There are a lot of choices you need to make when converting your home into a smart one. You need to decide what ecosystem you want. You need to decide what devices you want to start with, such as a hub or smart speaker. There also needs to be some consideration of how this is all going to affect your Wi-Fi network.
You may not want to rely on outside manufacturer servers to control your smart home devices. If you’ve ever relied solely on Wi-Fi and the cloud to run your smart home, you have definitely noticed lag before. There’s almost no way that you have used voice commands or even an app and had your smart devices follow that command just as you did it. If you want to reduce lag and your need for outside servers, there are plenty of features that smart home devices can handle locally.
I turned my old tablet into a smart home dashboard, and it’s perfect
I use my 1st-gen iPad Pro as a smart home dashboard
Check for motion at your door or in your home
The sensors can be set up locally
The easiest way to build a smart home without using the cloud is to rely on a local hub to connect to Home Assistant, the open-source platform that runs home automations. While it was previously mainly used with a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi, it can now be used with other hub devices or dedicated servers to enable local control.
Something like Home Assistant has become plug-and-play in a more user-friendly fashion. A great way to keep eyes on your home is by using motion sensors outside the cloud. I’ve tested many motion sensors over the years and the biggest complaint I have about them is the delay that some of them have in reporting when motion registers. A lot of the time, that lag doesn’t even make it worth it, especially if you’re using the motion sensor to trigger another smart device’s action.
An if/then automation only works well when the if portion is recognized quickly. While many of them work with Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, Google Assistant, or Apple HomeKit, those still rely on the manufacturer’s servers to receive data and then turn around and give you the feedback.
If you have a Zigbee or Z-Wave sensor, which are common protocols that you can find many options for, this makes setting them up locally easier. This can be connected to your Home Assistant hub, as it recognizes an array of brands and protocols. You don’t need one specific manufacturer to rely on when it comes to your smart devices.
Because these provide local alerts, they are faster than ones that need to phone home. So, whether you’re using mmWave sensors that can recognize if something is present even if it’s not moving or passive sensors that can recognize motion, you’ll be better equipped to set up automations based on them.
You’ll have to set up somewhere for them to record to
Smart home cameras are some of the most used devices when trying to improve your security levels. They can record and show you what’s going on in real time in your home. Many people rely on smart cameras from Ring, eufy, Nest, and more well-known companies that store footage in the cloud.
But if you don’t want to avoid smart home cameras and want to keep your footage private, you won’t be able to rely on that. You’ll need security cameras that aren’t relying on outside servers, and you can hook them up in a few different ways.
You can start with a network-attached storage (NAS) device. This connects to your internet via an Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi and serves as a file storage system. It basically acts as a private cloud for your video files. You can also plug in a microSD card to store footage on.
If you’re using an IP camera, many times like a bullet or dome camera that’s mounted up high, these can use a network video recorder (NVR). This is specialized for IP cameras to both record the footage that is seen through them and store it. You probably aren’t using analog security cameras, which would require a digital video recorder (DVR).
Smart lighting can respond right away
This makes life a lot more efficient
Smart lighting can be controlled in a number of ways without needing the cloud to do it for you. For direct app usage, you can get Bluetooth-enabled smart lighting. This connects the two devices and doesn’t rely on cloud servers to help them interact. The negative about using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth bulbs is that you usually need to be relatively close to have them working as well as they can.
For anyone who has used voice commands to control their lights and waited for a response, you know how frustrating that can be. But using Zigbee or Z-Wave-compatible lights with a local hub can get a lightning-fast response when you want to change the colors or turn the lights on. They can create their own local mesh network, so you don’t have to go out of your way to make it that way.
While Matter and Thread protocols are some of the more popular ones today, these can still rely on manufacturers’ ecosystems to work as well as they can. You also need extra equipment sometimes, such as Thread border routers, to make them work.
Smart locks can let you in and out of your house
You may have to use one traditionally, though
One of the best parts of using smart locks is that you can check the status from wherever you are to see if you accidentally left the door unlocked. Unfortunately, that can require using an app and a company’s cloud service to do so. The lock that I have at home, a Yale + Nest lock, can’t really work without the cloud if I want to use the app and check the status of the door.
But other Z-Wave, NFC, or Bluetooth-enabled door locks can work locally, allowing you to lock or unlock them from afar. What is nice about using Home Assistant is that you can set up an automation to make your smart lock work. If someone is walking out the door and the alarm is turned on, you can have the front door lock behind them via an automation.
Many smart locks that have a keyless entry have either a fingerprint sensor that you can use as a lock or have a keypad where you can punch in codes and combinations. Those codes are stored locally, so you’ll still be able to use the door without the cloud. This also makes sense as to why you’ll be able to use the door lock even when a power outage occurs. The lock from the inside is not affected by any of these scenarios.
Smart home devices don’t have to rely on the cloud
While many smart home devices may seem like they need their manufacturers’ cloud servers to help them reach their full potential, that just isn’t true. In fact, by relying on servers that can get bogged down with traffic, the delay that you experience when using your devices is likely greater than if you were connecting them locally. Relying on Home Assistant automations and Bluetooth, Zigbee, or Z-wave-compatible devices can help you keep your smart home running smoothly and efficiently.
