What I learnt after building a smart home from scratch for my BTO flat

What was once a pipe dream reserved for a distant cyberpunkian future is now absolutely real — everyone can live in a smart home now. It is the year 2020 after all.
 
With all the tech available in the market these days, modern homeowners no longer need to do a lot of work (nor spend a fortune) to get an automated abode up and running with smart hardware to make their lives easier.
 
Connected homes aren’t exactly new concepts either in highly-connected Singapore. Analysts believe that the government’s ambitious smart nation drive has actually rubbed off on its citizens, making smart home systems actually appealing across all age groups. Who wouldn’t want to control all parts of their home with voice control?
 
Personally, I know for a fact that it’s definitely not easy to set up a connected home. Growing up on a steady exposure of sci-fi apartments in Back to the Future and Blade Runner didn’t prepare me for a ton of sweat and tears spilt trying to get all the various internet-connected plugs, lightbulbs and speakers to sync together.

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But thanks to at least a hundred hours of perusing internet forums and basic trial-and-error, I think I’ve pretty much made my BTO flat a whole lot smarter. Now, I can speak to the deliveryman at my front door when I’m away (thanks, smart doorbell!) and my house knows what time in the evening it should switch on my living room lamp (thanks, smart lights!). 

All those hours spent perspiring under cabinets and frustratingly looking into hacks for foreign smart plugs could have been saved though. Daikin — yes, the air-conditioning brand — has roamed beyond just cooling solutions and planted its flag in the realm of building smart homes for residential homeowners.

No sweat

What they’ve come up with is something called D’SmartHome, which promises to offer an integrated, all-in-one solution to control your house devices from a single app or even via voice control. So that means letting you monitor and manage connected appliances like your home’s air-conditioning units (Daikin ones, of course), security systems, door locks and lighting even when you’re not physically inside the house.

Well, you could always rig everything up DIY-style if you’ve got the patience to manoeuvre through a cascade of multiple apps to control the different janky devices you sourced on your own. If you’ve got the smarts though, you could probably just let Daikin handle the hard work through a one-stop solution with trusted smart home products from trusted brands. 

Like me, you could always start off with something small — my first achievement when I moved into the flat simply consisted of a Google Home Mini speaker and a voice-activated dining table lamp that I could dim or even change colour for some mood lighting. The D’SmartHome can be as big or as small as you want, Daikin assures — an expandable, scalable system that is fully compatible with devices and services from established brands in the market. 

The single interface

What I learned about trying to rig all my appliances under my Google Home app is that not everything works with Google. Thanks to a mishmash of various gizmos bought from different brands, I’ve got an entire folder on my phone dedicated to storing at least nine apps controlling nine separate things, which can be quite a chore to navigate when you need to turn a specific device off. 
 
The D’SmartHome App, however, dispels all the trouble of syncing everything together because they would be linked to a single Daikin Smart Hub. Let’s say it’s movie night — turning down the air-con temperature, dimming the living room lights and shutting the blinds can be done on a single app. This might sound geeky, but the fun part is when you’re arranging custom scene settings on the app.

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One futuristic example is the Home Scene. Imagine, if you will, that you’ve just returned home from work and you’re standing at your front door. A tap of a button on the D’SmartHome app disengages the digital lock, switches on the air-conditioner, lights up your living room, and draws the window curtains apart. Welcome to the modern home. 

Let’s say you’re living with your young kids and elderly parents under one roof. It suddenly rains in the middle of the night and it’s getting a bit too chilly with the air-con on. Instead of fumbling in the darkness for the remote control, any family member can just voice out to Google Assistant that it’s too cold and the temperature would be turned up appropriately. Someone wants to visit the bathroom (on account of it being cold and all)? Motion sensors would trigger the bathroom lights on so neither child nor elderly parent runs the risk of hurting themselves in the dark. 

Of course, there’s the issue of keeping your home safe and secure for your family too, for which a connected D’SmartHome fully accommodates. Smart smoke detectors can trigger an alarm on your phone so you can take immediate action after remotely checking via security cameras what’s happening. Smart sensors on doors and windows can detect an unexpected intrusion, which can automatically trigger an alarm upon sensing motion. 

Daikin’s interface also has the added benefit of giving users insights into their connected home’s energy consumption. What this means is that users can analyse the patterns of their electrical usage and adjust their habits to lower their monthly bills. Trust me, it would come in handy when your spouse is the type who would fall asleep with the TV on during Netflix binge sessions.

Daikin Proshops

Think of authorised Daikin Proshops as their equivalent of Apple’s Genius Bars — these are places to get reliable information and consultation from certified experts.
 
Located at seven spots across the country, Daikin Proshops let customers speak with professionals and get advice on the right solutions for their home, customisable according to their needs. If you just want smarter home security around the house, they could provide suggestions on what could be installed, be it a Schlage smart lock for the front door or a D-Link IP camera with an inbuilt motion detector that could monitor a large area, even in the dark. 

The thing about smart systems though is that there’s an unending stream of new technologies cropping up once in a while, which would be a bother for you to keep track. With convenience comes endless feature updates for better hardware security, and for people who aren’t actually working in the tech industry (or a gadget geek like me) it can be a nightmare of cables, plugs and inter-device connectivity.
 
But that’s where the Daikin Proshops come in. With support from Daikin’s D’SmartHome specialist, the Daikin Proshops are where customers can get referrals and face-to-face clarifications over how it all works. 

It wouldn’t hurt as well to sign up as a Daikin Proshop Member, which offers referral rewards, exclusive promotions for D’SmartHome packages and free extended warranty for selected products.

After years of building an internet-connected residence, I have to admit that there are bound to be hiccups when you go DIY. Some of the things made by companies rushing to jump on the smart-home revolution would be disappointingly awful, so you’d have to get used to diving deep into research or buying new gizmos from overseas stores — which is an issue when it comes to warranty support. 

Nobody told me that living in a sci-fi setting contains tints of digital dystopia, but with Daikin’s D’SmartHome, being future-forward is easy.

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Visit our website to find out more about D’SmartHome.
Get in touch with Daikin here for any enquiries, contact a Daikin Proshop or visit our Facebook page today.
Visit Daikin’s E-Proshop to start building your dream smart home online. 

This article is brought to you in partnership with Daikin.