‘It’s a big jigsaw puzzle’: Where to start when setting up a smart home on a budget

There’s been plenty of buzz around “smart homes”, both in terms of integrating appliances and saving time or money. But what exactly is a smart home, and how do you go about setting one up?

The term actually refers to a broad spectrum of technological options, according to RMIT Associate Professor Yolande Strengers.

“There’s everything from people who walk into the shop and buy a Google Home, versus people who spend thousands on a whole system,” she says. “The DIY option is going to be a different experience to getting a system integrator involved.”

Strengers says people often invest in smart home technology to make their home more convenient, improve energy efficiency and lower power bills.

Others with health or mobility issues could use voice-activated smart home technology to improve their quality of life.

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Start with a smart speaker

Senior lecturer in educational technology at Central Queensland University Dr Michael Cowling says an affordable smart speaker and a few devices, such as smart light bulbs, are a good starting point.

He says entry-level smart speakers such as the Google Home Mini, an Amazon Echo Dot or LG’s forthcoming CLOi, are basically remote control devices for your house.

“There is something to be said for being able to shout into the ether and have the device respond,” Cowling says. “There’s just this convenience factor – you get used to it really quickly.”

Strengers says voice technology is most effective when paired with other devices. “You can’t just have the Google or the Alexa, you need products it can talk to,” she says. “Lights, security systems – things you can turn on and off using the voice systems.”

Other options are smart televisions and refrigerators, available through manufacturers like LG and Samsung.

Clipsal smart space director Ben Green says users could view smart homes as a “big jigsaw puzzle”, using affordable smart speaker technology as a starting point.

“They get used to the interaction and they ask, OK, what else can I do with it?”

Let there be light

The easiest place to start incorporating smart home features is lighting, according to Green. Smart globes can be installed in lamps and controlled using a smartphone to create different lighting themes or for security purposes. LED lighting can drastically reduce a house’s electricity usage and carbon footprint.

Smart switches that could be controlled using voice, an app, sensors or the old-fashioned way, are becoming more affordable, Green says.

“You don’t want technology that completely changes your life,” he says. “So it’s the little things like all the lights switching off, or all the power points switching off when you leave the house.”

The offering of smart home tech for new homes is broader and more dynamic than for existing properties, Green says. But it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition, and systems can be scaled as a family grows. “You can put it together over time,” he explains.

What are the limitations?

Cowling says the downside of smart home technology is people expecting devices to be able to do more than they could actually manage.

“Companies like Amazon and Google are struggling to keep up with that,” he says. “You give it too many instructions and it gets confused.”

He says speech recognition and contextual language needed improvement in some areas, such as understanding that the main bedroom and the master bedroom are the same thing.

Better integration between smart home systems will allow advances in automation, Cowling says. “At the moment we have a remote control home, but what we want is an automatic home. One that turns on the aircon because you have left work, or opens the garage door when you drive into the driveway.”

Homeowners should be aware that smart home technology could actually increase electricity use. “They’re often marketed as a way to save energy, but that doesn’t seem to be the case,” Strengers says. “There’s opportunities for saving energy, but there’s also opportunities for consuming it in new ways.”

While smart home tech is often advertised as easy to use, Strengers says it could increase the homeowners’ “digital housekeeping” in the form of updating systems and software.

“Our research shows that most of that work is done by men,” she says. “There’s a really interesting gender divide there. For most guys we speak to, they enjoy that work – they consider it a form of fun, a form of leisure.”