How to Start Building Your Smart Home – A Zero-Experience Guide

I have been hoping to be like Iron Man that could control all my home applicants by myself at any places e.g. voice controlling the lighting, air conditioning and music playing. And now you may realize there are several brands offering smart home  related products e.g. Apple /  Google / Samsung / Aqara/ Philips/  Xiaomi etc.

This time let me share with you the products I am using with the reasons of choosing them and how could they apply in my daily life. Then, we will dig deeper to talk about a more advanced setting e.g. how to setup Home Assistant etc.

And now there are too many brands launching different smart home products e.g. light bud, electronic socket, smart speaker, robot window binds, smart vacuum cleaner, body sensor. But since there will be difference in price and compatibility, you may need to think twice before purchase.

Platform

First of all, let me briefly talk about the 3 most common smart home platforms, including Apple Homekit / Google Home / Samsung SmartThings.

Apple Homekit of course is able to offer and support a wider range of products which are produced for the ecosystem of Apple at higher price. Together with the use of HomePod / Siri, the whole set of smart home system can support Cantonese voice inputting. But for sure it can be perfectly managed by only matching with iOS/Mac products, which makes it difficult to be adapt on other brands.

Google Home is another common platform with quite a lot of supporting products. But since we cannot buy authorized products in Hong Kong, we cannot update to the most up-to-date version right after Google. And it may not be a good choice if you want to control the home applicant by Cantonese voice inputting, while it is still workable using iPhone or Android.

Samsung SmartThings may not be familiar with some of you, but its compatibility still worth mentioning because Samsung itself have launched many home applicants and partnering with different other brands. So the offerings are at wide range which also support iPhone and Android version.

By the way, Mi Smart Home by Xiaomi are prevalent in Asia, which is relatively an economic option.  They have its own user platform with a more variety of product choice. It is also compatible with Apple Homekit and Google Home.  But since the compatibility may have a little bit different between authorized product and parallel-imported product, you have to be more aware during purchase and setup.

Product

Entering to the part of smart home, maybe we can start from the most simple product first. Let's start from a lamp of light~

When you are sitting in front of the desk to start a day of work, have you wondered if you can turn on the light automatically ? First you need to add a smart light bud to adjust different color hue and tone. By doing so, it can facilitate yourself to work more consciously. And you can switch to different color tone to match your personal need e.g. when you are using the computer or reading book.

And there is another more convenient setting, which is to setup a Hub to control the existing home applicants that is not compatible with smart home system. For example, when you are still on the way back to home, you can use your mobile phone to adjust the room temperature of the air conditioning in advanced. Or when you are ready to leave your work place, you can voice controlling to turn off all the electronic applicants. It should be a good news to all busy bee!

This time I have shared with you some simple concepts of Smart Home, and two applications that I usually use. In the coming future, let me dig deeper to talk about different settings and how to mix and match with different products.