It seems like almost everything within the home is now employing smart technology. The internet and connectivity have enabled a new wave of technology designed to make everything easier. The ability to connect to almost everything through your home keeps your home life great. Smart TVs let you access apps and the internet from anywhere. Smart thermostats save money by keeping your heating and cooling bills down. Smart appliances make cooking easier and more consistent.
One of the main issues with the smart home is that sometimes they can run off of different connectivity options. While some may use Wi-Fi, others use Zigbee, Z-Wave of Bluetooth. The answer to all of these is a smart home hub. The smart home hub works to seamlessly integrate the many aspects of a smart home. This brings the ability to use all devices into one simple app. Smart home hubs allow people to set up rules and triggers to ensure that their smart devices are performing at peak efficiency exactly as desired.
Smart Home Hub Integration
A few of the options for smart homes was mentioned earlier, but the smart technology has expanded to security and lights, locks and many more things. What’s impressive is that this is only the start. Smart home tech is only going to continue to expand to other parts of the home. It’s kind of interesting how close people’s homes are to reaching some of the sci-fi images from movies and television over the last thirty years.
A smart home hub will typically run between $50 to $300. When going for just a hub, the price will likely only cost below $100. Extra prices come when looking at items which have other functions like speakers or visual displays as well.
Finding the right hub will depend on the devices being purchased for the home. Many hubs need to be compatible with either alexa or google home. This is because these work as verbal operating systems. While some items will crossover, others don’t and it’s tedious to find out there’s one item in a home that won’t be integrated and work well.
Smart home hubs are the key for items which don’t run on Wifi. The low power usage for items that use Zigbee, Z-Wave or other communication systems mean they don’t have to recharge the batteries. It also means that they need something to help coordinate them. Otherwise, they can’t really be controlled by a smartphone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can smart home hubs work with everything?
A: Not every hub is set to work with each connectivity option. Wifi and Bluetooth are the most common, but more and more are integrating Zigbee and Z-Wave.
Q: Do I need a smart hub?
A: Not all home devices will actually require a smart home hub. Many items come prebuilt with a Wifi bridge. This means they can be connected directly to the internet via wifi and be monitored through a smart phone app.
Q: Are Alexa, Siri and Google Home smart hubs?
A: These devices tend to work as a sort of simple smart hub. Consider them as smart assistants. They can’t access items which lack a wifi bridge, but do a great job controlling most devices which can already connect to Wifi. Google Home in particular is trying to expand what can be connected to it as well.
Q: Is there a best smart home hub?
A: The best hub can depend on what a person needs. There are many good hubs out there for purchase including the Samsung Smartthings V3, The Amazon echo dot and the Hubitat Elevation.
