Back to basics

For those of you who may be new to home automation, we thought we would go back to basics in order to explain how our products work. And how you can use them with other services like Google home.

Put simply smart devices are an electronic device, generally connected to other devices or networks via different wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi, LiFi, 3G, etc., that can operate to some extent interactively and autonomously.

Typically wireless home automation systems will use either wifi or a radio frequency based solution like Zigbee or ZWave. Wifi devices can be paired with your existing wifi router whereas Zigbee or ZWave devices will need to connect to a dedicated hub that translates the communication from your device to your network or the internet.

iSwitch products use wifi. We chose this approach because of its simplicity, you can connect an iswitch to your existing router without needing to buy any additional hardware.

As our products require they be wired into your household you'll need a licensed electrician to install them. But once this done you can do the rest.

Smart devices are managed by a service and in the case of iSwitch the switches are managed by the Smart Life platform (Tuya). This service is cloud based (hosted on a server on the internet) and the Smart Life app allows you to register your device (iSwitches) with the service. Smart Life also allows you to control the devices or link them to another service like Google home.

First off you'll need to download the Smart Life app from either the Apple App Store or Google Play. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the free app you’ll need to create an account.

Once thats out of the way you can start adding devices.

Adding devices is a simple process. The device to be paired must be in pairing mode. In the case of iSwitches you simply press and hold the top switch until it starts flashing. Once in this state you can open your Smart Life app and select add device.

From there you are guided through the process of choosing the device type and a wifi network. Once you’ve completed this process you’ll see your device in the app.

At this point in time your device is registered with the Smart Life cloud service. When you turn the switch on via the app the request is sent to the cloud and then the action is sent to the switch. This architecture gives you control of your devices from anywhere.

The Smart Life app not only gives you control over the functions of the switches and power points but it also allows you to make scenes such as turning lights on and off automatically. It also allows you to connect switches together to do some cool things. We have a few examples in our blog.

Out of the box Smart Life doesn’t give you voice control so you’ll need to pair Smart Life with either Google Home Assistant or Amazon Alexa if you want to command devices.

To pair Smart Life with Google Home you’ll need to have Google Home setup and from within the Google Home App select Set Up Device. Here you choose to add something that “Works with Google”. Search for Smart Life, then grant Google access to Smart Life by using your Smart Life account.

Once authorised your switches will be displayed within Google Home. This will allow you to ask Google to turn on and off your lights. Make sure you give your switches and each gang, names that make sense.

For this blog we added a three gang light switch and called them Entry, Front and Hallway. To turn on the hallway light we simply say “Hey Google, Turn on the hallway light”

Your voice command (using a google home, mini or home hub) will be sent from your smart assistant to the Google cloud service, from here Google will send the request over to the Smart Life cloud service which will then send the command to the light switch.

Just so everything knows whats going on a status is send back the same way so that your Smart Life and Google Home show the current state of the switch.

As your smart home grows you may ens up with many apps for different services. For example you may have an app for your robot vacuum, or one for a temp sensor. You can try adding these to Smart Life as Smart Life supports multiple device types such as Wifi, Zigbee and Bluetooth.

It makes sense when you can keep as any devices as you can in one service. This has the advantage of creating simpler scenes within one place, however you can also leverage a service like IFTTT if you need to connect services together.

Google Home and Amazon Alexa are designed to connect many apps together so you can control them all from one place too.

If you’re after more information on Google Home you’ll find plenty of info here
If you’re after more information on Amazon Alexa you’ll find plenty of info here