New smart home solutions supporting independence – and some of their hidden costs.

At first glance, Smart home products appear to be quite a low cost.  However, it is worthwhile to consider all the costs involved before getting into a specific system.  Some of these costs are not always obvious at the beginning.   Some examples are given below relating to smart home technologies.

Smart hub

A smart home hub is a hardware device that connects all of your smart home devices together. With a hub, you’ll be able to control your smart lights, thermostat and other smart home devices using one app. Most smart home hubs allow you to schedule when equipment automatically turns on or off using a mobile device.

There are a growing number of hubs to choose from, ranging from free open source solutions based on a Raspberry Pi  to commercial products such as Samsung Smartthings hub.   Each has its advantages and disadvantages.  The final cost may not always be apparent until you have set up all your smart home devices.

HomeSeer is a relatively low-cost smart hub starting at €120.  It has many advantages as it features locally managed automation for reliability, security & privacy and its compatible with many smart home products & cloud services.

However, if you want to connect a smart home product to the hub there is an extra third party charge for its plugin.  For example, if you want to connect WeMo sockets you will require a WeMo plugin costing €29, or Philips hue plugin at €32.  Expanding your smart home could work out to be more expensive than planned.

 

Subscriptions on Doorbells and cameras

Other common smart home products are video doorbells as they can bring both convenience and security to your home by streaming a live view of the doorstep to your smartphone, whether you are on the other side of the door or the other side of the world.

If you are not going to be at home all the time you may need to invest in cloud storage if you need to look back on who was at the door when you were not at home.  For example, Ring doorbell provides the option of recording your doorbells camera for up to 30 days of video history.  Rings cloud storage cost $10/month or $100/year.  Other security cameras suppliers also have similar cloud storage options.

Batteries

Other costs include batteries which are in many smart home products such as door locks, and sensors (proximity, temperature, contact).  These replaceable batteries will build up over the year.

Setup and maintenance time

One of the biggest cost and probably the most underestimated cost is the time you put into setting up and maintaining your smart home equipment. Depending on the setup cost will be from a few hundred euro to ten thousand.

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