Let’s be clear about one thing here: no technology is perfect. Ever. If you hear someone rave about AI or their smart home on some other brilliant, cutting-edge electronic gadget without telling y0u what’s wrong with it…run. Chances are pretty good that whoever is giving this glowing review of ___________ is being paid by that company to do so.

If you want to build a smart home that’s even remotely resembling reliable, then you need a backup plan. At least one.

Ideally, your smart home should “just work”. It should do what you want it to do with minimal effort on your part. However, no one — and no thing — can read your mind (yet). You do have to make it clear how you want things to happen in your house.

In the “old days”, that meant setting rules for your spouse and kids to follow.

Nowadays? Okay, it might still mean setting some up some rules for your family members. But it also means setting rules for your smart lights, your thermostat, your vacuum…

The technical term for setting rules for your electronic devices? Programming.

Congratulations. You’re officially a nerd.

The good news, though, is that the nerds who came before you have made smart home programming relatively easy.

The 3 Layered Approach to a Great Smart Home

THE IDEAL — Using sensors (and conditions) to trigger automations

The easiest way to trigger any smart home automation is time. Having your outside lights go on at sunset and having your curtains open every day at 6am? No problem! Once you understand how to set the rules for your smart home equipment, scheduling time-based routines will take you all of 30 seconds per routine.

But…what if you don’t have a specific time that you want something to happen? What if, say, you want the lights to come on every time you walk in to your (windowless) bathroom? Or when you open the door to your pantry?

It can be done — but you need to invest in sensors. Think of them as an earth-scaled version of those “sensors” you hear about in science fiction movies or shows like Star Trek.

The most common types of sensors are:

• Contact sensors — Contact sensors are the simplest sensors to understand and to work with (for the most part). A contact sensor has two parts. When the parts are separated from each other, the sensor reads open. When the parts are together, the sensor reads closed. They are most commonly used to let you know if a door or a window is open or closed. If you’ve seen 2-piece sensors sold as a part of a DIY security system, those are most likely contact sensors.
• Motion sensors — Most of you are probably familiar with how a motion sensor works. You move in front of a motion sensor and something happens: maybe a light goes on, maybe a camera turns on and starts recording…you get the idea. Using a motion sensor as a trigger allow you to pick the device(s) that you want to automate when motion is detected.
• Presence sensors — Presence sensors were developed to solve a problem that typically comes with using motion detectors to trigger automations: say you use a motion sensor to turn on the lights in your living room when you enter the room. If you, then, go curl up on the couch to watch TV — and the motion sensor no longer detects motion in the room — then those lights might turn off when you didn’t want them to. A presence sensor detects your presence in the room…whether you’re moving or not. NOTE: This is the one category of sensors where it’s important to buy a higher quality (and probably more expensive) sensor. “Cheap” presence sensors are closer to low-quality motion sensors. Higher quality sensors use radar. In this case, you will most definitely get what you pay for.
• light, temperature, humidity, etc. — Imagine having the exhaust fan in your bathroom turn on automatically if the humidity is high. Or the fans go on automatically if the temperature in the house reaches a point that you think is uncomfortable. Or having the lights go on automatically if it’s “too dark”. There are sensors out there that detect light levels, temperature, humidity, pressure, vibrations, water leaks…the possibilities aren’t quite endless yet, but there are a lot of ways to gather information from different areas of your house.

First backup: your voice assistant

If you really need to go to the bathroom and your presence sensor doesn’t do its job when you run into the bathroom in a hurry, then you might be able to get to the light switch the “old fashioned” way. But if you can’t? Best to train “Alexa” (or program the voice assistant of your choice) to help you out in advance.

Important note: Integrating multiple systems will cause devices to be recognized different ways by different systems. That can lead to a system attempting to recognize the same device multiple times. Amazon Alexa is particularly susceptible to this problem. If you connect Alexa to SmartThings and Home Assistant and each brand of smart home equipment that you’re working with, be sure that each device is only seen by Alexa once. (I tend to have Alexa recognize devices by brand skill first, then SmartThings, then Home Assistant. The fewer “middle programs” to cause you potential problems, the better.)

Second backup: Apps

In general, you’re going to need to set up your devices in their respective apps first anyway because the major automation systems (Alexa, Apple HomeKit, etc.) won’t recognize your devices unless they are set up and registered in each app. Each app will also handle firmware updates for the devices — which will be what keeps your devices up to date and (hopefully) reliable.

However, what I’m talking about here is setting up your devices in both Alexa and Apple HomeKit whenever possible. Why? While Amazon’s Echo devices are the most commonly used voice assistants on the market, the most common smartphone…is the iPhone. And at the moment, the interface of Amazon’s Alexa app…well, it sucks. Trying to coordinate your devices using the Alexa app is an unwieldly mess even at the best of times. Apple HomeKit’s interface is much easier to work with — and if you have an Apple TV, you can control your devices from the remote-controlled comfort of your couch.

Amazon has promised a major upgrade to the smart home interface in its next upgrade of the Fire TV stick — but until that happens, I strongly recommend setting up your devices in HomeKit if at all possible.

Last Resort: Manual Switches

I hate to tell you this — but even in a smart home there is a chance that the only way to get a light to turn on will be to flip the switch and turn it on manually. Wifi networks fail. Modems fail. Apps fail. And — as the expression goes — if you try to call customer/technical service and ask for help with those systems fail, the first thing that they’re going to ask you is, “Did you try to turn it off and turn it back on again?”

I have seen smart home content creators who have disconnected the light switches in their house because their spouse kept turning lights of manually “out of habit”. This is a huge mistake that could lead to you sitting in the dark with a spouse who’s furious that you were the one that got them into this mess. Don’t make that mistake. Make sure that you always leave the manual option available to you if at all possible.