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What equipment do you need for a smart home?

Smart sock­ets

Don’t wor­ry about for­get­ting to turn off your appli­ance

Smart calls

Want to know who’s at the door? Choose a smart call and keep an eye on the sit­u­a­tion even in your absence

Elec­tron­ic home man­age­ment sys­tems have firm­ly entered our lives. They make life eas­i­er for their own­ers: they help to pro­gram the nec­es­sary func­tions in advance or remote­ly con­trol them. With the help of “smart home” sys­tems, you can con­trol street and indoor light­ing: it will turn on and off accord­ing to a planned sched­ule or in case of insuf­fi­cient light­ing. You can also con­trol water sup­ply, room tem­per­a­ture, con­trol house­hold appli­ances and much more.

In addi­tion, such sys­tems make it pos­si­ble to make an apart­ment or house safe: to warn of an ille­gal intru­sion by an alarm, turn­ing on the light and siren, as well as a mes­sage on the smart­phone of the own­er of the home. You can also pro­tect your­self from risks dur­ing vaca­tions or busi­ness trips: spe­cial sen­sors report flood­ing, gas leaks, smoke and oth­er dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. Also, in most cas­es, video sur­veil­lance and con­nec­tion to the pri­vate secu­ri­ty con­sole are pro­vid­ed.

Which of the smart home sys­tems offered by man­u­fac­tur­ers can be con­sid­ered the best on the mar­ket in 2022? By what para­me­ters should you choose it and what to look for?

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Editor’s Choice

“High Pro”

This is a com­pact device that plugs into a 220V out­let and oper­ates on its own radio fre­quen­cy (868 MHz) with­out an inter­net con­nec­tion. The case has a con­trol but­ton, two indi­ca­tor LEDs and two con­nec­tors (RJ-45 and USB). Sys­tem set­up and adding devices is done using the HiTE PRO appli­ca­tion. Among the pos­si­bil­i­ties are: con­trol of light­ing, dri­ves (open­ing and clos­ing cur­tains, blinds), con­trol by sen­sors (move­ment, tem­per­a­ture, humid­i­ty, water leak­age, open­ing doors and win­dows) and cre­at­ing sce­nar­ios.

The smart home oper­ates in five ecosys­tems: Apple Home­K­it, Google Home, HiTE PRO, Tuya Smart and Yan­dex Smart Home. Also, the sys­tem can be con­trolled using voice assis­tants: Google Assis­tant, Yandex.Alisa, Siri, Marusya. The kit includes: the “brain” of a smart device, one relay to con­trol the light, a wire­less switch, door and water sen­sors.

Accord­ing to cus­tomer reviews, some­times sys­tem fail­ures occur and com­mu­ni­ca­tion is lost between the con­trol unit and the relay. Also, users note that soft­ware updates are rarely released.

Main characteristics

Ecosys­tem	Apple Home­K­it, Google Home, HiTE PRO, Tuya Smart, Yan­dex Smart Home
Equip­ment	wire­less switch, open­ing sen­sor, leak­age sen­sor
Device con­nec­tion type	wire­less, wired
Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Pro­to­col	oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy ranges 868 MHz
Food	220 V
Oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range	-30 to +50 ℃
Con­nec­tion inter­face	RJ-45, USB, WiFi

Pros and cons

Sim­ple oper­a­tion, sup­port for pop­u­lar voice assis­tants, wide range of fea­tures

Fre­quent crash­es in the sys­tem and loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, soft­ware updates are rarely released

Rating of the top 3 best smart home systems for an apartment

1. AJAX StarterKit black

The com­plex con­sists of a cen­tral hub (the “brain” of the sys­tem) and two sen­sors: move­ment and door open­ing. This is enough to con­trol the room. To acti­vate the work of AJAX, it is enough to turn on the device in the net­work and con­nect it to the Inter­net.

The device works through an appli­ca­tion — it is installed on any sys­tem, be it Android or iOS, after installing which the own­er will be able to receive noti­fi­ca­tions on his smart­phone when sen­sors are trig­gered, in the form of a push mes­sage.

