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Eight years have passed since my last post about my smart home journey.

I moved to a new house late last year and had a chance to redo my smart home setup from scratch. Many things have changed in the smart home scene, with more options and cheaper accessories.

I will share how my past experiences and lifestyle shape my smart home choices.

Apple HomeKit is the center of my smart home system, and most of my smart home accessories are from Aqara.

Virtual Assistants
There are three major virtual assistants in the market.

• Apple Siri: Controls smart home accessories in Apple HomeKit
• Google Assistant: Controls smart home accessories in Google Home
• Amazon Alexa: Control smart home accessories in Alexa Smart Home

Some examples of smart speakers with virtual assistants include the Apple HomePod, Google Home Mini, and Amazon Echo Dot.

One of my previous mistakes was setting up the smart home accessories across all three smart home systems because I wanted any virtual assistant to control them.

Maintaining the accessories across all systems is definitely challenging. Duplicating the setup thrice whenever new accessories are added is simply not sustainable.

Since my wife and I are primarily iOS users, it makes sense to use Apple Siri as our primary virtual assistant and Apple HomeKit as my primary smart home system for our house.

You will only need to remember one command: “Hey Siri …”, “Okay Google …” or “Alexa …” and not all three.

Apple Siri is exclusive to Apple devices. Suppose you and your spouse are on different mobile operating systems, you can choose a virtual assistant from Google or Amazon, as their apps are available on iOS and Android. I will lean towards Google since you can easily get their smart speakers in Singapore.

Z-Wave Or Zigbee
Z-Wave and Zigbee are wireless communication protocols used primarily in smart home accessories to communicate with a hub.

Another mistake was going with Z-Wave instead of Zigbee. Z-Wave devices are very expensive as it is a proprietary system on a chip (SoC).

An example of Z-Wave accessories is the wall switches. An MCO Touch Panel 1 Gang (Z-Wave) costs S$130, while an Aqara Smart Wall Switch H1 1-Gang (Zigbee) only costs S$55. I could save more than 50% if I had used Zigbee. Hence, I only buy Zigbee devices after which.

Thread is the upcoming protocol in the market, and it is a competitor to Zigbee. Thread has strong backing from major tech companies, making it a forward-looking choice, especially with the adoption of Matter. Smart home accessories with Thread are still slightly more expensive than Zigbee. Performance-wise, they are indifferent. Thus, I stick with Zigbee as it continues to be seen as a reliable and mature option due to its extensive ecosystem support.

Manufacturer-independent Smart Home Platform
Manufacturer-independent smart home platforms are smart home platforms that allow smart home accessories from different manufacturers to connect.

Typically, each manufacturer will have a platform for its smart home accessories. You may need four platforms if you have smart home accessories from four different manufacturers.

Manufacturer-independent smart home platforms like Homey and Home Assistant (HA) aim to solve this by having smart home accessories from different manufacturers connect to them via their plugins. These plugins are sometimes written by themselves but mostly are from developer contributions.

The popularity of such platforms allows you to have a centralized place to manage all your smart home accessories regardless of manufacturers and the ability to create complex automation with them.

These platforms will then expose smart home accessories to your smart home system, Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa Smart Home.

My first manufacturer-independent smart home platform is the Fibaro Home Center Lite. The whole web user interface (UI) is extremely laggy, and it became frustrating to use after a year that I decided it was enough and I swapped it with Homey.

One of my mistakes is assuming these platforms can easily connect smart home accessories from different manufacturers.

From my experience with Z-wave on Homey, it is easy to connect the accessories when they are slightly dated and locally controlled (don’t talk to the Internet directly), as it takes time for the developer to update the plugin to cater to the latest smart home accessory released by the manufacturer. Remember, the developers are doing this for free.

Smart home accessories that talk directly to the manufacturer’s cloud like the Sonoff T2UK Wi-Fi Smart Wall Switch will not work inside Homey.

Homey is less well-known than HA because you can find the Sonoff plugin on HA.

As a workaround, I have to use Homebridge. Homebridge allows you to integrate with smart home accessories that do not natively support Apple HomeKit. I chose Homebridge because of the ease of setup and usage.

Since Apple HomeKit can now see my accessories from both Homey and Homebridge platforms, it makes sense to use it for my automation.

That is why I ended up with Apple HomeKit as the center of my smart home system, which has multiple bridges connected, and I used the same method for my new house.

Aqara
Aqara is one of Singapore’s most popular smart home accessories brands, and most of its accessories are on Zigbee.

For my new house, I picked all my smart home accessories from Aqara, including the hub, as it fulfills my four requirements: they must work with Apple Homekit, reliable, cheap, and readily available.

I will elaborate more in another post.

Conclusion
Everyone has a different comfort level when it comes to meddling with smart home platforms.

I am at the stage where I want my smart home to work with the least possible effort. Set up once, and I can forget about it.

With the Aqara Hub, I can pair all its accessories to the hub. These accessories will automatically appear in the Apple Homekit.

For those devices that don’t support Apple Homekit, there is still Homebridge, which is less complex than HA to manage.

I have an HA installation on the side to play around. It is still too overwhelming and complex for my liking.

My decision may change someday. For now, I am happy to use Apple Homekit (with multiple bridges connected), and the Apple Home app to control those smart home accessories.

There is no right or wrong, only what works best for you.