My Family Complained About Our Smart Home Technology… Until We Lost It

Have you ever heard the saying, “You never know how much you miss something until it’s gone?” Well, last month it hit my family unexpectedly.

I am still in the process of moving and my “new” home requires quite a bit of renovation before I can finalize the move. Because of this, many of the things my family and I used in our previous home are not or cannot be set up yet because we do not have the space for them or they are in storage and unavailable.

The things we didn’t know we’d miss until we lost them are unexpected. Well, not for me, but for the rest of my family. They’re our smart home devices. After spending the better part of the last eight years installing automation, lights, plugs, vacuums, sensors, and more, losing 90% of them — at least temporarily — has hit my family harder than we could have imagined.

I miss my smart home, even if it was far from perfect

I’ll say this right up front: While nothing is perfect, getting close to it in a DIY smart home takes effort. That makes the process daunting at times and a little frustrating when you finally get started. Even for me, who tests and writes about smart homes professionally.

However, when everything is working as intended, a smart home can alleviate unexpected stress and anxiety. Being able to call up my Amazon Echo to add an item to a shopping list, set a reminder, timer, or perform another helpful task helps me and my family know that everything is going to be taken care of. Then, being able to look at my Echo Show 15 to visually see our shopping list, calendar, reminders, and more is a very useful feature.

Aside from the ability to summon help from Alexa to better organize our lives, lighting is the second most overlooked smart home customization. Dimming lights without having to rewire, turning them on automatically at different times of day, dimming the hallway in the middle of the night when motion is detected are all conveniences we miss.

But that’s the point, right? At least for the most part, a smart home is about convenience. So, all things considered, not all parts of my smart home are overlooked. Mainly the ones that seemed to malfunction more often than others. Aside from lights or plugs that randomly stopped working, the biggest pain point is Google Assistant, which likely won’t be fixed until Gemini takes over or is more tightly integrated with Google Assistant.

So, if there’s so much inconsistency and frustration, why would I do it? The even bigger question is, why would my family miss it? It’s because, honestly, things worked more often than not, except for my Google smart speakers. When things worked as instructed and just worked, my smart home really improved our daily lives.

Perhaps the device we missed the most was our Amazon Alexa speakers, primarily the Echo Show 15 because of its large screen, which allowed us to quickly see what we needed and was a source of entertainment while cooking. We use Alexa for a few reasons, and not just because it works more consistently than Google Assistant.

The Alexa app is user-friendly, allowing you to customize what you see in the app and put what you want in the places you can find it. For example, I can add any device, group, or list to my home page for quick access. There’s an activity feed of recently completed tasks. Oh, and the ability to sort and search through the list of connected devices. But these are just a few of the parts of the Alexa app that help me make my smart home a little more efficient.

We also felt the lack of our smart lights, sensors, and plugs. These three items are related because plugs were used for some lights that I didn’t want to buy a specialist bulb for. But I like that the lights turn on automatically during the day when I enter a dark room or at night when I come home late from a game, because the sensor is set to turn on when the light intensity is below a certain point. They’re also great for times when your hands are full or you just don’t want to get up to turn the lights on or off.

I’m ready to welcome technology back into my home

Another smart device I rely on for convenience and peace of mind is my smart door lock. I got so used to not carrying my house keys that when I had to carry them again, I ended up locking myself out of the house more often than I would like to admit. As of this writing, I’ve installed a new Anker eufy C33 smart lockwhich solved that problem, although outdoor lighting and security cameras still need to be added.

I plan on connecting more of my home to the network in the coming weeks, assuming I find the time, and that will include everything I previously set up, along with a few new devices. It will take some time to set everything up again, but I’ll definitely remind my family what it’s like not having our smart home devices the next time someone complains.