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Too many platforms, too many choices...

Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Tuya, Home-A-Genius, etc. these are the platforms that you've probably heard of when you are looking to do up a smart home ecosystem.

Google Home & Amazon Alexa works on pretty much the same basics - software developers build services/skills to allow their applications to link up to Google Home & Amazon Alexa. To allow these services/skills on their platform, massive tests were done to ensure usability of services/skills.

Tuya platform pretty much allows for any distributor who've paid for the microchip to link up to their platform; disallowing integration with other ecosystems, unless linking up with Google Home/Amazon Alexa.

Let's skip the boring parts here and move on to more important topics. As we all know Smart home platforms comes in 2 different forms: Cloud-based and Local Area Network (LAN). Simple, one runs on cloud (requires internet) one runs on your local network (don't need internet). Google Home/Amazon Alexa and Tuya are all cloud-based.

Getting a System Integrator vs DIY

The role of system integrators (SI) involves being a consultant during the smart home setup, pre-setup and also after the setup is completed. While the role of SI may sound simple, it involves a full suite of services from developing the solution, building and R&D on new solutions, communicating with the ID/electrician, setting up the system, training users on how to use the system and lastly, off-site and on-site maintainence of the system. As you can see the scope of work of an SI is pretty hefty, hence you can never be able to justify the pricetag against a smart home system that is built via DIY.

DIY solutions are readily available in the market, with suppliers providing solutions online. While it may look as easy on the e-commerce paltform, IoT solutions are not as simple as it seems.

Do you know that Wi-Fi connected devices consume more electricity than Zigbee devices even though there is no need for an additional hub?

While the solution may seem more afforable at the start, the running cost to maintain the system will cost more overtime. Information as such will not be displayed on the e-commerce platform, hence it is up to the client's knowledge to decide on the device.

Single Application - A promise from a System Integrator

The difficulty of the IoT ecosystem now is being able to sync all of the various devices together. Usually, consumers would have 1 application for their security cameras, another application for their doorbell, another application for their lights, and so on. The confusion always starts when users do not know which application to use. i.e. the app provided by the system integrator or the Google Home app.

The backstory to this is that once you hop onto Google Home, or an alternative secondary app that allows for full integration, the promises on the application on the system integrator (Local Area Connection, single app control) would be nullified. Use of multiple applications will also contribute to confusion, leading to bad user experience.

Being able to link up to a device/application is not easy - various API linkages are required. Massive programming +maintenance works required along the way. Building an application to link up to various devices is not as simple as it looks. On top of that, users have to use that application on a daily basis. The app has to be lightweight, secure and also user friendly at the same time.

Single Rules Engine - Single Maintainence work

An all-in-one application promises one thing. Easy maintainence. What it means is that you need not use multiple applications just to setup rules.

Example: Switches belong to a proprietary application (App P). App P is unable to link up with other smart appliances proivded in Singapore. e.g. Dyson fan, Sonos sound system and LG/Sony/Android TV. The only way to link up these devices in your living room is via Google Home.

What does this mean to a user?

Multiple Rule engine used, resulting in multiple rooms/scene setup. More complex debugging if needed.

• Firstly, you need to link the devices in App P, group them in an dummy room e.g. Resting Room. Note you cannot use the same name in Google Home as this will confuse the system.
• Next, you will need to sync the rooms and scenes to Google Home App.
• Link smart appliances (Dyson, Sonos sound system and LG/Sony/Android TV) to Google Home App, and setup another new room in Google Home App. This time you can use the correct room name "Living Room" as this will be the actual name used in your Google Command.
• Thereafter, you will need to add the devices into Living Room. Your Living Room is setup!
• That is not all, the above steps only allow you to use the voice command. To use the Siri Widgets, you will need to create shortcuts in the shortcuts app.

Notice the number of rules engines used in this scenario and the number of times the user needs to setup a room. Much less to mention if the additional device needs to be added after your SI has left the house. Maintainence will be a nightmare.