The sen­sors includ­ed in the kit are high­ly sen­si­tive — the oper­a­tion will occur lit­er­al­ly from the first step of a per­son in the room. Cam­era view­ing angle — up to 135°.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Motion sen­sors

Pro­vide effec­tive pro­tec­tion for your home

2. Rostelecom Advanced Security

The sys­tem is designed to ensure safe­ty and com­fort in your home. Man­age­ment is car­ried out using a PC, tablet or smart­phone through a per­son­al account or a spe­cial appli­ca­tion (“Video Sur­veil­lance and Smart Home Ro”). The kit comes with an extend­ed set of sen­sors: open­ing doors and win­dows, move­ment, tem­per­a­ture and light, smoke and leak­age, as well as a con­troller that is need­ed to con­trol and con­fig­ure devices using the Z‑Wave com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col.

Through the appli­ca­tion, you can cre­ate action sce­nar­ios — devices and sen­sors will exe­cute all com­mands accord­ing to the spec­i­fied set­tings. Accord­ing to cus­tomer reviews, the sys­tem takes a long time to load and con­nects new devices. Users also note lengthy respons­es from tech­ni­cal sup­port.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

3. “Stop Trouble Basic”

The sys­tem is focused on safe­ty in the apart­ment and pre­vents unpleas­ant con­se­quences not only for you, but also for your neigh­bors. “Stop Trou­ble” can detect gas leaks, water leaks, smoke and fire, as well as the intru­sion of thieves. The sys­tem is installed sim­ply and quick­ly, with­out the need to resort to the help of spe­cial­ists.

The device mon­i­tors not only the integri­ty and per­for­mance of all its sen­sors, but also the posi­tion of clos­ing taps, and also con­ducts pre­ven­tive open­ing and clos­ing to get rid of limescale. It is con­trolled using the STOP-BEDA appli­ca­tion and the remote con­trol. It works in the Yan­dex smart home ecosys­tem and has voice con­trol through Yandex.Alice.

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Sup­ports con­nec­tion of up to 30 sen­sors of dif­fer­ent types and an unlim­it­ed num­ber of wired water leak­age con­trollers. Accord­ing to user reviews, there are no sen­sor clamps in the kit (you need to pur­chase sep­a­rate­ly), and they also note the com­plex appli­ca­tion inter­face.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Rating of the top 3 best smart home systems for a private home

1. PS-Link PS-1203 “Protection”

This kit includes three Wi-Fi devices: a motion sen­sor, a door/window sen­sor and a smart siren. The PS-Link Okhrana-1203 sys­tem will auto­mat­i­cal­ly noti­fy the own­er of the house about the inci­dent — a push mes­sage will be sent to his smart­phone. The trig­ger­ing fre­quen­cy can be set to 2 or 4 min­utes.

Acti­va­tion occurs when the door is opened or when mov­ing. The alarm can turn on the lights or start the siren. The sen­sors includ­ed in the sys­tem can be used as “inde­pen­dent” devices or in com­bi­na­tion with oth­er “smart home” devices.

This mod­el is avail­able in sev­er­al con­fig­u­ra­tions, which dif­fer in the num­ber of sen­sors and addi­tion­al func­tions. So, the PS-1201 pack­age has two sen­sors, and the sys­tem appli­ca­tion saves the entire his­to­ry of events. The PS-1204 also comes with a smart cam­era that pro­vides video sur­veil­lance via a smart­phone app.

In addi­tion, it is able to dis­tin­guish mov­ing objects in the com­plete absence of light­ing at a dis­tance of up to 8 meters and record sound through the built-in micro­phone. This mod­i­fi­ca­tion can also be sup­ple­ment­ed with a smart siren (it must be pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly) — then the own­er of the house will be able to con­trol the tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty lev­els in the room.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Ring Alarm Home Security System

The secu­ri­ty sys­tem works thanks to the open­ing (doors, win­dows) and motion sen­sors includ­ed in the kit. You can con­trol the devices with the key­board con­troller (includ­ed) or through the Ring app on your smart­phone and tablet. The sys­tem is also com­pat­i­ble with Ama­zon Alexa. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the sta­tion is pro­vid­ed using Z‑Wave tech­nol­o­gy, which is char­ac­ter­ized by eco­nom­i­cal pow­er con­sump­tion.

