Home Tech Tips: How to Repair Your Smart Home Gadgets

In just a few years, the price of smart home devices has dropped into the affordable range for a lot of people. These devices can do everything. From controlling your lighting to controlling your garage door, and even your heating and cooling system.

With technology, particularly IoT gadgets you’re an ‘innovator’, or ‘early adopter‘ if you’re quick off the mark to get the latest product.

However, if you’re an early or late majority tech user, you’re less likely to be tech-minded and when things break you’re not sure what to do.

What happens when you run into problems with your system? Pay a costly fee to have someone come over and fix them? Thankfully, there are quite a few problems that you can fix with just a little patience and forethought!

Smart Home Gadget Conflicts

So many manufacturers make smart home gadgets that it can get tricky getting them to all play nice. Thermostats, security cameras, and other sensors don’t always connect, especially when made by different companies. While the easiest solution is to stick with one manufacturer, that’s not always possible.

The next best thing is to invest in a smart home hub. Smart home hubs are made to play nice with other manufacturers, that way, you only need to automate from one place and need only one app. Yep, even to program an opener for your garage.

Network Connection

One of the more common issues is problems with internet connectivity. If you don’t have Wi-Fi throughout your house, your smart home technology won’t work! You need to have every part of your home connected to the Wi-Fi.

The easiest way to do this is with a mesh network. A mesh network is made up of a router and several nodes that you put around your home to ensure complete coverage. These networks are robust enough to handle a gamer’s needs, so your smart home should be in good hands.

Right Place, Wrong Time

Trees in the wind and rambunctious cats can easily trigger a smart sensor or camera. When that happens, you’ll get a notification or email every time. If your cat has extra energy one night, this can get annoying.

The good thing about these sensors and cameras is the flexibility in their settings. You can program a “smart zone” where a sensor is dormant, or set up your cameras so that they only trigger when an unidentified human is in the frame.

Battery Drain

When using wireless smart home devices, they often drain their batteries faster than you’d like. Cameras are especially prone to this. What can you do to lengthen battery life?

The biggest thing you can do is make sure the device is within range of your wireless network. A device that is always looking for a network signal will go through its batteries faster. Most devices will also have some settings you can tweak or even turn off to help.

Smart Home Revolution

From cranky networks to battery hungry motion sensors, you can run into a few different problems with your smart home network. They can even feel like unsolvable challenges to controlling your home from one spot. Some of them, though, just take some time and patience.

Like this article? Take a look at the rest of our site for some great smart home content!