In Home-A-Genius, we have a single rule engine, single admin page and a single action of setting up the rules will sync up with all downstream user interfaces: Smarter switch, Home-A-Genius Widget and the Google Home app. Furthermore, this eliminates the need to use dummy room names hence lesser confusion just to reference the rooms/scenes in-between applications.

Leave it to us!

Home-A-Genius specializes in developing smart home platform and also comes with a strong team that assist with your smart home setup. Leave the work to us while you enjoy the movie mode!

Humans have always been fascinated with coming up with new ways to make tasks easier. Even our hunter-gatherer ancestors, says Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman, were "as likely as 21st century Americans to instinctually avoid unnecessary exertion."

From motion sensor lights to air con timers, we've invented a host of gadgets and gizmos to help automate our lives since. In particular, many devices have been created with our haven of peace and rest in mind - the home.

It might seem like the term "smart home" has been thrown around for a long time now. That's because it has. The means to allow two or more things to communicate wirelessly - protocols like the Z-Wave and Zigbee - has existed for more than a decade.

In other words, the capability to control your locks and light switches remotely has been around for a while.

Of course, in the early 2000s, you could only do this via a dedicated remote control. It was only in 2011 did Nest introduce WiFi into their first product, the Learning Thermostat.

Due to factors such as prohibitive pricing and inaccessible technology, having your own smart home has probably always been a pipe dream - until now. Here's why 2018 is the perfect year for you to get into smart home automation in Singapore.
 

Automating menial tasks at home might come across as frivolous.

Yes, having the aircon in my bedroom switch on automatically when it gets a bit warm is pretty cool (pun intended). But if all I have to do is spend a minute to stand up, walk into my bedroom, and press a button on the remote control to do the same, is it really worth spending good money on that? Why not save it up instead?

The answer lies in two words: decision fatigue.

Everyday, we face an incredible amount of decisions that need to be made.

Some are more important, such as whether you should fire an underperforming employee or not.

Other decisions might seem less impactful, but require equally lengthy consideration.

Take lunch, for example. You’ll start off with whether you should eat more fried food or vegetables at lunch today. Which leads to the question of which hawker center or restaurant you should patronize. Which leads you down the rabbit hole that is Yelp, Burpple, or your favorite food blogs.

On Burpple alone, there are 57 food categories to choose from. There goes half an hour of pre-lunch work productivity.

On a daily basis, we make a large number of seemingly “routine” decisions, which are actually not routine at all.

All of these add up to decision fatigue: “the more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts,” according to The New York Times.

The result? We end up making bad decisions, or none at all - which could be catastrophic if we happened to be in such a state when facing an important but tough call to make.

This is the reason why people who need to make big decisions constantly - such as CEOs and presidents - wear the same thing everyday.

“I’m trying to pare down decisions,” former US president Barack Obama tells Vanity Fair. “I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

The solution? Automate as many so-called menial decisions as possible. And that starts at home.
 

To those who are not well-acquainted with this industry, technology always seems to be expensive - even when it is not - because everything appears to be futuristic and shiny.

The fact is, however, that the more technology advances, the cheaper it actually gets.

Take the personal computer, for example. In 1971, the first ever PC debuted at an inflation adjusted price of over $4000. And let’s not talk about Hewlett-Packard’s first attempt to produce a business computer, which had a stunning price tag of $95,000 (inflation adjusted price: $541,209).

Even in the last two years, the cost of smart home automation devices and parts have halved (in some cases, even more), according to Home-A-Genius.

How did this happen? We have China to thank for that. Chinese tech companies such as Xiaomi, with a huge advantage on the production front, have leapt ahead of the US and rapidly produced high-quality, low-priced goods at scale.'

In other words, you can now get Chinese smart home automation devices and parts in Singapore that are as good, or even better, than their US counterparts. At a price point that makes sense for the everyday consumer.

