Over the last few weeks, I have been working very hard to improve my smart home to make life easier, but the primary focus has been making things easier for other people when they use my house. I've been adding stuff for myself as well, of course.
The first thing I did was get myself into Matter. Following the rapid transition from technologies like Zigbee and Z Wave to Thread and Matter for smart homes, I have decided to adopt Matter devices in my house. I will make them the primary technology going forward. This happened after I decided to get a new lock for my door, which is Thread/Matter-based. After several attempts to connect it directly to Home Assistant, I opted instead to run it through my HomePod Mini, which immediately connected and gave me complete control of it, and it works nicely through it. Home Assistant then connects to the HomePod Mini to get the device through it, too. This new Aqara U200 is absolutely brilliant, and I am loving not having to carry keys around with me.
I now also have an excellent new robot vacuum, the Roborock QV 35S, and not only does it integrate really well into my smart home, it also makes my floor spotless and is hundreds of times better than its predecessor. I cannot believe how effective it is.
Next, I've been adding NFC contact points around my house. One of my new innovations is an NFC tag you can tap on each photo and picture around my house. Your device then takes you to the location where the image or picture was taken (all my pictures are of places). I've also developed a clever filter that, when an Apple user taps a location tag, opens Apple Maps; however, for others, it opens OpenStreet Maps. Nice.
Additionally, I've added new NFC points around the house to control devices that you'd typically have to manage from the front door tablet (known as my Home Control Tablet), either via Siri or HomeKit. To make this accessible to everyone in my house, I've created straightforward URLs to activate web hooks, eliminating the need for a specific app like Home Assistant. I'm very proud of how these have come along.
I also have NFC points in the garden, allowing me to activate various features such as my Home Sweet Home mode, which will simply turn on the appropriate lights when I get home (I do also have my detection automation on my iPhone, actually).
I'm doing a video in the current month that will show everything that I have done so far, so keep an eye out for that.
Since moving to my current house three and a half years ago, I have done many things to improve my home's technology.
I love my house; it's just perfect for me. It's close to work, in a place I always loved growing up, and somewhere I've known since I was a kid. That's why I've worked hard to improve my home more and more, and thanks to Colin coming round to assist me the other day, I've been able to tidy up the front cupboard finally (whilst I do know how to wire an RJ45 keystone and put cables through the wall, my good friend Colin is far more experienced).
But now, the next big thing I've been planning is upgrading the house to at least 2.5Gbe, as it makes no sense now that I have a fibre connection providing 1.6Gbps. After 1.6Gbps, the next upgrade is 2.2Gbps, so I'd need to consider this the last upgrade available on 2.5Gbe. The solution for computers is easy since most computers I own have a Thunderbolt port capable of up to 10Gbps at the minimum, though most are 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4. I also have some computers that have 2.5Gbe on them.
For me, this means ensuring that all cables are at least CAT6a around the house, updating the router (out of my hands at the moment) and ensuring all my switches are cable of 2.5Gbe.
I will continue to update my followers with what happens out of this.
For the longest time, I have enjoyed the fantastic Samsung SmartThings. Still, with concerns over speed, cloud access, reliability and of course longevity of the service, I have opted to move away.
Today, I received a USB to Zigbee adapter which I inserted into one of the USB ports on my Ubuntu home server. I also got Home Assistant installed (I am already using Homebridge). To my amazement, the USB Zigbee adapter was recognised by Home Assistant immediately (I mean Linux is often a pain with drivers so I was worried about having to spend precisely 9.23 days trying to get this working but not this time). I got started and found that the installation of my Zigbee devices away from SmartThings and into my new Home Assistant was incredibly easy - in fact, better than SmartThings.
I say better because SmartThings requires a cloud connection no matter what, even if the connection is local. This meant that things were slower and with SmartThings unifying my whole home, this meant that simple things weren't quick. I also say better because things like my Xenon power strip can now be recognised as four different plugs - not one. This has allowed me to remove one of my WiFi-powered power strips and replace it with the Xenon one (at last).
Since Home Assistant also works locally, I decided to turn off my internet connection for a short period to test it. And voila, it switches on and off without the need for an internet connection absolutely perfectly - and fast.
As well as Alexa devices, Home Assistant also integrates with Apple devices easily by acting as a bridge. Now I plan, at present, to supplement my Home Assistant with Homebridge since it is also fantastic and it actually runs on the same server. Further to all of this, my Alexa devices now integrate entirely with my Home Assistant, allowing for much quicker control.
My whole stack is much cleaner and much better designed with the performance that makes it so much more reliable and less reliant on third parties. I plan to install more Zigbee control devices around the house in the next few months too and I'm looking into installing touch screens across the house with control for each device to make things even easier than they are now.
Over the next few weeks, I will be making big changes to my house. The first of those has already started - moving all of my WiFi smart stuff to Zigbee. It's an expensive job since I've got a lot of WiFi stuff but it's just not reliable enough. This has begun with smart plugs, which even though I bought my last WiFi power strip just two months ago, will eventually be replaced by Zigbee plugs for reliability. I've also begun switching out my dumb light switches with Zigbee switches and removing smart bulbs - the switches are much easier to use and have a backup option.
Another major change I'm making is moving from having plug sockets occupied by smart devices and I'm moving more of these to devices that can be powered by Ethernet using PoE.
And, I'm now in the process of upgrading my house so that every room in the house has an RJ-45 connector and CAT6 cabling to ensure that I can both provide data and power devices in every room of my house.
I've also begun to use my security system now as it's all up and running with sensors all around the house that immediately trigger if someone enters the house.
All in all, the house is much safer, saves more energy, and allows me to access and control it from anywhere.
