Smart Home Frustrations : What they don't tell you

so you decided to start your smart home that's great pretty sure by now you've already looked at all the videos on the cool gadgets that are included in a smart home such as the smart lights the different voice assistants robot vacuums all the cool things most of those videos won't tell you the frustrations of starting a new a smart home Alexa what's the weather sorry it didn't the Internet isn't reachable today I want to talk about my top five frustrations I experienced when starting my smart home but first don't forget to like And subscribe it really helps me out now let's get into it the first one I want to talk about today is compatibility issues so you're new to the smart home you're looking at all these cool gadgets you're also looking at the prices some things are really expensive and some things are cheap if you're just starting out those cheaper products probably will grab your attention more than these you know more expensive ones for example a $10 TOA smart bul versus a $40 Wix bulb why spend $40 on a on a bow right so you're probably going to lean more towards that $10 one however keep in mind not everything works with everything I guess that's the best way to put it um I guess an example I have is the twoa Smart locks I bought one it said it was Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and all this neat stuff so I bought it install it into my master bedroom door and it didn't work it only worked with the 2 app it didn't work with paing it to Alexa and bring it to home assistant or anything like that matter of fact to this day it still doesn't work with home assistant in order to make it work with Amazon's ecosystem I had to purchase an additional Hub a Wi-Fi bridge if you will to connect the Bluetooth to Wi-Fi makes no sense why not just build a Wi-Fi into the the door lock in the first place other issues I had was you know when I started getting into security cameras looking at Ring versus the other ones ring was really expensive Arlo was really expensive wise was not wise was like $20 a camera so I bought their cameras and eventually got into their ecosystem with their locks their light bulbs and stuff like that well it does work with Amazon's ecosystem it didn't work with smart things directly and at the time I only had smart things um so that was where I was doing all my routines and automations and stuff like that and where most of my stuff talked to each other that's where all my sensors were that's where all my switches were that's where all my lights were um so that became a problem and that's actually what led me down in the path of using home assistant and then even further more using the home assistant community store app because they had a wise Community app and that's how I force it to work however it was frustrating I had to learn a lot of stuff and it being new to to the smart home industry or the being new to Smart Homes it it was a little daunting I mean yeah I work in Tech but Smart Home Tech is a little bit different it's not I'm not a programmer so working with config.yml files and having to SSH into your your uh home assistant to put this code in you know it it took a lot of time and a lot of research to figure it all out and iron things out starting out you don't want to do that you know you want to pick an ecosystem you want to stay in but at the same time you want to have access to all the things now matter has promised that um I don't really have an opinion on whether they delivered that or not I don't really need to use matter because I use home assistant but compatibility was a big frustration when I first started my smartphone the second thing I want to talk about is batteries you're going to have a lot of batteries you're going to be dealing with batteries draining having to replace batteries all kinds of different type of batteries aside from your normal ablea and AAA um you're going be dealing with like C 2450s c2s C12 3s CR whatever they all have these weird names and you have to buy an array of them because your sensors aren't use the same thing all the time uh I keep a stockpile a pretty big stock bile matter of fact I have a lot of them on just subscribe and save um and just constantly ship because they go out a lot of Manufacturers save batteries last two years that's a lie it depends on how much they use how much they trigger so if you have a sensor in a high volume traffic area you're going to be replacing that battery a lot more often if it gets cold the battery life dies the quality of battery what you what brand you bu matters um yeah my second second biggest frustration was always having to change out batteries and spending the extra hidden cost of buying these batteries cuz some of them aren't cheap and if you do buy the cheap ones will they last a few months as opposed to buying a brain opposed to buying a name Brin one which will last you maybe a year depending on the device keep that in mind it's an extra cost and it's an extra frustration because when they die that automation might not trigger off that sensor my third frustration was hubs and protocols the different ones out there learning about them what hubs had zwave what hubs had zigg what devices use those protocols what devices use Bluetooth Wi-Fi and what I needed to make a certain device work so that was the real reason why I got into smart things cuz the sensors [Music] were more reliable from what I understood at the time um zigg was great it was what everybody was going to it supposed to be this great protocol I mean I had to spend time researching each protocol and understanding the differences between them um it was kind of frustrating CU I just wanted to buy things that just worked with things and I was like well why can't I go with a Wi-Fi well you have tons of Wi-Fi devices eventually your network is going to get overrun with these Wi-Fi devices um I think I have 100 on my network right now it's a lot but um I have the system to handle it um so looking at the different hubs and what antennas and stuff they had in them you know I settled on smart things because it had zwave and zigp and it could integrate Wi-Fi devices VI their app another issue is