My Family Griped About Our Smart Home Tech… Until We Lost It [CNET]

Have you ever heard the phrase,  “You’ll never know how much you miss something until it’s gone?” Well, it has hit my family unexpectedly in the past month. 

I am still in the process of moving homes, and my “new” home needs some pretty intense repairs before I can finalize the move. Because of this, many of the things my family and I used in the previous home aren’t or can’t be set up just yet, either because we don’t have a place for them or because they’re in storage and inaccessible.

The stuff we didn’t know we’d miss until we didn’t have it is unexpected. Well, not for me but for the rest of my family. It’s our smart home devices. After spending the better part of the past eight years setting up with automation, lights, plugs, vacuum cleaners, sensors and more, losing 90% of it — at least temporarily — has hit my family far more than we could have imagined.

Missing my smart home, even it was far from perfect

I’ll say it upfront: while nothing is perfect, getting even close to that in a DIY smart home setup takes effort. This makes the process daunting at times and a little frustrating when you finally start it. Even for me, who tests and writes about smart homes for a living.

However, when things work as intended, a smart home can relieve unexpected stresses and anxiety. Being able to call out to my Amazon Echo to add an item to my shopping list, set a reminder, a timer or any other helpful task helps me and my family know things will be taken care of. Then being able to glance at my Echo Show 15 to visually see our shopping list, calendar, reminders and more is such a useful feature.

Outside of being able to call out for help from Alexa to keep our lives better organized, lighting is the second most missed smart home customization. Dimmable lighting without needing to rewire anything, automatically turning on at different times of the day, dimly lighting the hall in the middle of the night when motion is detected are all conveniences we miss.

But that’s what it all is, right? At least for the most part a smart home is a convenience. So, with all that being said, not all parts of my smart home are missed. Mainly the parts that seemed to fail to work properly more often than others. Aside from lights or plugs that would randomly go offline, the biggest issue is with Google Assistant, which likely won’t be resolved until Gemini takes over or is more tightly integrated into Google Assistant.

Then, if there is so much inconsistency and frustration, why would I? An even bigger question is, why would my family miss it? This is because, in all honesty, things worked more often than not, except for my Google smart speakers. When things operated as instructed and simply worked, my smart home genuinely improved our daily lives.

Perhaps the device we missed most was our Amazon Alexa speakers, mainly the Echo Show 15 due to its large screen capable of making info we need quickly glanceable and be a fun source of entertainment while cooking. We use Alexa for several reasons, and not just because it works more consistently than Google Assistant. 

The Alexa app is user-friendly, allowing customizations to what you see in the app and putting what you want in accessible places. For example, I can add any device, group or list to the home page for quick access. There is an activity feed of recently accomplished tasks. Oh and being able to sort and search your connected device list. But these are only a few parts of the Alexa app that help to make my smart home operate a bit better. 

We also felt the absence of our smart lights, sensors and plugs. These three tie together as the plugs were used for certain lamps that I didn’t want to buy a specialized bulb for. But I like that the lights would automatically turn on during the day if I went into a dark room or at night when coming home late from a ball game because the sensor was set to do so if the lux rating was below a specific point. They are also great for the times when hands are full or you simply don’t want to get up to turn the lights on or off.

Ready to welcome tech back into my home

Another smart device that I’ve come to rely on for convenience and peace of mind is my smart door lock. I had become so accustomed to not carrying house keys that when I had to again, I locked myself out of my home more times than I care to admit. As of this writing, I’ve installed the new Anker eufy Smart Lock C33, which has solved that issue, though still need to add outdoor lighting and security cameras. 

I plan on getting more of my home online in the coming weeks, assuming I can find time to, and it will include everything I’ve had set up before, along with some new devices. Getting everything set back up will take time, but I’ll be sure to remind my family what it’s like not to have our smart home devices the next time someone complains.