Addi­tion­al fea­tures include the abil­i­ty to con­nect third-par­ty devices, such as glass break sen­sors, smoke and car­bon monox­ide detec­tors. Of the minus­es: some users not­ed prob­lems dur­ing the first set­up, as well as an unsta­ble Wi-Fi con­nec­tion.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

3. VKU “Max”

A set for a pri­vate house with wide func­tion­al­i­ty. With it, you can auto­mate the oper­a­tion of var­i­ous sys­tems: heat­ing, secu­ri­ty, irri­ga­tion of the site, con­trol of smart appli­ances and light­ing. The set includes 11 ele­ments, includ­ing sev­er­al sen­sors, a smart sock­et and a secu­ri­ty cam­era. Installed smoke and leak con­trollers will help pre­vent a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion and, if a prob­lem is detect­ed, they will noti­fy you about it. The sys­tems oper­ate on the Zig­bee pro­to­col (a wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion stan­dard cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly for the smart home), which min­i­mizes the use of Wi-Fi data.

Wired con­nec­tiv­i­ty is not avail­able on this sys­tem. The smart home is con­trolled using the VKU mobile appli­ca­tion, where you can make all the nec­es­sary set­tings, as well as cre­ate action sce­nar­ios. VKon­nek­tU smart sock­ets and relays sup­port Alice voice assis­tant.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Rating of the top 3 best smart home systems with Alice

1.ELX-Device

This is a full-fledged high-lev­el wired “smart home”. The man­u­fac­tur­er focus­es on the qual­i­ty of its prod­uct and claims that, com­pared to wire­less sys­tems, its sys­tem is more reli­able and “seri­ous” (how­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble to con­nect wire­less sen­sors from a third-par­ty com­pa­ny). It has easy instal­la­tion and wide func­tion­al­i­ty.

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Thanks to ELX-Device, you can: dim (dim) light­ing, con­trol under­floor heat­ing (up to 11 zones), cur­tains and blinds, install a secu­ri­ty sys­tem (fire alarm, leak­age con­troller), main­tain cli­mate con­trol (humid­i­ty and tem­per­a­ture sen­sors), and also cre­ate scripts.

The man­u­fac­tur­er pro­vid­ed a min­i­mum set of sen­sors (5 pcs.) in the kit, since he believes that it is nec­es­sary to select them indi­vid­u­al­ly for each house (the sys­tem itself sup­ports up to 40 dif­fer­ent types). It works in the Yan­dex ecosys­tem and is con­trolled using the Alice voice assis­tant.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Livicom Livi Smart Home

An afford­able and mul­ti­func­tion­al sys­tem to ensure the safe­ty and com­fort of your home. The kit comes with a con­troller that com­bines sen­sors (motion, water leak­age, smoke, tem­per­a­ture) and “smart” devices into a sin­gle struc­ture. Thus, you can con­trol var­i­ous devices, light­ing, cli­mate, pre­vent emer­gency sit­u­a­tions (fire, flood) and ensure a high-qual­i­ty secu­ri­ty sys­tem.

Bat­tery oper­a­tion is pro­vid­ed in case of an unfore­seen sit­u­a­tion (up to 15 hours). Note that there are paid func­tions, for exam­ple, to view the mate­r­i­al of sur­veil­lance cam­eras, you need a sub­scrip­tion to the Ivideon ser­vice (from 150 rubles / month). The smart home is con­trolled using Alice and Marusya, as well as through the Livi­com appli­ca­tion (there is no remote con­trol).

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Light sen­sors

Reduce your ener­gy bills and extend the life of your light bulbs

3. Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance Starter Kit

This com­plex is con­ve­nient in that it can be eas­i­ly com­bined with a large num­ber of smart home plat­forms, for exam­ple, with a sys­tem from Yan­dex or Apple. That is, you can man­age it not only through the “native” Philips Hue appli­ca­tion, but also with the help of the famil­iar Alice or Siri.

In addi­tion, these appli­ca­tions have add-ons that sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand their func­tion­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, you can cre­ate the illu­sion of a thun­der­storm or space flight at home.

This sys­tem knows how to cre­ate the right light­ing for any sit­u­a­tion: sub­dued roman­tic light for a roman­tic date, bright for painstak­ing work or fad­ing before bed­time.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Leaders of the Past

1. Rubetek “Video control and security”

This kit is a full-fledged secu­ri­ty com­plex that allows own­ers to mon­i­tor their home and prop­er­ty. A pow­er­ful cam­era with a wide view­ing angle (355°) and a motion sen­sor will help them in this, which, in the Secu­ri­ty mode, will turn on a loud siren and send an SMS or push noti­fi­ca­tion to the own­er about the inci­dent.