you'll eventually own more than one unless you strictly just stay in that Hub ecosystem I have I think about nine total some of them I don't use anymore more I have I had aara or I have an aara Hub home assistant is technically a hub cuz I have the the sky connect dongle on it smart things my Amazon Echo fourth gen is a hub uh wise has a hub for its lock tuya has a hub for its lock my notion system has a Hub you get the point you're going to have more than one Hub you're not going to have as many as I have because I do testing and I like to have all the things but um yeah you're going to end up with more than one if you Branch out so just keep that in mind research research research find the right hub for you and find the right ecosystem or find the right ecosystems um you don't have to let me yourself to one but just keep that in mind it was frustrating at first I was always constantly happy to buy this Hub that Hub my new yui system you know there's a hub with that the home base 3 so they would work locally and be encrypted and all that great stuff but it's worth it in my opinion but if you don't want all that junk sitting around then you know really plan out what you're going to do with your home all right so my fourth frustration and is still a frustration to this day is troubleshooting my house I work in it I troubleshoot all day long I come home something's not working in my house do you not want to work today day automation's not working device is offline device is out of batteries um a hub is too close to my Wi-Fi router therefore the zigg is being interfered by the Wi-Fi signal that's a thing so keep that mind a zigg and dongle is Too Close to You know my home assistant [Music] Hub things don't always work all the time in all the videos you see everything works perfectly they don't show you the other side of it where all of a sudden you know you're smart things devices aren't online for whatever reason because they're not interacting with home assistant correctly and you have to redo the entire integration to bring them back in or one of my recent ones I was just troubleshooting is you Fe cameras randomly not showing up on my echo shows when I ask them to uh that's irritating cuz I use those a lot to see when I'm in different rooms just check on the kids check on the dogs Check outside my house in case someone shows up in the driveway so I can see who it is if that's not working that's a frustration you're going to spend time with customer support I've called Amazon's customer support wise's customer support ring you name it I've called them just when I I have trouble and I've gotten to a point where I don't know what to do anymore I call them and usually it's like well there's a problem with this server or this service or this system or there's an update that happened that knocked off the ability to connect correctly with this so firmware updates software updates are a big thing every time I have to update something there's a little bit of anxiety that something's not going to work right anymore my final frustration that I had in the beginning and I still have now with Smart Homes is what happens when you have an internet outage or a power outage Internet outages you can mitigate if you go all local with certain devices and certain setups it's going to take a little bit longer to figure that stuff out but when you're first starting you're not probably even thinking about that you just want devices that are going to work your internet goes out there's a lot of brands that require a server to connect with Alexa what's the weather sorry it didn't get the internet isn't reachable whether they be Wi-Fi devices or zigby devices connected to a hub and that Hub has to have connection to the internet in order to work I don't know why some people just or some companies just design it that way but that's something to consider power outages so those are unavoidable there's absolutely nothing you can do other than you know put a backup battery on your whole entire house and a generator so you can keep your smart home running we had a power outage the other night and every time this happens certain light lights when they get cut from Power don't remember their previous state so they'll turn right back on to the default state which is on at 3:00 in the morning all the lights are on the house guess kind of frustrating um you can mitigate that buying certain brands that remember their state um I think Go's one for sure that does that but when the power goes out I mean nothing in your home's working anyway but it's when it comes back on you know that the problems the frustration the little irritations happen such as also having to restart some hubs like my home assistant will I have to go power it on before any of my automations will work it turns off on away you know all my automations that happen based on where I'm at in my area if I'm coming home won't trigger if my wife comes home they won't trigger uh kids come home it won't trigger so it's a big frustration but there's not a whole lot you can do without spending a lot of money and even if you did have a generator you during a powder outage I don't think your smart home's going to be a priority I think most people would do their fridge maybe something to make your life a little bit [Music] easier Smart Homes should make your life easier if they're sought out and implemented right they do but there are still some frustrations out there that you'll have to deal with most of these can be mitigated by ecosystem and device Choice which if you're interested I do have a live stream that I will do on the following Sundays after I release a video um if you made it this long in the video I hope to see you there if you have other frustrations than what I've suggested please leave in the comments I hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you next time stay smart stay connected all right I'm heading out what the heck I'm sorry I allow you to outside are not cond to Humane stay and wait for the authorities [Music]

Channel: Fritz Home Tech Solutions

Views: 3,448

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Id: ZEmWpnnFBxs

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024