A Few Smart Home Upgrades for Mexico City (Premium)

We just booked the flights for our next trip to Mexico City, in June, and I will be making a few smart home upgrades while we’re there.

It’s been a while. I used our move to Pennsylvania in 2017 as an opportunity to rethink the technology we used at home, and I created a series called Paul’s Tech Makeover to document our tentative first steps into the smart home world at the time. Ultimately, mesh wireless networking, indoor and outdoor Hue smart lights, Sonos smart speakers, and cord-cutting proved so useful that they’ve endured through subsequent moves. But other related pushes into outdoor security cameras, smart plugs, voice-activated digital assistants, and powerline networking came and went with a whimper.

But now we own an apartment in Mexico City—in fact, it’s the only home we own—and it’s finally furnished and have implemented the most important upgrades I discussed in Thinking About a CDMX Tech Makeover (Premium) in late 2022: We’ve upgraded the Internet speed, and have complete More Mobile setups with podcasting gear for the two of us.

But there’s always more to do, and we’ve rethought a few potential upgrades after speaking to friends in the area. For example, I always imagined we’d need a smart lock for the apartment door, and I almost pulled the trigger on that in February. But we don’t Airbnb the place, and a neighbor noted that, with 24/7 security at the building’s entrance, upgrading the lock isn’t all that important. And he’s right. I may still go down that path at some point, but it’s no longer a priority.

What is a priority is an outdoor camera. We’ve never wanted security cameras in our home, and our brief foray into outdoor cameras in the last house was more about enjoying wildlife than personally security. And over the past few trips to Mexico, it’s occurred to me that an outdoor camera or two on the balcony might be a fun addition, a way to remotely watch the gorgeous sunsets and sunrises we enjoy so much when we’re there. And, less obviously, a way to make sure that our Internet connection is still functioning.

I researched cameras during our previous trip to Mexico City in February. But electronics are so much more expensive there than in the United States, and I’d need to upgrade our Wi-Fi network before we could get a camera anyway: The one router we have there now doesn’t quite reach the far corner of the balcony where I want to mount the camera. And so I held off on that, vaguely figuring I would solve these problems before the next trip.

And we know how that usually goes. Best of intentions, for sure. But these things tend to slip through the cracks.

In this case, however, I got lucky.

I grabbed a Blink Outdoor 4 camera when Amazon had a sale, paying just $60 for a product that normally costs $100. And I put a price alert on Eero mesh networking equipment: We’re quite happy with the three-node Eero Pro 6E system we have here in Pennsylvania, but these products are very expensive. And aside from my balcony camera wants, a single node could easily cover our tiny apartment. Perhaps there was a cheaper alternative.

And then it happened. Just the other day, Amazon alerted me to an Eero sale. The three-node system we use at home, normally $550, was on sale for $410. That’s still too expensive, but a two-node system was $300 (normally $400), and a one-node system was $185 (normally $250). What to do, what to do.

And then it hit me: Amazon’s newer Echo Dot smart speakers can be used as Eero network extenders. Echo Dot speakers are cheap at $50 a piece, but they were on sale too, for just $28. And that settled it: I purchased a one-node Eero Pro 6e Wi-Fi router and two Echo Dots. I can replace the Wi-Fi in our router with the Eero and place an Echo Dot in each of the two bedrooms, which both open up to the balcony. Nice.

We’ve had the Blink Outdoor 4 camera for almost a month now, and after experimenting with it indoors for a while, I put it outside (and unsecured) by the front door, pointing it in the direction of the sunrise, so I could get a rough idea of how it might work in Mexico.

It’s a fun little device, but I won’t be using it like most people. I don’t need its motion sensing functionality, for example—the only motion this thing will detect on the balcony, I suspect, will be avian in nature—or audio, most likely. What I want, instead, is the highest possible video quality—it supports up to Full HD (1080p)—60-second on-the-fly video clip recording, photo capture, and (I think) night vision.

Of course, Blink requires a subscription if you want more than 5 minutes of remote live viewing. If I stick with just the one camera, I can subscribe to Blink Basic for just $30 per year (or $3 per month) and get 90 minutes of continuous live viewing, 60-day unlimited video clip storage, and other features. But if I add one or more other Blink devices, I’ll need to get Blink Plus at $100 per year (or $10 per month). As I write this, I have about a week left on my free trial of Blink Plus. I will likely go with a Blink Basic monthly plan just in case I feel like getting a second camera, in which case I’ll switch to an annual Blink Plus plan.

The Blink Outdoor 4 camera also requires a mount of some kind. There was a basic mount in the box, but as you might expect, there is a cottage industry to support this need, along with associated peripherals like batteries, solar power adapters, and a lot more. We don’t have a power port outside on our balcony, so I went with a battery-powered camera. But we do have a guy who could add that for us, so I also have options for the future. Meanwhile, I just want to securely place it on the corner of the balcony and see how it goes.

This is the corner where I’d like to mount the camera:

Most Blink mounts are secured with screws, but my first choice for the camera position—a sort of plant container area at the end of the balcony—would require drilling into metal, which isn’t ideal. Fortunately, I found a door/gutter mount with a clamp that doesn’t require any drilling, and I will make sure that works well before bringing it to Mexico. I just ordered that today, along with a little rain cover for the camera. Both were inexpensive.

The Echo Dot speakers arrived today, so I installed the Alexa app on my phone and configured them with my existing Eero network to see how that works. Here, too, I won’t be using these devices like most customers, though I did a bit of testing and am pleasantly surprised by the audio quality given their small size and Amazon’s bargain-basement tendencies. (I had to resist stereo pairing them.)

Set up was easy. I placed one Dot in our dining room area and one in the main bedroom, plugged them in, connected them to my Amazon account, and got them online with the Alexa app, doing just a bit of configuration. (In Mexico, I’ll likely just mute them and make sure they never light up or make any sounds.) I was particularly curious what I’d need to do to add them to my Eero network.

As it turns out, there’s nothing to do. When I opened the Eero app on my phone, it alerted me that it had found two compatible Echo devices and had added them to the system. However, because our Eero devices already provide great coverage in these rooms—the condo is much smaller than the house we had when we bought this system—it automatically disabled their “Eero Built-in” capabilities. It doesn’t look like there’s a way to manually enable that, so now I’m curious what I’ll see when I bring them to Mexico: It’s a small place, but its thick concrete walls do a number on the current router’s Wi-Fi.

The Eero Pro 6e Wi-Fi router arrives tomorrow. I’m not sure if I should configure it here with the current setup temporarily, or just hold off until I get to Mexico. But that decision may be made for me: The next trip is coming up soon, all of a sudden, and if you can believe it, I have three trips between now and then between Seattle for Build, Memorial Day weekend in the Finger Lakes, and then a long weekend in Boston to visit friends. So I guess I’ll be a bit busy.

I have a few other smart home ideas for Mexico City, but that’s probably enough for this next trip. We have pictures to hang, and some lighting to add in the kitchen, as well. It never ends. But I feel pretty good about these upgrades and will chime in again when they’re up and running.

More soon.