Addi­tion­al bonus­es: the pres­ence of a water con­sump­tion con­trol sen­sor — in the event of a water leak, the own­er of the house will imme­di­ate­ly receive a mes­sage and be able to fix the prob­lem in time.

This com­plex has a dis­tinc­tive fea­ture — up to 7 smart­phones can be con­nect­ed to it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, that is, in case of force majeure, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a quick response will be greater.

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Main characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Xiaomi Smart Home Security Kit

The mul­ti­func­tion­al Smart Home Gate­way com­plex, with which you can not only con­trol the safe­ty of your home, but also receive many addi­tion­al bonus­es, for exam­ple, wake up to your favorite tune.

The device includes two win­dow / door sen­sors: the sys­tem will send a mes­sage to the own­er of the house if the doors and win­dows are open in his absence. At the same time, an alarm will be trig­gered.

In addi­tion to the motion sen­sor, the kit also includes a motion sen­sor, after which the cam­era will auto­mat­i­cal­ly record. But in order to use this fea­ture, you need an IP cam­era.

Addi­tion­al bonus­es that the kit has: a smart sock­et that allows you to con­trol the con­sump­tion of elec­tric­i­ty, and a wire­less switch.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

3. Ring Alarm Home Security System 4K11D9-0EU0

The sys­tem will pro­tect the house from extra­ne­ous intru­sions and emer­gen­cies. The sys­tem uses motion and open­ing sen­sors. This kit is con­ve­nient in that it can be moved from apart­ment to apart­ment — most secu­ri­ty sys­tems do not have such an oppor­tu­ni­ty.

The Alarm sys­tem gives audi­ble warn­ings when trig­gered. In addi­tion, the own­er will receive a push noti­fi­ca­tion on their smart­phone.

This kit is per­fect­ly com­bined with oth­er smart home devices, due to which its func­tion­al­i­ty can be expand­ed. For exam­ple, you can add a sen­sor that will mon­i­tor the lev­el of gas or fire, which can warn of a fire or gas leak in time.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

4. Rubetek “Access Control”

This com­plex will pro­tect the life and prop­er­ty of own­ers of pri­vate hous­es, apart­ments, com­mer­cial premis­es. The device includes motion and open­ing sen­sors.

In order for Rubetek to work, you need to install and con­fig­ure the con­trol cen­ter — this is the “brain” of the sys­tem. It is he who will con­trol the sen­sors. Infor­ma­tion about the oper­a­tion of any of them is sent to the own­er’s smart­phone in the form of SMS or push noti­fi­ca­tions.

How the motion sen­sor works: it “reads” the ther­mal radi­a­tion of a per­son and sends a noti­fi­ca­tion to the own­er on a smart­phone that there is an out­sider in his apart­ment. It can also auto­mat­i­cal­ly turn on the light when a per­son appears.

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The intru­sion sen­sor is trig­gered by the open­ing of a win­dow or door — any pen­e­tra­tion into the house will not go unno­ticed.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

5. Xiaomi Aqara Smart Bedroom Set

This kit will help you turn your apart­ment or house into a smart­phone-con­trolled space quick­ly and eas­i­ly. The smart home cen­ter (Hub M1S) is its “brain”, which unites all oth­er devices that are part of the com­plex. The Hub also helps to inte­grate Aqara com­po­nents into the net­work and man­age them using voice assis­tants (Siri, Alice).

The kit includes “stan­dard” motion and open­ing sen­sors, as well as addi­tion­al ones. The first is a leak­age sen­sor, which reacts to the ingress of water. True, the liq­uid must direct­ly touch the con­tacts of the device. The sec­ond is a tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty con­trol sen­sor — it can turn on air con­di­tion­ers or humid­i­fiers if nec­es­sary.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

How to choose a smart home system

“Smart Home” is a sys­tem that con­sists of:

• Sen­sors that respond to move­ments, tem­per­a­ture changes, humid­i­ty, deter­mine the lev­el of illu­mi­na­tion;
• Exec­u­tive devices, for exam­ple, relays for turn­ing on lights and house­hold appli­ances;
• Con­trol cen­ter (con­troller or hub), cre­at­ing a sin­gle net­work of all com­po­nents.

