My Smart Home After 5 Years: What I'd Do Differently

Five years ago this month, I plugged in my first smart plug — a TP-Link Kasa Mini — and told Alexa to turn on the living room lamp. It worked, and I was hooked. Since then I have spent an embarrassing amount of money and time building out a smart home with over 80 devices across three protocols, two hubs, and one patient spouse. Looking back, I have learned more from the things that went wrong than from the things that worked. If I could start over today with everything I know, here is what I would do differently.

I Would Start with the Network, Not the Gadgets

My first two years of smart home building were plagued by connectivity issues that I blamed on the devices. Smart plugs dropping offline. Cameras buffering. Automations failing randomly. I replaced devices, tried different brands, posted on forums. Eventually I realized the problem was my ancient Netgear router struggling under the load of 30+ connected devices. The day I installed a mesh WiFi system, 90% of my reliability issues vanished overnight.

If I started over, the very first purchase would be a proper mesh router system. Before a single smart bulb, before a single smart plug. Get the network right first and everything else becomes dramatically easier.

I Would Pick One Hub and Commit

Over five years, I have used Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, and Home Assistant. At one point I was running three of these simultaneously, with different devices on different platforms and increasingly complex bridges trying to make them talk to each other. It was a mess.

Today I run Home Assistant as my primary platform and Apple Home as a secondary interface (because my family prefers Siri over voice commands to a custom dashboard). If I were starting over, I would go straight to Home Assistant from day one and skip the years of platform hopping. Home Assistant supports essentially every protocol and device, runs locally without cloud dependencies, and gives you the most control over automations. The learning curve is steeper than Alexa or Google Home, but the payoff in reliability and flexibility is enormous.

For someone who does not want to tinker, SmartThings is the best mainstream hub in 2024. It supports Zigbee, Z-Wave, Thread, Matter, and WiFi devices in a single hub with a genuinely good app. I would not recommend building a smart home primarily around Alexa or Google Home anymore — they are great voice interfaces but mediocre automation platforms.

I Would Buy Fewer, Better Devices

My early buying strategy was "cheapest device that works." That led to a collection of budget smart plugs, no-name Zigbee sensors, and clearance-rack cameras that technically functioned but were unreliable, clunky, or abandoned by their manufacturers within a year or two. The Tuya-based plugs that cost $8 each? Half of them are now paperweights because the cloud service they depended on changed its API. The cheap Wyze Cam v2s I bought four of? The company's security breach and subsequent firmware issues made me lose trust in them.

If I started over, I would spend more on each device and buy fewer total. Two high-quality security cameras beat four mediocre ones. One reliable smart switch per room is better than three smart plugs daisy-chained together. Quality devices from companies with track records of long-term support — Lutron, Ecobee, Aqara, Eve — cost more upfront but save money and frustration over a five-year lifespan.

I Would Prioritize Local Control From Day One

Cloud-dependent smart home devices have a shelf life determined by the company that runs the cloud, not by the hardware itself. When the Wink hub went behind a paywall, when Insteon's servers shut down overnight, when Chamberlain locked out third-party integrations for their MyQ garage door openers — in each case, perfectly functional hardware became useless or degraded because a company made a business decision.

Every new device I buy now, I ask one question: does it work locally, without an internet connection? Zigbee and Z-Wave devices connected to Home Assistant work locally by definition. Thread and Matter devices work locally. WiFi devices that have a local API (like Shelly plugs) work locally. Cloud-only devices are a last resort, purchased with the understanding that they have an expiration date I cannot control.

I Would Automate Less and Automate Better

I went through a phase where I tried to automate everything. Lights that turned on based on motion in every room. Music that played automatically when I got home. The coffee maker starting when my morning alarm went off. Blinds opening at sunrise. It sounded amazing in theory and was actively annoying in practice.

The motion-triggered lights in the living room drove my wife crazy because they would turn off during a movie if we sat still for too long. The music automation played to an empty house when my phone's GPS glitched and thought I had arrived home. The coffee maker started on a Saturday morning when I had forgotten to fill it with water the night before. The blinds opened at 5:30 AM in June, waking us up.

The automations that have survived five years are the boring, invisible ones. Lights turn on at sunset and off at bedtime. The thermostat adjusts when we leave and come home. The front porch light turns on when someone approaches the door after dark. A leak sensor alerts me if there is water under the washing machine. These automations run silently in the background, never surprise anyone, and genuinely improve daily life. I deleted every "clever" automation that tried to anticipate behavior. The good automations are the ones nobody notices.

What I Got Right

To end on a positive note: the smart home is genuinely better than the dumb home. Even with all my mistakes, I would not go back. The convenience of voice-controlling lights, the security of knowing my doors are locked and my cameras are watching, the energy savings from an automated thermostat, the peace of mind from leak and smoke sensors that alert my phone — these are real improvements to daily life. The mistakes were in the execution, not the concept. Five years from now, I expect I will have a new list of things I would do differently. That is part of the hobby.