DIY Home Automation with Nexia

As some of you may know, I am a big home automation buff.  I love dabbling in DIY home automation and finding ways to make things easier around the house.  Do these scenarios sound familiar to you?

• Don’t you just hate it when you go into your son’s or daughter’s room only to find they are not there, but their lights are all on?

• How about when you leave the house at night and as you back away from your house you see 2-3 lights on scattered throughout the house?  It’s too late to run in and turn them off, but on the other hand, you know you’re wasting electricity…and your hard earned dollars.

• Are there times when you’re lying in bed too freezing to get up and turn up the thermostat? 

• Or how about when you come through your garage door with arms loaded full of groceries while you fumble with the light switch?

• Are you worried about whether your packages will be on your doorstep when you get home?  Or whether your child made it home safely after school?

All of these scenarios are perfect case stories for the need for automation.  In the old days, if you wanted this type of automation, it would set you back at least $20,000.  But thanks to the advent of apps and low frequency wireless protocols, it’s now easier and cheaper than ever to implement your own system…piece by piece…and at your own pace.

DIY Home Automation Choices

There are three popular protocols or languages that can be used in your house to have your devices talk to one another.  They are:

1. WiFi
2. Z-Wave
3. Zigbee

Home automation light switches, door locks, room sensors, thermostats, and more have one or more of these protocols built into them, though typically a product is exclusive to one protocol or another.

Years ago, the protocol I choose and implemented in my house is Z-Wave, due to their sound strategic direction, large quantity of suppliers, and my sense that they are better oriented towards consumers than Zigbee is.

I created my own home automation completely DIY, but when I did run into problems, I would need to find forums where members could help me address them.  I also found the software to be a little complex to do the robust things I had planned for my house.

NEXIA

Nexia solves these problems of finding help and keeping the app simple.  I recently installed the NEXIA Home Intelligence system in my home  to test it out for myself.

NEXIA is more geared towards consumers and has their own line of compatible Z-wave devices, but they are also compatible with any Z-Wave device, which is good in my case since I already had installed Z-Wave light switches in my home.

Throughout the year, I will be writing  a series of DIY home automation articles on WellConnectedMom and theWellConnectedHome.com, where I will go over the steps of how to set up DIY home automation in your home using the NEXIA Home Intelligence system.  I’ll show you which products I recommend, how I set them up, and how I control them.

I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to get started right away with some simple DIY home automation.  The key is to start small, see how you like it and it won’t take long before you begin dreaming up other ways in which automating tasks in your home can make your life easier.

What do you think about DIY home automation?  Are you curious to give it a try?