Turning a basic home into a smart home is an investment. If you expect to get a return on that investment when you sell your home, then the systems that you have installed need to be properly documented so prospective buyers see value in what you have built.
Part of the value of smart home technology is in the functionality that the system provides, and another is the confidence that the prospective buyers have in their ability to maintain and enhance the system without you. If the system was installed by a professional smart home integrator, then the prospective buyer can rely on them. If you installed the system yourself, then you are going to need to prove that the system is well designed, is easy to maintain, and can be enhanced over time. The best way to do that is through proper documentation.
First and foremost, if you are developing a smart home system yourself, then you have to understand that the system will change over time. There are a number of reasons for this. Equipment breaks and will get discarded or replaced with a different model that performs a similar function. You will come up with new ideas on how your smart home can make your life more convenient, save energy, or make your home more secure.
Related: Using Home Automation to Make a House a Haven
Implementing these new ideas will probably require the purchase of additional smart devices that will be installed in the home. Features and equipment that you stop using, or didn’t meet your expectations, may be discarded or replaced. The rapid pace of innovation means that smart devices in your home will inevitably become outdated and require replacement. The manufacturers of some smart home devices that you install in your home will go out of business. If these devices leveraged a cloud service, then this service will go offline and the devices that depended on the cloud service to operate will stop working.
To make matters worse, this ongoing process of enhancement and changes will take place over a period of many years. And, while all the details of your smart home may be fresh in your mind when you first install it, I can assure you that you will start to forget important information about the system and that will make it more difficult for you to properly maintain it over time.
It is easy to scribble down a few notes and fool yourself into thinking that this qualifies as documentation of a smart home. However, put yourself in the place of a perspective buyer of the home. Would a buyer be able to understand all aspects of the smart home from those notes well enough to maintain it and enhance it without any assistance?
Most of what I’m going to suggest for smart home documentation are drawings, not simply written documentation. An old adage is that a picture is worth a thousand words and this holds true when documenting a smart home.
Here are some suggestions on the kinds of documents you will want to create to document the various elements of your smart home:
Network – A diagramming tool, such as Microsoft Visio, can be used to create a diagram of the home’s Ethernet/Wi-Fi network. Every device that is connected to the network (through either wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi) should be included on the diagram, including how the devices are interconnected. The documentation for each device should also include its static IP or DHCP reservation (if it has one) and its username/password.
Smart Home System – Your smart home system, like your network, consists of interconnected devices. Unlike your network, not all devices are connected over Ethernet or Wi-Fi. Some devices may be controlled over RS-232 links from your automation processor/hub. Devices, like a TV, may be controlled using IR pulses. Some devices, including lighting, may be controlled using various wireless protocols (Z-Wave, Zigbee, Bluetooth, etc.). Your system may also use third-party web services. All of the devices and services that make up your smart home should be included in a smart home system diagram that shows how these devices and services are interconnected.
Security System – Your security system, including keypads, fobs, and sensors should be included in a diagram that shows how this equipment is connected. This diagram should also include security zone numbers and any associated device identifiers for each piece of equipment.
Code – Some smart home processors/hubs leverage custom-written software while others may only include a rules engine that allows someone without any software development experience to create If-Then rules that define what steps the smart home will take when events occur in and around the home. While basic rules may be simple to understand, custom-developed software is not.
A professional software developer is never writing code for themselves; a professional writes code for the person who comes after them and has to maintain/enhance the code with the assumption that they aren’t there to help. The code, itself, must be well organized and include detailed comments. After graduating from college, I was writing code for military systems. I was required to include a comment with every line of code, and every line of code went through a peer review process. Code for the typical smart home doesn’t require peer review, but I try to include as many comments as is reasonably possible in my code. When the code gets complicated, I absolutely do comment on every line.
Together, all of the above drawings and the comments in the code document the overall smart home system; each from a different perspective.
If you are buying a smart home, ask to see the documentation. Also, make sure you get a copy of all the source code and make sure that you get the username/passwords required for each device.
Then ask the current homeowner, or the smart home integrator who installed the system, to walk you through the documentation. It isn’t necessary that you understand every detail at that time. However, it is important that you walk away confident that when something goes wrong, or you want to changes some aspect of the system, that you know that all the information has been documented and is available to you.
