A Step By Step Guide To Transforming Your House Into A Smart Home

You’ve probably heard and read about them. The glories and conveniences of owning a “smart” home, and you want in. There’s just one problem: You’re not exactly sure where to start. You needn’t worry. By following the instructions in this guide, we’ll put you on the fast track toward making your home smarter, cooler, and more efficient and fun in general.  Beginning with general appliances, we’re going to tell you everything you need to know.

Before you can turn your house into a smart home, you need to start upgrading appliances. Most everything has a “smart” version these days, so when it’s time to replace the fridge, dishwasher, thermostat, or even light bulbs, start getting “smart” ones. Yes, they cost more, but they also do more. This is definitely a case of getting what you pay for.

Hand in hand with this, you should sit down and make a detailed list of what you want your smart home to do. For example, do you want a video doorbell? What about smart door locks? You can even put your blinds on servo motors and control them (opening and closing) from a central console, once you start tying all of this together (Arduino motors will become your best friend if you want to go that route, so bookmark this site)

Now, if you start by purchasing smart appliances, you’ll be able to enjoy some of the benefits of having a smart home right away. For instance, your fridge will have a control panel built onto it, and you can use the smart features from there. Your smart lights or door locks will come with an app you can install on your phone, and control them from that.

If you buy a Nest thermostat by Google, it too, comes with its own app that will allow you to control it. The problem with this, however, is that now you’ve got potentially half a dozen disconnected apps to wrestle with. That’s no good, and its inconvenient. What you ultimately need is a central command console. ONE place from which you can access all the smart stuff in your home, and building the system that makes that possible is the next step.

Your Wireless Router

Here’s a fact most people who are just getting into this don’t know. Your wireless router is the real star of the show here, because all of these smart devices have to be able to connect to something. They all need to be a part of your home’s network.

Depending on where your wireless router is located, and depending on the size of your house, you may need to invest in multiple wireless routers, scattered through your house, in order to make sure your various appliances are connected. This, in turn, could mean doing some wiring, or paying someone to come out and do it for you.

There’s good news on this front though. Even though you may not have a landline any more, your home is almost certainly wired for it. If it is, odds are good that it already has the wiring you’ll need to carry data. It costs about $250 to convert the jacks in your wall from a standard phone jack to a data jack, but once you do, you’ll be able to plug your wireless routers into data jacks in your walls, and build a really robust home network system, with good signal strength all through the house.

Tying Everything Together

Once you’ve got your home network solidified, and all your smart appliances residing on it, you can take the next step, which is providing them a central hub to work in. You can buy commercial, off the shelf products like Insteon, or if you’re more of a do-it-yourselfer, then you can opt for one of the open source control centers like OpenHAB. Both will serve you well, so what it really comes down to is personal preference.

Once everything is tied together, you’ll have a central console from which you can survey, and give instructions to every smart device on your home’s networks. Doors can be locked and unlocked remotely. Lights can be powered off and one. Your thermostat can be adjusted, and more. It’s hugely convenient, and a project well worth undertaking.

Further Refinements

Once you’ve done all of this, you should consider taking it to the next level. What about tying your Smart TV to the network? What about setting up an external hard drive to store all your music and movies on, so they can be accessed from anywhere in the house (or even, anywhere in the world)? All of these things become possible, once you’ve got the framework established.

Then, there’s Emotiv. What you’re about to read is probably going to sound a little like science fiction. You may not believe this is real, but it absolutely is. In fact, you can watch a demonstration of the technology on TED.

Basically, what this headset does, which costs about four hundred bucks, is allows you to control all of the smart appliances in your home with nothing more than the power of your thoughts.

Yes, you read that correctly! Here’s how it works: When you buy the headset, you’ll create an account on the Emotiv server. This account is where all of the Emotiv data is stored. You’ll find training exercises on the site for simple commands (push, pull, on, off, etc). Wearing your headset, you’ll think about pulling an object shown to you on the screen closer to you. The headset records your brainwaves when you think about “pull” and stores them so that it can recognize them later.

It takes a bit of practice, but once you get it, the virtual object will move to the power of your thoughts.

You simply go through the various exercises, and once you master them, you’ll be able to apply the headset commands to ANY program running on your computer, so, wearing your headset, you’ll be able to “think” your lights on or off. You’ll be able to mentally command your doors to lock or unlock. Your blinds to open or close. It’s almost spooky, when you think about it, but again, this is not the stuff of science fiction. This is science NOW. This is something you can do today.

Turning your house into a smart home is easier than you ever imagined possible. It’s a fun project that will not only make your life more efficient and convenient, it will allow you to do some simply amazing things. Things your friends probably don’t even know is possible. They’ll feel like they’ve stepped onto the set of a science fiction movie, every time they come over!