A personal testament to my experience with these technologies – don’t take it personal
I have read a lot of articles that talk about Smart Homes they often discuss Z-wave, Zigbee and Power Line Communication and the many devices available to the consumer. They have control valves and thermostats and pool lighting controllers and garage door openers and timers and just about everything you never cared about controlling available.
The articles usually laud the differences between these technologies, I won’t because they don’t work. I have worked with Z-wave, Zigbee and PLC in many projects and I can tell you in general its slow and prone to failure. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not talking about clinical trials here I’m talking about real life in home day-to-day, week to week, month to month problems.
I’ve had systems install flawlessly from go. I set it up program it and everything lights up. I’m happy. I’m actually surprised and super stoked I get to go home on time – this almost never happens. Annnndddd just as I’m about to do a full walk thru after cleaning up something just doesn’t quite catch on a command, one device is not responding in sequence or the volume suddenly seems like its touchy. I don’t immediately throw my hands up and rip it all out I assume it’s probably just a mistake or bad timing. But then it happens again and then something else that was flawless before suddenly crashes. I start to get that sick feeling that tells me I’m not going home and I’m going to be on the phone with tech support soon. I have had this happen so often that I generally get really suspicious when something works correctly.
I’ve tried. I’ve fought. I’ve cried. Everything has a cause and you should remember if they can’t tell you what the cause is it was probably their fault. This holds true with almost anything. When I’m on the phone with Tech support and they put me on hold and then come back saying here try that and it works I am elated. My next question of course is ‘What did I do Wrong?’ I want to learn ,I want to not have this problem again, I want to go home on time, please god why?
Now I won’t lie and say that I’ve never made a mistake – I do and often its stupid and I shouldn’t have done it – However when Tech support says ‘Oh No you didn’t do anything wrong it was a Glitch/Error/Fail in the Code/Process/Driver.’ I don’t feel vindicated. I feel frustrated that I wasted my time trouble shooting something I didn’t do wrong and had no way of correcting. I feel betrayed by the manufacturer that sold me a dream and I was left holding the bag. If I’m working on a system for a client I now how to explain to them that I didn’t sell them crap and it was just a glitch.
Unfortunately in my experience this glitch will return. Again and again. Eventually customers start to get annoyed, and rightly so, with a product that is faulty. This leads to mistrust of any of my products and in turn myself.
Business is about relationships, right? Relationships are about Trust, right? If I can’t trust my product, my clients can’t trust me. This is unacceptable. I refuse to use these products not because I didn’t get a free replacement or the Tech was not forth coming with the details. I refuse to use these products because I can’t trust them and with out my trust they don’t get my business.
Be careful when you are shopping for a Smart Home solution and don’t believe everything the guy selling it to you says. There are technologies that work and there are technologies that don’t. Don’t forget some dealers only deal with certain products not because they believe they are the best but because they are not allowed access to the best and if that’s the case you might want to ask yourself why.
