Smart home technology refers to the integration of smart devices to a single or multiple systems within a home premise to enable monitoring, control, automation, scheduling, alerts and remote access when you are away from home. While integration of the readily available smart devices over WiFi to a cloud service seems convenient, it exposes home owner to various risks such as the downtime of the cloud service affects the access to all smart devices, risk of data leak from the service provider or access from unauthorized personal.
To provide home owner the convenient of smart home and removing the risk of exposing their privacy and improve the system reliability, we offer an alternative solution by providing a smart home hub with all smart devices connected wireless over ZigBee to the smart home hub. With the smart home application running locally in the hub, data including logs, automation, schedule, etc are programmed within the home owner premises. This does not only removes the risk of exposing any attack from the internet but also enable the automation and schedule to run seamlessly, in the event when the internet is down.
Budgeting for a smart home upgrade plays also an important role. While a budget friendly smart device may seem attractive in the beginning, it might not end up in the electronic waste after a month or two, or is not compatible with the closed smart home technology that is currently running. Since there is no one manufacturer that produces all the highest quality and largest product range of smart devices, consider looking for a smart home platform which provides the flexibility to connect smart devices from various manufacturers.
With these consideration with mind, the smart home platform that will be running as the owner’s smart home platform is HomeAssistant, which has the highest system reliability, no data is shared without consent and provide the home owners the freedom of choice by mix and matching the smart devices from different manufacturer.