Don’t believe me? Here are some examples we have gathered:

Earlier in this article, we talked about the Z-Wave protocol, which basically allows you to add any device in your home to your network and control it remotely. This can be achieved simply by plugging the relevant Z-Wave module into your devices of choice, which can then be controlled with a Z-Wave controller.

While Z-Wave smart home products are very popular in the market, they’re notoriously hard to purchase in Singapore - typically, you’d need to ship them in from the US or Europe.

Additionally, the Z-Wave protocol works in different frequencies for different countries. In other words, Z-Wave products purchased in the US won’t work in Singapore.

Once again, China has offered us a better way to get past these difficulties.

For one, we can now get our smart home products and devices directly from manufacturers in China. Xiaomi, for instance, shipped over 10 million smart home products globally in the past three years. MiJia smart switches and smart sensors, for instance, are very highly rated.

Shenzhen-based VStarcam has also set the standard for wireless IP cameras locally. TP-Link, which also hails from Shenzhen, offers a cheap but superior Smart Plug alternative.

Furthermore, Xiaomi smart home devices are also generally compatible with Zigbee, another well-known protocol. Zigbee’s advantage over Z-Wave is that it is is a standardised protocol, which makes it far easier to implement, especially in this part of the world.

Similarly, the popular Amazon Echo - a smart home voice controller - is huge in the US, but don’t ship directly to Singapore. Google, however, has recently set up an online store in Singapore, giving locals access to their newly launched voice controller, the Google Home.

All that said and done, setting up a smart home system in your home can seem like a daunting task.

A major issue is technological fragmentation - that is, when each of your devices, while able to communicate with each other, require separate remote controls and mobile apps to operate.

Another is the sheer amount of options available for hub devices, protocols, software ecosystems, and so on. For the average user, it can be overwhelming.

The good news is, these issues can be easily overcome by having a smart home hub.
 

A smart hub allows all your devices to operate on the save wavelength, and gives you centralized control over your entire smart home automation system.

Rather than having to manage different apps and remote controls for your devices, you’d be able to access everything through a single hub.

For instance, if you’ve opted to use Mi Home and Philips Hue devices, you can get access to both lines of devices simply by connecting the Mi Home Gateway and Philips Hue Bridge to our Home-A-Genius hub.

From then on, you can control them via the smart home hub directly.

Another advantage of using a smart home hub is the ability to group devices in a room or environment together. For example, if you have a lamp, fan, and speaker from different ecosystems in your living room, you can group and control them as a “room” unit.

A good smart home hub also includes connectivity across different wireless standards, regardless of whether you’re using Z-Wave or Zigbee, so you don’t need to worry about compatibility.

Here’s how our Home-A-Genius Hub looks like:
 

This is the fun part! Here’s where you consider which devices you want to automate, and find the relevant smart plugs and switches that will accomplish that for you.

For instance, if you want to fit out all your lightings with Philips Hue devices, you’d need to first get the Philips Hue bridge. If not, you might want to consider getting TP-Link Smart Plugs to connect your “dumb” light fixtures.

Either way, a good smart home hub would allow you one-stop connectivity all of these devices - regardless of the ecosystem they belong to. Home-A-Genius takes it up a notch by operating through local network connections, which allows the system to receive triggers and send signals to the respective devices faster.

You can go one step further and get a voice controller - such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home - which would allow you to deliver commands from anywhere in the house.
 

The best part? Once set up, smart home automation systems tend to be relatively low maintenance. Apart from updating device and hub software, there’s really not much else to be done.

An exception would be sensors and IP cameras, which require changing of batteries once every three years and three months respectively. Even then, it’s a small price to pay compared to the alternative of running wires to power these devices. Sure, you might go through some trial and error at the beginning, but once these systems are optimized, you’ll reap great benefits from it.
 

Clearly, many factors have aligned to make smart home automation a much friendlier and affordable option in 2018. If you’re looking to dive into it, we’re here to help. Let’s explore how we can help you save time and money together!