example is a switch that’s hard to reach. You might not need to turn it on or off very often, but anyone who uses it might appreciate being able to do so with a mobile device or voice command instead. The same is true of a malfunctioning router that takes everyone’s internet down. Why not add a smart plug that can reboot the router automatically instead? You can even automate festive decorations.
Other ideas include reminding everyone which bins need to go out with an appropriately-colored light each week, adding sensors to windows and doors so that you can get peace of mind that the house is secure while you’re away, using simulated occupancy to pretend you’re home when you’re not, and installing an energy-monitoring device that can help you save money by adjusting your energy usage.
For me, a simple “good night” scene has been one of the most impactful improvements to my home.
Be proactive about privacy
Cameras are an important part of home security, but they can also make people uncomfortable. Home security is important, but so too is making sure that everyone is happy with the arrangement. You might want to set some boundaries early to reassure everyone, like no cameras inside the house.
If you do decide to put cameras inside, make sure that everyone knows their exact locations. It’s possible to set up automations so that cameras are inaccessible and stop recording when members of your household are at home, but you’ll want to be upfront about how you’re planning to use them.
For some, a camera system can be the tipping point where a smart home setup can start to feel oppressive. Even if the resulting footage captures a home intruder, it’s worth asking how useful the camera in your kitchen is compared to the one on your porch or driveway.
Personally, I’m not comfortable being filmed in my own home, even though I’m the one who would be installing and monitoring the cameras. The furthest I’ll go is a webcam pointed at a cat’s favorite sleeping place, and even that feels like a bit more hassle than it’s worth.
Lastly, it’s always worth starting out slow. Consider beginning with a single room in your house and building out your vision from there, rather than replacing everything overnight with smart versions and a steep learning curve.
