How to choose and configure a smart home

According to various estimates, over the past year the demand for smart home equipment in the Russian Federation has increased by 80–90% (and sales on Wildberries have jumped by 168% in units). Everything is logical: more and more solutions are appearing on the market for any budget and for any interior; Russian IT giants are making their contribution by entering the market with entire ecosystems. Smart homes are no longer overloaded with wires, and you can choose any composition: with an emphasis on security, a comfortable microclimate, entertainment, etc. There are a huge number of devices and brands, Kommersant figured out how to choose the most convenient system in terms of setup and cost.

Xiaomi

One of the most popular smart home options due to its affordable prices and signature design. A set of devices plus the ecosystem of the Chinese manufacturer allows you to control lighting, humidity and temperature in the house, remotely control a robot vacuum cleaner, curtains, and a smart pet feeder. The owner will also be able to connect to a baby monitor and other cameras.

In this case, control can be “push-button” through the Mi Home application (free). It is also possible to connect to the Siri system through the settings, section “Siri and search”, where you need to enable the voice assistant and in the same section activate the sliders of the Mi Home application. In the application itself, you will have to find the iOS shortcut through “Lab Functions” and add a script to it through the “Automation” section for each device.

It is easier to connect the Chinese system with Alice: you will need the Mi Home and “Home with Alice” (Yandex) applications. After adding devices to the first application, you will need to press plus in the second, add a smart home device, select Xiaomi from the list and merge accounts. As a result, all elements of a smart home can be controlled by voice through “Yandex Station”, and through “Home with Alice” also by voice or buttons. In Mi Home, you can create scenarios for the operation of different devices and connections between them. You can also add multiple smart homes and switch between them.

Protocols: Zigbee when connected to a central controller, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Flaws:

• there are no proprietary mounts for sensors (you need to order from AliExpress or glue them with tape);
• There are device failures.

Pros:

• affordable price;
• easy to set up;
• minimalistic design.

“Yandex”

Yandex smart speakers of different sizes and colors, with and without screens, are the company’s calling card. But there are other smart elements: TVs, sensors for leaks, temperature, motion, etc., light bulbs, sockets, toys with the voice assistant Alice for children.

There are fewer devices than other manufacturers, but the company offers to add devices from other manufacturers through Yandex Station or a special hub. The website states that the smart home is compatible with products from 170 brands. The list includes smart dishwashers, air conditioners, multicookers, etc. Third-party sensors and sockets can also be connected – for example, from Aqara.

You can control it by voice through “Yandex Station”, through the “Home with Alice” application by voice or buttons. There you can add scenarios in the “If/Then” format, look at ideas for scenarios (and what devices are missing for them).

Protocol: Zigbee, Wi-Fi, IR connection, Matter (single protocol open source; it allows gadgets from different brands to work with each other), IR connection.

Flaws:

• sensors can be disconnected from hubs;
• Not all third-party compatible devices can be connected.

Pros:

• compact gadgets;
• Yandex ecosystem.

“Sber”

Sber has its own ecosystem – Salyut, which is also an AI assistant based on the GigaChat multimodal neural network. The assistant has three voices with different tones, from business to friendly. It works in the Salyut application and on Sbera smart home devices: TVs, speakers, sensors, night lights, light bulbs and LED strips. To control you will need a hub; up to 32 devices can be linked to it.

Sber doesn’t have many of its own devices (and there are no popular robotic vacuum cleaners at all), so third-party gadgets are compatible with the smart home platform. These are vacuum cleaners, heaters, switches, kettles, sockets, humidifiers, thermostats, other people’s TVs and hubs. Among the compatible brands on the Sber website are Aqara, Philips, Elari and others. Compatibility is checked here.

Control is standard: through the application by voice/buttons or through a speaker.

Protocols: Zigbee and Bluetooth.

In the description, Sber emphasizes that the system operates on an “autonomous platform that does not depend on foreign suppliers,” and the data remains on Russian servers under the protection of banking protocols.

Flaws:

Pros:

• easy to set up;
• minimum of failures (judging by reviews on the Internet);
• servers in Russia.

