[00:00] I recently came across some feisty blog posts from a company that makes high-end professional smart home equipment. One in particular gave 13 reasons to NOT use a DIY system.
[00:12] And whoa, this feels a little bit like a personal attack, because I have a smart home I built myself that I absolutely love. And this article, is it really telling the whole truth?
[00:24] I'm going to show you how building your own smart home could be better than a professional system. Basically tell you everything these professional smart home companies don't want you to hear. Now don't get me wrong, a professional system could be a good fit for some people.
[00:40] And it's easy to tell if you fit the profile. You know, are you a rich MBA basketball player, or are you a Kardashian, and you don't know how to cut your food properly? For most of us normal people, a DIY system is going to be the way to go, mainly because
[00:54] you probably don't have 50 to 100 grand laying around to pay someone to do your system for you. And doing a DIY system has a lot of benefits, even if you have the money to do a professional
[01:07] system. You'll know how it all works, so you can easily change your smart home if you want to. You'll have more flexibility in what devices you can get, or where you can buy them, and of course you'll save so much more money. Alright, let's take a look at the article and see what's so bad about a DIY setup.
[01:24] The first point says you'll want to take inventory of what smart devices you plan on having. They're just trying to make you feel overwhelmed so that you'll pay them to solve this problem that they invented.
[01:37] There's an easier way though. Instead of trying to figure out everything you need on day one, just focus on one room to start out. I would start with the room I hang out the most in, which for me would be in our living room.
[01:50] Then pick one or two things in the room that you'd want to add. Maybe it's smart lighting by swapping out a light switch with a smart one to control your existing ceiling lights. Before adding some smart light strips for accent lighting, maybe you change the thermostat
[02:04] often. Listen to music or want to be notified if your little one goes outside. Back door open. All this is super easy to set up, and doing this slowly over time throughout your house is the best way to have you and your family get used to it.
[02:19] I mean, that's how I do it, and I think it has the best spouse approval factor. But before you go crazy and buy tons of devices, you might want to make sure they all work together which I'll talk about in a second.
[02:31] The next scare tactic is that you'll have too many apps if you don't pay more for the professional system. It looks like they're conveniently leaving out how you can control all of your DIY smart
[02:44] home devices from just one app. For example, this light switch is from Lutron and these light strips are from Philips Hue. So yes, I need the Lutron app and the Philips Hue app to set up these devices.
[02:56] But after they're set up, I only need one app to control them. You could use Amazon or Google smart home apps to do this. There's also Apple's HomeKit, SmartThings, and Home Assistant to name a few.
[03:08] These all make it so you can control all your devices from one app. Just make sure when you're buying devices all around your house that they'll work with that main app or system that you decide to use. That way you can just use one app and all of your devices will work together for automations.
[03:25] Next up, we got some more fear mongering about companies selling your data. Now granted, I'm sure that there are a few that do this, but there are plenty of DIY options that don't. Apple claims their system does not sell your data.
[03:39] So this article must have forgotten to mention them and Home Assistant, which Home Assistant is definitely the most private and secure since it's open source and you control everything. I mean, if you want to know what's going on, just look at the source code.
[03:54] You know, I'm beginning to think that this article is a little biased, unlike this video, which is definitely not biased at all towards DIY systems. Another argument they say is our smart home is filled with too many remotes.
[04:08] What is their solution to this problem? You might have guessed it, by another remote from them for $500. That's not a joke. It's actually $500, but you know what's a better solution?
[04:22] From the remote that's already in your pocket, your phone. That's right. I can turn on my TV, control the fire stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, change the lights, blinds, temperature, door locks, and way more that they're saying that their remote can do with my
[04:37] phone. I mean, who wants another remote to lose? Alright, maybe this next point in the article about programming scenes and automations might have a valid point. It probably won't. But first let's hear a quick word from a sponsor.
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[05:03] It has a 60 watt power delivery USB-C port that I use to charge my laptop, as well as two regular USB-A ports for something like wireless chargers, plus two normal outlets that
[05:15] you can use for anything. I like them right here on the desk, so when I'm setting up a smart home device, I don't have to crawl under looking for an open outlet. This uses gallium nitride power delivery to keep things compact and low heat.
[05:30] So you get that full 60 watts of power on the USB-C port, even if everything else is plugged in. Installing it was easy. I covered the spot with blue painters tape to keep the damage minimal when I drilled
[05:42] the hole. I used a 3-1-8 inch hole saw and a few seconds later, plus some vacuuming, it was all done. I slid the grommet in, plugged it in the wall, and now I have a nice clean charging station
[05:54] that can be installed on any flat surface. I'm loving this thing, and it's on Amazon if you want to check it out at the link below. Anyway, let's set up a scene and see if it's as painstakingly difficult as they say, and
[06:07] I'm going to use HomeKit for this, but most DIY options are going to be similar. So I'm going to set the lights to the way I want them, like the brightness level, then click on New Scene, then select the lights that I want to use for it, and click Save.
[06:21] That's it. Okay, that was a scene, but maybe an automation will be more difficult. Their example is using a button or a voice command to turn on the lights, lock the door, and start playing music on a playlist.
[06:33] So I'm going to use an Amazon routine with a voice command that will have three actions. People turn on the lights, lock the door, and start a playlist. Well, that was so difficult.
[06:46] You know, I think calling someone on the phone and scheduling for them to come out and set up the automation for me, and making sure I have time in my day for that would be way easier. Actually, yeah, I think it's the opposite.
[07:00] And if you set it up yourself, being able to make little tweaks to the automation as your schedule changes over time is so much more convenient, versus having someone come out to make those changes. Okay, what about understanding your network?
[07:14] They say, do you know your Zigbee from your Z-Wave or your Wi-Fi from your Bluetooth? Wait, so you're telling me if I don't know the difference between Zigbee and Z-Wave that I should pay a professional about 50 grand to come out and set up my system for me?
[07:28] Yeah, I don't think so. It's really simple. If you want to buy a Zigbee, Z-Wave, or even a thread device, just make sure to also buy a hub to connect those devices too.
[07:40] All this some down in the description. And if you add more devices that use the same protocol, like if they all use Zigbee, then they connect together and form a large mesh network to reach further distances and be more reliable.
[07:52] There you go. Save yourself 50 grand. Oh, and one other thing, all these professional smart home companies talk about all the wiring that they would add into your house, and they kind of look down on mesh Wi-Fi.
[08:04] You could definitely still get by fine with mesh Wi-Fi, but adding extra ethernet throughout your house is only going to help. For this, I recommend hiring a low voltage electrician to do just the wiring, versus hiring
[08:16] a professional smart home company to do your whole system for you. That way you can save lots of money since they'll only do just the wiring. Now, I'm not going to break down every single argument for a professional system instead
[08:29] of DIY, because this video would be way too long, especially since some of the next points in the article are about how much more difficult it is to set up and maintain everything yourself.
[08:41] I mean, obviously it's going to be more difficult than paying someone to do it for you. But most smart home systems are really easy to set up and maintain, except for home assistant, which is getting easier but can still be time consuming.
[08:54] But whether you're using home assistant, Amazon, or really anything, you can learn it all here on YouTube. And I'm going to be doing a video on dashboards, which dashboards are usually a big selling point for some of these professional smart home systems, since anyone can use your smart home.
[09:10] But you can set that up yourself really easily. The amount of money you can save by doing it yourself is just crazy. And you know what? I don't mind being the smart home professional in our house to fix any problems that might
[09:23] come up. Thanks for watching. Whoa, I'm never going to financially recover from this.
[09:40] What are you talking about? Well now I'm going to have to get a $50,000 professional smart home system. So tinkering with home assistant doesn't have to be your full time job anymore? Uh, it's not my full time job.
[09:52] I work on our system for free.