Posts in Smart

5 Reasons Home Automation is so Expensive

Posted on 10th Oct 2020 17:38:39 in General, Smart

Automation is great. It can help save precious time in your day by making repetitive, mundane tasks automatic. Going from having no smart functionality in your home to fully equipping every area can be intimidating. If you've ever done this or are trying to, you may have wondered why home automation is so expensive. There is, unfortunately, no simple answer, but there are a few factors that will come into play to make your particular situation more expensive.

Home automation can be expensive

The Top 3 Best Smart Home Servers For DIY

Posted on 8th Oct 2020 23:55:21 in DIY, General, Smart

Smart home servers are perhaps one of the most important aspects of any given smart home. Despite that, they are often ignored or disguised using other terms such as "smart hub" or "controller". Understandably, this can cause quite a bit of confusion leading to many users simply purchasing whatever the most convenient option is. Depending on what you are doing, this can be a bad thing as there are many options to choose from, and it is easy to pick something underpowered or too expensive.

A smart home server

The Differences Between Z-Wave Versions Made Easy

Posted on 2nd Oct 2020 18:46:01 in General, IoT, Smart

Z-Wave is one of the most popular protocols used for home automation. Despite that, it seems there is still a lot of confusion over the different standards that devices can be certified with and still be "compatible with Z-Wave". Indeed there is Z-Wave, Z-Wave Plus, and Z-Wave Long Range, just to name the bigger ones. What's the difference? What should you buy? In reality, there isn't much for you as a consumer to do as manufacturers will almost certainly be certifying their devices with the latest standard. There are significant improvements in each newer one though, so it's worth upgrading older equipment if you have any!

Z-Wave vs Z-Wave Plus

Smart Lights Are Slowing Down Your WiFi - This is Why

Posted on 30th Sep 2020 22:39:50 in General, IoT, Smart

Building a smart home is exciting, so it isn't surprising that many will want to jump straight into the fun of purchasing devices and setting up automations. However, spending a bit of time planning how things will come together can save a lot of time and money in the long run. The issue is often the same, what works at first doesn't always scale up to larger configurations involving many more devices. Let's take a look at some of the problems with only using WiFi in a smart home.

Is using all WiFi smart devices going to slow down my network?

Is Z-Wave Dead? 3 Reasons Why It's Not

Posted on 30th Sep 2020 02:55:36 in IoT, Smart

Historically, Z-Wave has been one of the major players in the smart home industry, but with the rise of WiFi products, many may wonder: is Z-Wave is dead? The short answer is no. A longer answer is that there are many contributing factors to the stability of Z-Wave in the smart market, most of them have to do with power consumption, certification, and network configuration. What the surge in protocol options means for you is that it is more important than ever to carefully analyze each technology to select the best one for your smart home.

Is Z-Wave Dead? No!