SmartHome Oakland

SmartHome Oakland We provide bespoke advice and solutions to help you get the SmartHome you want

11/29/2018

Nobody likes coming home to a dark and cold house, so don’t! Now you can have your hallway lights and more come on as soon as you open the garage door, or even as soon as you pull onto your driveway. How about your Sonos speakers playing a welcome home message or switching on your favorite radio station as you open the door?
Using your phone location to trigger lights, etc. is called GeoFencing and is rapidly becoming a standard feature in a modern smarthome. Systems such as the Philips Hue lights, Nest and Ecobee thermostats, and Lutron light switches all include some form of geofencing, with Lutron also able to control your Sonos speakers.
For more fine control we recommend installing door sensors that trigger actions using your smarthome hub or one of the many linking services now available (IFTTT, Stringify, etc.).
Coming home may never feel the same again!

09/25/2018

Online storage for video cameras, such as used by NEST, Ring and Arlo, makes installation and setup pretty easy, especially for when you want to view you footage away from the home, but it pretty easily swamp your home internet connection. Each camera, and that includes the smart new video doorbells, will look for about 2MB/s upload when they start recording, so with a few cameras working at the same time you’ll need more than the 5Mb/s that Comcast offer in this region for a trouble-free experience. If you have a system based on the newer NEST IQ cameras (that are great and super-smart) then you’ve another problem waiting for you - each camera can use 150 - 300GB of your monthly data, and the standard residential limit (if enforced) is 1000GB. With 3 or 4 cameras plus some Netflix binge watching you could be hit with extras fees….

So if you are thinking of a camera system with 3 or more cameras, and with a recording quality good enough to identify faces and licence plates, then we suggest you install your own DVR/NVR such as those make by Reolink, LTS, and Lorex. It takes a little more effort, but could save you a nasty surprise later.

07/03/2018

Your personal information and habits are valuable information, and more and more we’re seeing manufacturers apparently keeping their prices down by instead making money from your data. While everyone is aware of this for free services like Facebook or LinkedIn, we now also need to be smart about what data we want to share with Samsung, LG, your router manufacturer, and of course your security camera company.

The good news is that you can normally opt out of the most intrusive data sharing while not losing functionality (unlike some websites we all know about…), but it’s not always clear and straightforward as to how to do it. There have been some great articles written to help you, such as a recent one in the Washington Post by Geoffrey A Fowler, but this is a continually evolving challenge.

We recommend you try to ‘untick’ as many data-sharing options as you can, and only agree to those that you are sure will benefit you. Remember, both ‘to serve you more relevant adverts’ and ‘to help improve our services’ mean about the same thing when it comes to sharing your data!

07/03/2018

Your smarthome devices give you easy control and understanding of your home and what’s happening there, but you do need to take care of who can access these devices. We’ve all heard the warnings about russian hackers and the like, but a more immediate problem can be ex-roommates, ex-partners or even landlords. You need to take control and keep yourself safe from stalkers.

Take a good look around your home and write down all your internet connected devices, for example your wifi router, thermostat, cameras, lightbulbs, locks and garage door openers, and check that you know the login and passwords for them all. Then go through them one by one and make sure only people that you trust have access to them.

For any devices that you can’t check or control, we suggest you “factory reset” them and set them up again with you in control. If you have any difficulties doing this, then call the manufacturers helpline or call us and we’ll help you.

Smarthome security isn’t more difficult to manage than sets of keys – you just need to know who has copies and if necessary you change the locks…

06/18/2018

We have just installed Ecobee smart thermostats into older 2-wire heating systems, using a Honeywell R8845U as the interface. It works great! If you want a Nest or Ecobee type thermostat but thought your system isn't compatible then this is the solution.

05/23/2018

Almost every ‘classic’ wifi router suffers from 3 problems: it leaves wifi dead-spots inside your home; it’s hard to keep up to date against hackers; and it’s ugly. The startup Eero launched it’s 2nd gen mesh wifi system a year ago that gave a simple solution solving all 3; now all the big players are catching up, and Google has got in on the act too.
As well as providing an almost ‘fit-and-then-forget’ experience these new routers often come with simple app-based control panels so that everyone can take advantage of the advanced features such as parental controls, guest networks and VPNs.
It’s definitely time to stop renting your router from your ISP, and despite costing 2x to 3x the cost of a ‘normal’ router the new mesh systems are a clearly worth the money if you want a pain-free wifi experience.

05/23/2018

Every week brings new ideas and cheaper smart devices that you can easily install in your home, from lightbulbs to switches to thermostats, cookers, TVs, speakers, doorbells, alarms, locks, cameras… the list goes on. But there are some possible pitfalls that you ought to consider.
While nearly every device conforms to some common standards (wifi, bluetooth, Z-wave or Zigbee) we are also seeing more and more pay-for-service business models, at all price points. So it’s becoming increasingly important to have a longer-term plan for your smart home, otherwise you’ll end up with a patchwork of apps and connectivity and an increasingly frustrating experience.
Competition in smart home devices is intense, and not all companies will survive. Neither will all products. We all know the frustration of being left behind in the upgrade cycle, or of companies dropping support for products we own, and we should be prepared for when this happens. The great news is that with the steadily dropping prices it can now make sense to buy now with a plan to replace/upgrade in 2, 3 or 4 years time.
So we think there’s never been a better time to start to turn your dream of a truly smart home into reality, and to be able to do it one step at a time if you wish. We think the key is to think big (even if it’s not yet possible then it soon will be) and work back from there.

Address

6047 Snake Road
Oakland, CA
94611

Telephone

+15103459339

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