But those additional controls introduce complexity, and understanding how they work will help you build a better smarthome.
And with smarthomes, it’s all about the radios and brains.
But that radio doesn’t give your bulbs, plugs, and doorbell any intelligence.
It’s there for communication.
And even in cases where it is, like Bluetooth, that’s always the end of the story.
Almost all your smart devices communicate with an intermediary, the brains of your smarthome if you will.
Without that process, voice assistantsdon’t understand a word you say.
The truth is, nearly all (if not all) your smart gadgets work similarly.
Before your smart doorbell video reaches your phone, it travels through the doorbell manufacturer’s servers.
Zigbee / Z-wave
That hub then communicates with your Hue bulbs to turn them off.
Think of the servers or hubs (and sometimes both) as the brains of your smarthome.
That’s where the intelligence is.
Josh Hendrickson / How-To Geek
And those servers and hubs enable extra abilities beyond on and off.
They provide routines, facial recognition, automations, voice control, and more.
But the thing to keep in mind is that your smarthome may have more than one set of brains.
But you may still need to involve other company servers and hubs for interaction between all your devices.
is essential because smarthomes work best when everything works together.
Thankfully, rig manufacturers understand this and usually venture to work with as many different services as possible.
But just importantly, you want to pay attention to how they interact.
Each additional ‘brain’ in the chain introduces points of failure and chances of lag.
Along the way, the cloud and hub will see the data and decide what to do with it.
Those extra trips introduce lag.
Yourhub may stop working, or the service you use (like Nest) may cut off access entirely.
And yoursmarthome might breakbecause of it.
Sometimes the best solution means stepping outside your current mix.