Thus, there are a lot of dif­fer­ences between such sys­tems. Con­sid­er the main para­me­ters that you need to pay atten­tion to when choos­ing:

Purpose

The dif­fer­ence between “smart hous­es” in con­tent affects their func­tion­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, if a set con­sists of motion sen­sors and cam­eras, such a sys­tem can be con­sid­ered a secu­ri­ty sys­tem. Do you often think about whether you turned off the gas or water? Then pur­chase a kit with water and gas leak­age sen­sors. Want to con­trol appli­ances, light­ing and secu­ri­ty all at once? Choose a set with a vari­ety of con­trollers and a voice assis­tant.

Connection type

There are three in total:

• Wired. A more reli­able type of con­nec­tion and is placed in expen­sive sys­tems. It is nec­es­sary to cre­ate an instal­la­tion project and it is desir­able to car­ry out instal­la­tion at the ini­tial stages of repair;
• Wire­less. Eas­i­er to install, but com­mu­ni­ca­tion can be lost and bat­ter­ies require fre­quent check­ing and replace­ment;
• Hybrid. Uni­ver­sal option — allows you to con­nect more devices (wired and wire­less), as well as the choice of a con­ve­nient instal­la­tion method.

Type of control center (hub, controller)

They dif­fer in pro­to­cols for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with devices. Pri­or­i­ty are Zig­Bee and Z‑Wave, which have high com­mu­ni­ca­tion speed and low pow­er con­sump­tion, as they are designed specif­i­cal­ly for smart home sys­tems. But most mod­els work on the basis of Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth. They con­sume a lot of ener­gy, which reduces bat­tery life, and also have a short range (up to 20 meters).

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House or apartment

There will be dif­fer­ences both in func­tion­al­i­ty and in the num­ber of com­po­nents. For exam­ple, in an apart­ment there is no need to install video sur­veil­lance or a sen­sor for water­ing the lawn, but in a house such func­tions will be very use­ful. In addi­tion, in sub­ur­ban hous­ing you will need more sen­sors due to the area of ​​the ter­ri­to­ry.

How the smart home system works

The sys­tem set con­sists of a con­trol unit (gate­way, hub), to which all the nec­es­sary sen­sors are con­nect­ed. Usu­al­ly there are 2–5 sen­sors in the kit, unit­ed by one func­tion­al­i­ty. For exam­ple, if the sys­tem pro­vides secu­ri­ty, it will be a video sur­veil­lance cam­era, win­dow and door open­ing sen­sors, and a motion sen­sor.

Sys­tems respon­si­ble for pow­er sup­ply are usu­al­ly equipped with motion sen­sors, light sen­sors, smart sock­ets and switch­es, as well as a pow­er con­sump­tion con­troller.

Sys­tems can be wire­less or net­worked. Mains oper­a­tion is more reli­able, but only if the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply is unin­ter­rupt­ed. Wire­less do not depend on the out­let, but you need to mon­i­tor the bat­tery charge.

Con­trol is pos­si­ble using a remote con­trol, a but­ton and a smart­phone, or in sev­er­al ways at the same time. Con­trol using a smart­phone is more con­ve­nient, as it is always at hand, unlike a but­ton that can be lost. Man­age­ment appli­ca­tions are updat­ed fre­quent­ly, which makes the sys­tem more per­fect. In addi­tion, con­trol from a smart­phone is the only way when the own­er is away from home.

There is no sys­tem that would com­bine all or even most of the sen­sors with dif­fer­ent func­tion­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, most con­trol units allow the con­nec­tion of addi­tion­al sen­sors. Some­times even oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers. If in the future you plan to improve the installed sys­tem, it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly pay atten­tion to this point.

Expert reviews about the “smart home” system

Shares his expe­ri­ence of using the “smart home” sys­tem Vic­tor AntipovRegion­al Direc­tor of TFN Group:

“Before buy­ing, I com­pared sev­er­al smart homes and chose the one that best suit­ed me in terms of price, qual­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty. I pur­chased two sets at once: one for the dacha (“Coun­try”) and one for the apart­ment (“Obser­va­tion of the apart­ment”). The dacha kit con­sists of gas, smoke and open­ing sen­sors, a cam­era and a hub. Thanks to him, I am always aware of what is hap­pen­ing in the boil­er room, I can mon­i­tor the front door and the sit­u­a­tion inside the house. The kit for the apart­ment includes leak­age and open­ing sen­sors, as well as an inter­nal cam­era and a hub. I advise you to choose a sys­tem that is easy to auto­mate and man­age it through the appli­ca­tion.