Design a layout of an idea of your smart home
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Answer:
Before we go to designing our smart home, let me first point out a really big difference in smart homes and real smart homes. In my opinion, Alexa or Google Home does not make your home really smart. These devices are really user-friendly and easy to use but are also limited to the automating part. To turn the lights on with Alexa, you need to say “Alexa, turn the lights on”. That’s not smart, I don’t “think” for itself. Alexa, Google home and Apple’s Siri are virtual assistants that can perform a task for you if you ask them.
Smart means event based actions. The sun is getting down in one hour, is it cloudy outside? Yes, turn the lights on. No? Let’s wait for an hour, and then turn the lights on. Nobody home, turn the lights off at 23:10, is there a guest device connected to the wifi? Then there might be a babysitter at home, keep the lights and heating on.
That is smart, you set the rules, the guidelines, and the device acts on it. That is how I made my house smart. If I turn the TV on after 20.00 for example, the lights in the living room get dimmed. If I have the doors to the garden open and it’s outside colder then inside, then turn the heating off (and maybe send me a push notification .. )
When you start with the design of your smart home you only really need to think about which protocol you are going to build on. Besides WiFi, which is mainly used for bigger devices like the thermostat and smart hub, you will have to choose between ZigBee and Z-wave.
A WiFi network has a star topology, which simply means that every device connects to one central device (the access point). The WiFi signal is strong and can transport a lot of data. For smart devices you want to use as little energy as possible, the devices are small, so the battery is too. Besides that, you don’t have much room for a decent antenna.
Now there are a lot of smart devices that use the WiFi network. The advantage is that you don’t need a Smart Hub for them and you can control them with an app. But the WiFi network is already pretty crowded, which could cause interferences to result in a non-responsive smart device. Also, the WiFi protocol requires more energy.
Zigbee and Z-Wave are using a mesh-topology, this means that every device can connect to another, extending your network through your house and even garden. This way your network can extend further throughout your house and is more reliable.