Smart Home Infrastructure Tips
Smart Home Infrastructure Planning
Network Infrastructure
It is brutally important to have a secure wireless network that provides strong coverage throughout your home. Devices, especially cameras, are placed in the far corners of your home or mounted outside near the roof or other difficult to reach areas. The last thing you want to do is mount a camera on your second story porch and find out you cannot reach it with your wireless network.
You also need to secure your network. You do not want hackers controlling your smart home devices. They could ruin your day in ways you do not want to think about.
I believe the best approach to securing your network Is to use a wireless network extender in conjunction with a firewall. The firewall can be separate or integrated into the wireless extender network.The following are some of the advantages of this approach:
Choose a wireless network extender that allows you to set your own SSID name and Passwords. This keeps you from having to change the network settings on every device that you have logged on to the vendors Network if you need to change internet providers. it also makes it a lot easier to put in a backup internet Network. Particularly if you decide to failover to a 5G connection. This can save hours of time and hours of frustration. This also gives you control over how you broadcast your SSID name and how you manage your passwords.
Implement a firewall that sends you security alerts and that gives you administrative access. Some Wireless extenders have firewalls built into their product.The following link gives a basic explanation of Firewalls. https://firewalling.com/what-does-a-firewall-do/
Most commercial Smart Home Products required that you establish an account with the vendor. This means setting up a username and password and opening up another point of attack for a hacker. I would limit the number of products I use and make sure that I have very strong passwords in place.
Naming Conventions
The smart home network needs to know how to send your device commands. Vendors do this by requiring you to give the device a name, identifying its location and determining if it is part of a group of devices that work together. The issue is that terminology is not consistent among vendors. Therefore it is critical that you understand the physical layout of your home and the best way to identify functional locations. This becomes an even bigger factor if you have multiple locations.
It is important to go through each room and determine the function of each smart device in that room, before actually implementing the devices. For example, in my master bedroom I have ceiling can lights, a ceiling fan with lights,and table lamps, I have to decide which lights I want control and with how much granularity. For example, do I want to say Alexa turn off Master Bedroom lights and have it turn off every light in the bedroom. Or do I want to be able to say Alexa turn off the ceiling lights and turn on my nightstand lamp. This requires me to determine the control point for every light in the room and give that control point a unique name. Then I have to group those control points if I wish to give a mass command.
In my case, I placed the smart bulbs for the lamps in a group called Master Orlando lamps, the ceiling lights are controlled by a Smart Switch that I named Master Orlando dimmer, I implemented a separate dimmer which I call master Orlando fan.I placed every lighting device in a master group that I call master Orlando bedroom. I use the name Orlando because the house is located on Orlando place.
I learned this the hard way by being in a hurry and implementing a bunch of smart home devices. I've had to backtrack in deal with naming conventions due to inefficient operations and naming conflicts. This takes quite a bit of time and is often difficult to reverse your earlier mistakes.
Minimize Vendors
It was difficult for me to resist the temptation of trying multiple products from multiple vendors. It led to a great deal of frustration. Each vendor requires an administrative account and has its own installation method. They each have different customer service and support methodologies as well. Although most cases I don't know why they call it customer service and support, since they generally just torture you with their automated attendants. They often have different naming conventions that are difficult to reconcile.
I have decided to choose a primary vendor for each smart home capability I implement. Sometimes I choose the same vendor for different capabilities. This further limits the number of vendors I have to manage. Here are some of the benefits of having a smaller vendor group.
It is easier to determine compatibility and interoperability between devices
Troubleshooting problems is much simpler and it reduces finger-pointing among the vendors.
It reduces the security threat by reducing the amount of administrative accounts you have to manage
It makes establishing naming conventions much simpler
It reduces learning time by enabling you to concentrate on a few vendors capabilities
Power
Smart home devices need power.As the number of smart home devices increases so does the demand for power outlets. In some cases there is no power available at all.This creates issues for placement and the number of devices.
Fortunately some devices such as cameras, can be battery powered.The downside of battery operated devices is the constant need to monitor the batteries. Wherever I have a choice I try to use inline power devices.Other devices like smart bulbs use the same power as the existing products
Smart home devices that I use can receive power by being plugged into the wall, hardwired into the breaker box, batteries, and solar. Smart dimmers,light switches, smart thermostats can use the existing power from the wall box. Cameras can use power outlets, be hardwired, be solar powered or use batteries. Smart bulbs can screw into existing light fixtures. Hubs, voice gateways and other controlled devices need a power outlet.
I would think through what kind of devices I want to use and where I would like to place them before beginning my implementation. I would then look at the available power in each location and make a decision on how I want to power my device.
These are basic pre-planning ideas that I discovered through the School of Hard Knocks. every situation is different and everyone has different requirements. However the topics covered in this blog deal with many of the basic infrastructure issues associated with Smart Homes. I doubt this is all inclusive and I'm sure there are other ideas that I need to consider. Please feel free to comment and let me know your ideas.