Smart home

A smart home without renovation

Building a smart home needs no rewiring: most devices go into an existing socket or behind a switch and work with the light fixture you already own.

• Smart home devices — hubs and bridges, motion, door and temperature sensors, relays, smart plugs, curtain and blind drivers, smart buttons.
• Smart locks and doorbells — fingerprint and keypad locks plus video doorbells that show visitors on your phone.

ZigBee, Matter or Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi is simplest: connect to your network and you are done, though every device loads the router. ZigBee (Aqara, Philips Hue) needs a bridge but is faster and more reliable, and battery devices last longer. Matter is the new shared standard that brings devices from different brands into one app.

Where to start

A typical start is a hub, a couple of sensors and smart bulbs. That is enough for the first scenes: motion in the hallway at night turns on dim light, an open window switches off heating, the last person out turns everything off.

FAQ

Do devices work without internet? Local scenes on a ZigBee hub keep running when the internet drops; remote control from the phone does not.

Do all brands work together? Matter and Apple Home / Google Home support help, but check compatibility of the specific model before buying.