Paul’s Tech Makeover: Here’s to an Even Smarter 2019 (Premium)

It’s been a while since the last post in this series. So let’s check in, see where we’re at, and look ahead at what we’d like to accomplish in 2019.

I wrote a similar recap last January in Paul’s Tech Makeover: Here’s to an Even Smarter 2018 (Premium) that focused on what we had done to our home in 2017. As you may recall, we moved to Pennsylvania in August 2017 and needed to do a lot of work on the new house to bring it up to date So we resolved to add smart home functionality where it made sense as part of that updating.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, most of that work happened right up front. And perhaps even less unexpectedly, it almost bankrupted us: We ended spending many tens of thousands of dollars basically replacing the entire electrical system in the house after we discovered how badly done it was. But we also implemented a mesh home networking system, cut the cord using online services, moved to Google Home/Google Assistant for centralized control, consolidated the music services we use, set up Chromecast-based speakers for whole-house audio, and implemented smart lights in key areas of the house.

2018 was decidedly slower, which makes sense: Whatever money we walked away with from selling our house in Massachusetts was long gone, for starters. But we essentially lived with the changes we had made and adjusted as we went. The biggest news was our on-again, off-again, on-again cord-cutting experiment, in which we briefly returned to cable TV and that once again gave it up. Beyond that, we added more smart lights, and have stuck with Philips Hue despite the expense and some complexity.

Looking ahead to 2019, I see some areas for improvement and change. And, frankly, not a lot of need to change much of the work we’ve already done. But the most substantive work we do this year, I bet, will involve decluttering the metric ton of boxed photos, videos, and other memorabilia that we brought with us from Massachusetts, stacked in the basement, and haven’t touched since. Or, hadn’t. We finally just started going through that.

So let’s step through this.

Lighting and electric. Our biggest effort of 2017 is essentially finished: We consolidated and updated all of the switches and receptacles in the home, and while I would do more in an ideal world, we’re done. It is what it is.

Smart lights. We added several Philips Hue lights in 2018 and will continue adding more this year. We have a pair of Bloom accent lights in the sunroom that are literally on all the time, and will at least add a few more pairs—in the living room and front/dining room—most likely. Our experiment with the over-the-garage floodlights was mostly positive, despite some weird technical issues. So I could see adding more outdoor lights as well.

AC and heating. I have a GLAS smart thermostat, and I’d like to use it to replace the old-school round and analog thermostat downstairs. But my home has an interesting problem: The heat is electric and there is a unique heat control in every single room in the house. So that thermostat, like the one upstairs, only controls air conditioning. I’m not sure if it’s worth bothering.

Smart security. My wife and I both feel very strongly about smart cameras inside or outside the house—we’re against it—but we would like to add smart door locks. I could see this happening in 2019.

Cord-cutting. After our weird back-and-forth in 2018, we’ve pretty much moved away from traditional network/cable TV except for sports. So we do subscribe to YouTube TV, pretty much just for sports, but mostly binge-watch shows on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. We also subscribe to cable streaming services to catch up on other series (Showtime, recently, to watch Homeland, or HBO, later this year, for the final season of Game of Thrones). I don’t see any changes here.

Google Home/Google Assistant. We expanded our use of Google Home/Google Assistant last year thanks to the wonderful Lenovo Smart Display. I don’t believe we need more smart displays around the house, per se. But I suspect we will continue our use of Google Assistant-powered smart devices this year.

Music. I continue to use and prefer Google Play Music while the rest of my family uses and prefers Spotify. Our whole-house audio solution, based on Chromecast, works well, so it’s unlikely we’ll change that. But with Sonos adding Google Assistant support this year, I could see adding Sonos to the mix again. (My daughter uses our old Sonos equipment still.)

Home networking. Our Google Wi-Fi mesh networking setup has been excellent and error-free. I see no need to change this, not even to add additional nodes. That said, I would like to get some Ethernet going this year, if only between the router and my home office. (We did something similar in our last house, adding more and more Ethernet as time went on.) I think this will be the year.

Decluttering. This may not seem like a smart home topic, but it is. As important, it will be the core work that I do this year to improve the house. By scanning photos, uploading them to multiple services and local end-points, and then destroying the originals, I will be making them more available—via the smart display and elsewhere—and decluttering the house. That latter bit is a big deal: It makes the house cleaner, of course, but it makes us more mobile too. So when we do a home swap, as we do each summer, there’s less to tidy. And when we want to eventually move, there’s less crap to deal with. Decluttering is a goal, and we may never fully achieve it, or may at least not do so in 2019. But we have taken the first steps to go through what we have, aggressively toss out or donate what we can, and then start the terrible process of digitizing memories. I may write more to this topic if there’s any interest.

If there are any smart home topics you’d like to see me tackle in 2019, please let me know. I can still test things even if I don’t intend to implement them permanently in our home. And there are new, and more inexpensive options for smart switches, smart shades, and other technologies coming to market this year that will likely change our outlook as well.