Mistakes to Avoid When Planning A Smart Home
Smart homes are practical, convenient and bang on trend, with more and more people choosing to link up connected devices with the support of a powerful Wi-Fi system. If you’re thinking about installing smart home systems like Control4, however, it’s important to do your research to avoid errors. With this in mind, here are four mistakes people often make when planning and installing a smart home.
Not Choosing the Latest Wi-Fi Standard
It’s all well and good wanting an impressive smart home, but you need to think about how it’s going to work. Wi-Fi 5, for instance, wasn’t designed with smart home connectivity needs in mind and therefore doesn’t share the latency advantages and bandwidth of the new and improved Wi-Fi 6 standard.
Wi-Fi 6 routers are able to divide a wireless channel into a large number of subchannels, with each of those subchannels carrying data from a different device to keep everything running smoothly. Such routers can also put the Wi-Fi of certain devices to sleep when they’re not in use, freeing up bandwidth for other devices which are being used. The latency, or the delay between an action and a smart device to change its state, is significantly reduced with Wi-Fi 6 too, creating a more responsive home.
Not Considering the Position of your Wi-Fi Router
You’ve updated your router and are all ready to go. But where are you going to place it? Yes, the new standard is powerful, but you still don’t want to hide the router behind heavy furniture or brick walls as this will force it to work way harder than it needs to, potentially impacting the overall performance of your connection. Instead, pop it near to your connected devices in an open space so the signal doesn’t have to penetrate walls unnecessarily.
Not Buying All the Necessary Components
Technology has come on leaps and bounds in recent years and it’s fair to say that us mortals are still catching up. It’s not always easy to know what components are needed for your smart home to operate smoothly, so it’s a good idea to speak to a smart home specialist, like the team here at New Wave AV, who will be able to advise you. While many products are plug-and-play for ease of use, there are also plenty of devices that may require additional components such as adapters, hubs, controllers or even power supplies. So always double-check.
Not considering the Installation Process
Buying smart devices for your connected home is one thing, but you must also consider how your devices will be installed. The first thing to think about is wiring. While wireless technologies are the future, they still require power, so you might want to run wire to one or two extra zones in your house in case you add further devices to different rooms. Again, this is something that smart home installers can help you with.
Each device will also have different installation requirements. Some will simply need to be mounted or plugged in and others will need to be drilled into walls or hooked up to the main power supply. They may even need to be embedded into the wall, so don’t rush the installation process, but instead map out your connected home carefully.
Top tip: Always measure devices and their components to ensure they fit into your smart home plan perfectly.
If you’re looking for expert home automation installation services, contact New Wave AV today.
