Ok. So I have been to some houses that had some "smart home" tech installed in there by professionals. for example, some A/V systems, these houses are huge, and installed for not cheep at all. but it seems that their house is by far not even close to the smart home that mine is. simple HE hub, tons of switches, bulbs, garage openers, Temp sensors, motion sensors etc.
these all seem simple to me. no problems, and with some fussing I got it working.. BUT what about in 5 years.. how much will keep working.
the other issue question, what do I do if I sell my house. I am not going to tell anyone how I set this thing up.. heck even after a few months, I forgot how i did some of it.
what made bring this all up was this video Designing the brain of the Home of the Future with Grant Imahara - YouTube I mean, this comes with a $30/month cost (not a lot really) and that included tech support and 2 visits. but will they say "hey, your stuff is now old, you need to upgrade" and will that cost a lot..
i am rambeling. but i like to see what we all think .
Take it with you. I don’t think that smart devices currently add anything to a home’s resale value. It’s like a stereo system. You probably leave the in-wall/ceiling speakers (or replace with cheap ones) because they are part of the structure, but you take the equipment.
Yeah my stuff is going with me if I ever move. Although the one time I almost sold last year a realtor asked if the stuff could stay, I said sure the price of the house just went up $1500 and he said ok with me. I didn't sell however
I have always taken my stuff with me. The new owners will never operate the system in the same way you designed it for your personal use. I remember a real estate broker saying, don't modernize the kitchens or bathrooms the new owners will build them out to their own tastes.
My wife is a real estate broker, retired but still keeping her license active for one-off transactions. She was telling me that, in the US, real estate listing forms now require disclosure of smarthome devices and an owner transition plan. Personally, I'd convert the switches back to dumb ones and remove water valves, hot water circulators, etc.
tech getting old, becoming kind of useless and unsupporable.
Like X10?
I started out with HE & zwave but switched to zigbee after about 3 months (and $300 of zwave devices). There were several reasons, but zigbee seemed to me to be the one most likely to age well due --mostly because Amazon had chosen it as their Alexa-compatible platform.
I'd say wired contact and motion sensors have some value to me if I'm buying a house, knowing I can connect to those and integrate with my system. But otherwise, I agree take it all with you.
Just for that situation, or in the event of my death (turn 70 in less than 2 weeks), all of the cloud accounts and the Hubitat hub, etc, are registered in the house’s name, not mine, not my personal email, and I’ve got an updated file documenting the setup, DHCP lease reservations, etc.
I’ve also been fortunate enough to locate a very knowledgeable Hubitat user in our city, and I’ve put his contact info (with his permission) in that file so that she could contact him if I die, to help her with the transfer to new buyer.
wowa.. thats heavy. I just assume that most of the hardware/devices are just reset. and start-a-new. what I did for my automations (like if I get home in my car or motorcyles depends on what garage auto opens) are not going to be useful to many people.
I'd argue that with HE and your devices being local, you easily have a 4-8year window where your biggest reasons to upgrade would be;
Individual Sensor failures
New Hub/Changes needed for new devices
As for re-locating. I personally plan to leave my cameras, door locks, in-wall smart switches, as they would provide value to the new owners, and work even when not in a "smart" mode.
The rest would be more of an opportunity if I were to leave more of the contact sensors, etc, and remove all rules, etc, if I were to keep the hub for them.
More than anything as a way to justify buying all new things for myself in the new place and get rid of the mistakes I made
Totally agree on this. I left almost all my gears there when I sold my place and it was an excellent choice. They they were nice devices but all z-wave and not plus. Not to mention the wow factor during open house.
It was a good excuse for me to start fresh with all Lutron switches, Phillips bulbs and all Zigbee sensors. I still have some z-wave but darn! Should have left them back there
Interesting. What bulbs were you using before? I'm on Sengled given they don't repeat and am happy, but always looking for what's 'better' out there for anything.
I have Zwave Plus everywhere at least 30 switches, 6 cameras, and some outlets. I also have Vista hidden wireless contact sensors on all doors and windows. It's one thing to pull a hub.
No way would I pull all that stuff and pay for dumb switches for a move. I am a bit nervous about the big guys invoking a standard that would make my Zwave stuff obsolete.
