The Not-So-Hidden Hell of a Smart Home (Premium)

The smart home promised yesterday has arrived, you can connect many of the mundane things in your house like lightbulbs, garage door openers, speakers, any type of switch, thermostats, blinds, and nearly anything else to the Internet. And of course, all of this is presented in a way that will make your life easier but underneath all of that promise, is a hidden underground layer that you simply cannot ignore before venturing into the world of a connected smart home.

I mentioned it several times on First Ring Daily that when you are planning out your smart home, you need to choose a central hub and stick to it. This could be iOS, Android, Alexa, Google Home, etc, pick one as this is the foundation moving forward.

And as is tradition, I haven't listened to my own advice as the Chamberlin Wifi-Connected garage door opener that I recently installed works with Google Home or Apple's HomeKit but not with Amazon's Alexa. And seeing as I am using Alexa for my central hub right now, this is a pain in the butt as I can't scream at the sky computer to open and close the garage door and instead have to use the app on my phone to execute the function.

Worse, if I want to use Google Home, Chamberlin has decided that I need to pay $1 a month or $10 a year for this functionality or if I want to connect it to HomeKit, it's a $49 'hub' that I need to attach; this is absurd.

That being said, the MyQ (connected portion of the garage door opener) does work well and I do recommend it, just don't plan on integrating into your other platforms unless you are willing to pay for it.

I may one day switch from Alexa to Google Home since the hardware I use in my house is a Sonos One that will eventually support both assistants but I'm still having trouble convincing myself that saying 'Hey Google' is something I want my five-year-old barking all the time; for some reason Alexa feels less 'corporate-overlord'.

And because nothing can be simple, I needed to move a Sonos speaker this weekend to a new room and while trying to remove it from one zone and add it to another, the speaker got stuck in some setup-hell inside the app where it was added to a zone but could not play any music. Two hard resets later and some random luck by mashing the play/pause button, it finally worked correctly but it took 60 minutes to move a wireless speaker; magical.

But what may be worse than not having everything being tied together by a common platform are firmware updates. When Phillips Hue needs an updated, good luck turning your lights off and on, Nest Thermostat wants to download the latest bits? Hope you don't mind waiting to control the temperature of your home and of course, if a company abandons any of their hubs, you are out of luck.

Complicating the matter is that I also 'cut the cord' which means that I have an HDHomeRun, Apple TV, Phillips Hue Hub, Xbox, and two PCs hard-wired into my router means that I need a switch to connect everything. While this isn...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC