‍We often have visions of the Jetsons or sci-fi movies when we use the phrase "smart home". And while our houses can't yet wait on us hand and foot, we do have hundreds if not thounsands of smart devices made for your smart home. Smart home devices started off not too long ago with a handful of what you might consider typical devices such as lightbulbs, light switches, or outlets. Now we have smart ovens, smart thermostats, smart refrigerators, smart vacuums, smart blinds, smart speakers, and more! The problem that has come from this boom of smart devices is that there has not been a uniform standard to connect the devices, a uniform ecosystem to control and use the devices, and very little consideration to security.

Our customer owns a home and wants to customize that home to have automations that help them be more productive and just have a little fun. But since there is such a diverse set of devices and standards, we provided some help.

We started by seeing what ecosystems the customer already used. They have Apple products such as iPhones and MacBooks and an Apple TV. This makes it easier to choose the ecosystem. Smart devices might be make to work with Amazon products, google, or Apple, or all of the above. In this case we are looking for devices that work with HomeKit. Next we asked what the customer was looking for. Unfortunately, simplicity was not on our side by default since the customer wanted devices that had no offering with HomeKit integration. This leaves the option of using HomeKit with another 3rd party app for the incompatible devices, scrap HomeKit as an ecosystem and use another one, or use all 3rd party apps. We provided a 4th option. We decided to use an open source integration platform that has a wide range of compatibility that allows integration into HomeKit. But it can also be a platform to use alone.

But that lead us into the next set of considerations. What means of connection are we using for each device to connect to the internet or hub? Since the customer had only a wireless router to work with, our options were fairly limited to wi-fi devices. With this in mind, we decided to go with a split integration between HomeKit and the open source hub. The benefit was that the customer would just have to use the home app on their iPhone and the lightweight hub would be connecting and integrating the HomeKit incompatible devices. Once we got the devices connected over wi-fi, we created automations that the customer wanted.

The last consideration we would normally talk about is security. Unfortunately, there were hardware limitations that prevented a robust defense in depth approach in this network. Why would we need a robust approach to smart devices? Well as devices are rushed to market at competitive prices, there are many cases where there are vulnerabilities in the software that allows hackers to gain access to devices like security cameras. This is unsettling and potentially dangerous if criminals are able to use your cameras to look for financial information, hack the rest of your network, or interact with your children as has happened in many cases. So how would we secure it? There are many ways to secure the network. Isolating smart devices via access control lists can be done to only allow communication to a smart hub. Some wireless access points support this feature and can be done with no other hardware. You can also buy a switch to accomplish this. We can also set up a firewall or firewall rule to prevent incoming communication to network devices. Firewalls are built into some routers or can be purchased separately. In the end, it depends on what you have and what your budget is on how to secure your smart home.

If you need help with any of these considerations or want to add some IQ points to your home, set up a consultation with us and we will work with you to make a plan.