Paul’s Tech Makeover: Here’s to an Even Smarter 2018 (Premium)

In 2017, we moved to Pennsylvania and underwent what I think of as Phase 1 of our smart home makeover. For 2018, I have bigger plans.

To recap, here is what we accomplished---and failed at---from a smart home perspective in 2017:

Lighting and electric. This wasn't so much "smart home" as it was just "smart": We spent 10s of thousands of dollars upgrading this aging home's electrical systems and consolidating and replacing every single light switch and power receptacle.

Cord-cutting. We tried to exist without cable, but the existing cord-cutting services---YouTube TV, PlayStation Vue, and Hulu with Live TV were the ones we tried---just aren't there yet. Cable TV is cheaper and easier, sorry. A better approach may be to forego traditional TV all-together. Ultimately, TV is still too complicated.

Google Home. We are using Google Home for voice controls. It works great with the equipment we have, but I feel like Amazon Echo would work almost as well. (Google is better for certain things at the moment, as is Amazon, but I think this shifts back and forth as we move forward.)

Mesh networking. Because the new house is almost twice as big as our old house, I knew I was going to have to wire it with Ethernet or try mesh networking. I went the latter route, and the Google Wifi we use has worked flawlessly from day one. Highly recommended.

Entertainment services. Early in the process, I consolidated the many music services we were using down to just one, Spotify Premium, saving hundreds of dollars a year. But I missed Google Play Music, so I signed up for that again for myself.

Whole-house music. Because Sonos is too expensive and too incompatible, we standardized on Google Chromecast, and it works great.

Smart lights. We have Philips Hue smart lights in a few rooms, and we'd like to expand our use of smart lighting this year.

Looking over this list, and looking over my home, I see a few obvious areas for improvement.

Even though we underwent massive light switch consolidation at great expense, there are still too many switches, and some make no sense at all. That is, we have some switches---in the front hall, for example, and in (and right outside of) the garage that we still flip randomly to see what they do.

I'm not spending any more money on switch consolidation: I feel like we have already financed our electrician's vacation home. But I still want to arrive at something acceptable for certain lights and switches.

For example: My father---a previous owner of the house---installed various floodlights on the outside of the house. Some are useful, like the downward-facing floods under the front and back overhangs on the garage. Some are not: There are security floodlights high up on the house with switches for them scattered around inside.

For the useful floods, I'd like to utilize some kind of timer so that these lights come on at a time---ideally "sunset"---and then likewise turn off at some other time, which...