Your easy & secure smart home on a budget

In the world of smart homes there are currently two options: expensive easy walled-garden option or cheap risky option. What if there would be a cheap, easy and secure option?

the expensive easy walled-garden option

Pay tens if not hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros for something that costs below ten but now is "smart" and has a mobile app. Think about a doorbell, smoke alarm, thermostat, lightbulb, light switch, an electric socket,... If the famous brand is successful then a data privacy problem arrises. If the product is not successful, then you are stuck with an insecure or even worse not working "smart device". Smart devices from brand A mostly do not work with their revival from brand B.

the cheap risky option

Pay below or around ten per device to have a bluetooth, Zigbee or WiFi enabled "smart" device BUT download a bad quality mobile app, use an untrusted cloud service, have issues connecting the device to the famous "smart" brands,... Forget about easy and secure.

the cheap, easy and secure option

What if you could buy the cheap sensors: doorbell, lightbulb, scale, motion sensor, leak sensor, camera,... but you do not connect them to the big bad Internet or any untrusted cloud or phone app. Instead you download a mobile Smart Flow app on your phone which connects with your smart Wifi router and allows to pair the smart device to the router. No data ever leaves your home network if you do not allow it. No device is ever exposed on the Internet so hackers cannot get to it.

In the Smart Flow app you can now see your device and all its triggers and actions. A light bulb has one action to switch the light on or off. A light switch has one trigger: button pushed. You now make a flow that if your switch gets pushed [trigger], your light gets turned on/off [action].

Actions however can also contain more logic, e.g. if it is dark outside do this, if not do that. This would allow a motion sensor that gets triggered, to switch on multiple lights, only if it is dark outside.

Once you have defined your flows, they are pushed to your WiFi router and now your home is smart. None of your sensors ever speaks to the outside world so no data is leaked or any device exposed to hackers. Your smart wifi router has a small annual subscription, e.g. like ten a year, to make sure that a software team automatically makes updates and keeps your router secure. Without a continuous flow of money, a device manufacturer will not have an incentive to support more smart devices and keep your wifi router up to date.

If this smart WiFi router is similar in price to other medium to premium routers, would you buy into this cheap, easy and secure smart home option? If you would press like. If you would not, comment why. If you want to give a clear signal that you are interested in getting this solution, share this post.

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