Rubetek

Another notable brand in this area, Rubetek, allows you to assemble a smart home that will work via Wi-Fi. Rubetek has IP cameras for home and outdoors, sensors (motion, leaks and others), smart air conditioners, switches for closing/opening curtains and more. Kits are sold, for example, with flood protection by shutting off the water or for heating a country house before the owners arrive. Rubetek lamps (as well as lamps from other manufacturers) allow you to customize color lighting.

A control unit will be responsible for all this, to which up to 64 devices can be connected. Using the block, you can set operating scenarios for devices and make connections. For example, when you turn on the air conditioner, automatically turn on the humidity sensor, when closing the gate using an electric drive, turn off the lights in the house, etc.

Control is available through the main voice assistants: Alice, Marusya, Google Assistant or Siri. Plus – there is a free application in which you can see the history of events in the house for the day: when the air conditioner turned on, the smart intercom rang, etc.

Flaws:

• relatively high price;
• devices often fall off from Apple HomeKit and Siri.

Pros:

• easy to set up.

What budget to focus on?

The cost of a smart home directly depends on its contents. The cheapest items are sockets, sensors and light bulbs (RUB 800–2,000). From them you can start assembling a system from any brand you like. Smart cameras are a little more expensive – from 2.5 thousand to 5 thousand rubles. You will have to spend the most on large household appliances and televisions. Humidifiers and air purifiers, robotic vacuum cleaners cost from 8 thousand to 40 thousand rubles, and smart TVs – from 10 thousand to 95 thousand rubles.

Based on the results of 2023, the OFD Platform recorded the following average receipts:

• smart lamps and lamps – 955 rubles;
• smart switches – 980 rub.;
• smart sockets—RUB 1,115;
• robotic vacuum cleaners — RUB 17,580.

Manufacturers often offer ready-made kits, their prices vary. For blocking Rubetek leaks on a turnkey basis they ask for more than 20 thousand rubles, and from Sber you can assemble something similar – a leakage sensor plus a smart faucet from a third-party manufacturer plus a smart hub – for 12 thousand rubles. A home security kit from Aqara with motion sensors, glass breakage sensors, a video camera, etc. will cost 10.5 thousand rubles.while Xiaomi has a similar set (door closing/opening sensors, wireless switch and hub) will cost 8.5 thousand rubles.

Light bulbs without connection

Since the systems are similar, they also have a common disadvantage: when Wi-Fi is turned off, smart devices may not be available in applications. But this is not critical, since Zigbee devices, although they operate at Wi-Fi frequencies, have their own hubs. If the Wi-Fi point is turned off, the devices will work with the hub and will not lose connection with each other. This means that the specified scenarios will be executed without the Internet.

“What happens more often is that the Internet disappears, rather than the access point “dying.” In this case, both Wi-Fi devices and Zigbee will remain connected to the local hubs of the smart home, and after the Internet is restored, they will connect to their clouds,” explains Ruslan Permyakov, deputy director of the NTI center “Trusted Interaction Technologies” based on TUSUR.

For example, if the house has smart heating (when the temperature in the house drops below a certain value, the heating turns on), this system will function locally in the absence of an Internet connection. “To do this, it is necessary that the smart home controller work using the Zigbee protocol and all the smart home logic is implemented directly on it, and not somewhere in the cloud,” says Kaspersky ICS CERT expert Vladimir Dashchenko.

There is also a local smart home, Home Assistant, which is free and open source. You can integrate various smart devices with it and not depend on Wi-Fi, but it will take a lot of time and desire to understand the setup.

Safety: what to pay attention to

It is better for a smart home to have local server with additions in the form of cloud solutions. “Russian clouds are better than foreign ones, since we live in politically unstable times and blockages are difficult to predict,” emphasizes Ruslan Permyakov.

The Kaspersky ICS CERT expert recalls that foreign cloud providers and operators of infrastructure for smart homes and devices blocked the operation of devices located in Russia. For example, in 2022 this affected Sberbank devices that worked on a Chinese platform (no longer present). Occur periodically incidents involving compromise of smart devices and smart homes. Hacked gadgets can be used for various purposes, from hooliganism (for example, broadcasting audio through speakers built into devices) to exploitation of the resources of hacked devices to carry out DDoS attacks, lists Vladimir Dashchenko. To avoid hacks and leaks, you need to change the default passwords to more complex ones, allocate smart devices to a separate subnet, and not conduct personal conversations near smart devices that are turned on.

Anna Ganzha