Investing in those first two or three home automation devices is an exciting experience. You get them set up and then sit back and relish what you can do with them. The best part is that your devices respond almost instantly. Whether you are tapping a button on a phone or speaking a command, the response is immediate. But how long does it last?
Adding additional devices to a smart home system will start taxing the system. Eventually, you will notice that certain devices are lagging when you try to control them. This lag, or slowing down, is known as ‘latency’. It is a direct result of network fatigue.
All Networks Are Limited
All networks are limited in terms of the amount of traffic they can handle efficiently. When traffic overwhelms capacity, everything slows down. And as latency (the slowing down) increases, devices can start glitching. This is exactly what happens when a local network is overwhelmed by home automation devices.
Modern home automation is heavily dependent on Wi-Fi. This creates inherent problems for homeowners attempting to build their own home automation systems while also using the same network for smartphones, laptops, streaming devices, gaming machines, and a whole host of IoT devices.
One way around this problem is to invest in a dual-band router. Use the higher band for devices like laptops and cell phones. Use the lower band for home automation devices. Creating a secondary network with its own unique SSID is also a good idea. The network can be for the home automation system exclusively.
It’s Architecture, Not Technical Specs
How-To Geek has a fantastic guide that breaks down the network fatigue issue in a way that most people understand. You might want to take a look. At any rate, they boil the problem down to something simple: its architecture, not technical specs.
In other words, modern smart home devices are technologically advanced enough that lag should never be a problem. When consumers experience significant latency, the problem is most likely related to the architecture of their networks.
How-To Geek’s guide offers several meaningful solutions to home automation lag. One of them is investing in a smart home hub rather than relying exclusively on Wi-Fi and a bunch of mobile apps. A hub acts as a centralized location for all supported devices. Hubs typically rely on local mesh networks to do what they do.
For fans of pre-packaged home automation, most of the leading providers include hubs in their systems. Vivint Home Security is a prime example. Their hub supports every device they sell. Likewise, consumers preferring to build their own systems from scratch have a good selection of hubs that can be purchased independently.
Pick an Ecosystem, Local First When Possible
Between the hub and the other suggestions How-To Geek offers, there are plenty of ways to address home automation lag. But perhaps the most important suggestion of all is to pick an ecosystem and stick with it. Working within a single ecosystem – whether proprietary or open source – eliminates many of the problems associated with piecemeal systems.
Choosing a local first ecosystem is the best move of all. A local first ecosystem doesn’t send signals to the cloud for command processing. All system commands are processed locally. Going local first eliminates the built-in lag that cloud computing is known for.
Home automation systems shouldn’t be laggy. There should not be any noticeable latency. If you have a system that isn’t working as quickly as it once did, take a look at your network architecture. Changing that architecture will most likely solve your problems.