Good things come in small packages. It’s cliché, but true when you live or plan to live in a smart, well-connected home. Maybe a more accurate term to describe wireless access points (WAPs)isn’t small, but overlooked. “The weakest link in over 75 percent of smart home systems is the network, especially the wireless network,” says Cat Toomey, director of marketing for URC, and manufacturer of home control systems.
Yet, few homeowners realize that to have a strong network requires a strong, reliable router and at least one high-caliber wireless access point. Without a good wireless access point, signals travelling between a home control system and its army of connected devices, such as light switches, thermostats, and electronic door locks, can hit bottlenecks, drop out, or never reach their destinations, rending the entire control system weak and unreliable. You may be left scratching your head and wondering why the lights in the media room didn’t fade when you executed the command from your smartphone. Likely, you can blame the communications glitch on the Wi-Fi network in your home.
Exacerbating the problem is the growing availability and proliferation of wireless Wi-Fi smart home devices and streaming media products. “The average consumer is unaware of just how many things are tied to a wireless network,” says professional home systems integrator David Vranicar of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Boca Theater & Automation. “More than 100 devices can be connected to a wireless home network at a time, so we absolutely insist that our clients invest in multiple access points. Even modest size homes of 2,000 to 3,000 square feet we typically install two or three.”
Naturally, your inclination would be to hit your local home electronics superstar to pick up a WAP, install it yourself and watch your Wi-Fi woes disappear. Although adding a WAP from a retail outlet will help relieve some of the congestion on a Wi-Fi network that’s comprised primarily of personal computers, if you plan to rig your house with IP surveillance cameras, Wi-Fi thermostats, wireless light switches, a media streaming device, a smart TV, and other technologies, you’ll need a more robust WAP to ensure that everything works seamlessly and smoothly. But be ready to shell out some serious coin. While you can buy and install a WAP a new router yourself for around $200, having a professional put in a heartier, enterprise-grade system will set you back a couple thousand dollars. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the middle,” says Vranicar.
Sure, $2,000 is big chunk to dole out when there are awesome surround-sound systems, big-screen TVs, and amazing video projectors competing for your hard-earned dollar, but a WAP (and better router) is an investment that will keep your house running like a well-oiled engine for years to come. Plus, when you have a professional home systems integrator install and configure the network, he’ll have the tools and expertise to choose the most ideal positions for the gear to ensure good range, coverage, and strength of Wi-Fi signals.
For some home systems integrators, though, setting up a wireless home network is like visiting a foreign land. They simply don’t speak or understand IT language. Thankfully, this is changing, and changing fast. “They’ve had to become IT experts whether they liked it or not,” says Paul Williams, director of product marketing at Control4, a manufacturer of home automation systems. Control4 is helping its dealers learn the tricks of the networking trade by providing them with support and equipment from Pakedge, a company that it acquired earlier this year with years of experience designing and manufacturing a range of wireless networking equipment. Consumers will undoubtedly reap the benefits of this union, according to Williams. Dealers who bundle Pakedge networking components into their Control4 home automation packages will be able to provide a stable operating environment that Control4 systems need to operate reliably and efficiently. “Unlike the ‘Frankenstein’ approach that most dealers have been applying by cobbling separate networking and automation systems together, the Pakedge and Control4 systems will be configured to work seamlessly together,” Williams adds. In addition to creating a solid wireless communications infrastructure, the inclusion of Pakedge devices in a Control4 automation solution provides dealers and consumers helpful system monitoring and diagnostics features. The Pakedge BakPak Cloud Management System, for example, allows a dealer to manage customers’ networks remotely from a smartphone, tablet, or computer. Should a home’s network–or anything that’s connected to it–go down, a dealer is notified via email, SMS, or the BakPak Could app. Dealers can view a dashboard to identify the problem and proactively solve it, “often before a homeowner even realizes anything is wrong,” says Pakedge vice president of sales and marketing Benson Chan.
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