Outside of vehicles, I’ve always been super interested in technology. A big part of this house is the increased connectivity that I wanted to bring to it.
I’ve always had Nest thermostats and smoke detectors and plan to install some smoke detectors here soon. Unfortunately, we have electric heat, which means every room is a separate zone, which means we have 12(!) thermostats. One in every room, bathroom and a couple closets.
One of my favorite parts of the house is that every room has a hard wired data connection via a dedicated Ethernet port. A big plus if you game/work from home.
Our home has a data centre in the garage with the ability for 4 phone lines and for each room in the home hardwired to our modem. This is great for gaming/home offices because I can have a wired internet connection anywhere in the home.
I have a mesh wifi system to link everything together that isn’t hard wired with points in 3 of the rooms.
In terms of connected products, I try to balance privacy with convenience. I am a strong believer in good old steel vs plastic connected to the internet. No smart locks, just good ol’ deadbolts. No interior cameras and nothing that can change the operation of my life if compromised or leak too much personal data.
We have some more rooms to set up and a few more connected devices to put into place, but the home is really coming together. It is cool to be at a point where so many systems/ecosystems can be controlled from a central app like Google Home.
I get a strange comfort from being able to monitor and control things from the road/office given I have such strange hours.
That being said, who needs wifi in a washer/dryer?? It wasn’t a selling point for me, but if you got it, use it I guess.
