A few weeks ago, I wrote about my foray into home automation, beginning with a wi-fi enabled deadbolt and lighting module from Schlage. It was cool, yes, but my major beef with the system is the $9 monthly charge to use the service from Schlage, even though its technology is part of the open Z-Wave alliance.
Z-Wave and Schlage told me they see where I'm coming from: Their products are more expensive than their low-tech equivalents, and they suggested I try out more components and build out my ecosystem before passing final judgment.
This time around, they sent me a Trane set-back thermostat, a Schlage wireless camera and a GE wireless lighting scene controller. The wireless camera was easy enough to set up -- though, like the other peripherals, it doesn't contain much documentation and requires the user to download and print PDFs online -- a small hoop to jump through, but combined with a clumsy set-up process that I found works only through Firefox and not Safari, it's just tricky enough to be an obstacle for the technically disinclined.
After some early restarts, the camera now works well, and I trained it on my back porch. It suffers from a lengthy delay and doesn't stream audio, but considering it's remotely pushing that much data over wi-fi or cellular signals to my iPhone or PC, it does an adequate job.
Installing the Trane thermostat was a different story. Though I've previously wired a set-back thermostat with perfect success, this one was more complicated, because instead of using batteries, it must be hard-wired to a 24-volt wire from the furnace. The directions weren't especially hard, but when I connected the blue wire on my furnace, it didn't power on -- instead, an acrid smoke smell began to emanate from my furnace, before it shut down, never to turn on again. I think I fried the power supply, but (obviously) I'm no electrician.
Granted, I expected my furnace to die soon, anyway, as it was pushing 27 years old. Still, dropping $4,500 the day before Thanksgiving to buy a new one wasn't a pleasant revelation. Fortunately, the Trane Z-Wave thermostat now works well with my new super-fancy two-stage high-efficiency Carrier furnace, though because of my wiring setup, the HVAC guys had to tell the thermostat to treat the furnace as a single-stage and let the Carrier's CPU handle the rest. Thank goodness for energy tax credits, right?
The final component I am testing out is a simple lighting scene controller from GE, which I mounted with double-sided tape to the side of a bookcase by my sofa. Once you begin hooking up several pieces to your home network, you can control them together or separately (for example, you can have the heat and the lights turn on when you open the deadbolt). This third-party controller works well, but because it's not from the same brand as the Schlage light module, it wasn't incredibly "plug-and-play," and the directions were a little complicated.
And that's my takeaway on all of this. I'm fairly tech-savvy, and I'm even willing to mess around with wiring at the expense sending my old furnace to its grave. But this stuff is expensive and complex, and rightly so. Now, though, the infrastructure is in place, and it's relatively cheap to add dimmer switches and the like into the rotation.
There's something super-cool about being able to warm up your house when you're 10 minutes from home, or to see what's happening on your porch outside while you're sleeping in bed. Or getting text messages when your deadbolt opens. Or just controlling all the lights in your house without getting off the couch.
Individually, it's a neat gimmick. All together, for that kind of safety and convenience, I think it's something I'm willing to pay for.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
