Now that I’ve largely finished the job of integrating 50 Matter smart switches into my home, here are some closing notes to help you decide whether this is the type of upgrade might be worthwhile for your home
Each light still works as a regular light switch
Smart switches don’t require everyone in the house to install a new app or interact exclusively with a voice assistant. The wall switches might look different, but whenever you press them (Tapo smart switches are technically buttons to be pressed, not switches to be flipped), they do what you expect. The light turns off. The fan comes on. I could stop using all the Wi-Fi enabled features tomorrow and would still have a fully functional home.
This means there’s little friction with family members, nor do I have to educate guests when they come to visit or provide babysitters with instructions. The smart features are add-ons, not replacements.
I didn't consider how every switch now has a glowing light
Since Tapo lights are buttons, not switches, there needs to be a different way to indicate whether a switch is on or off. TP-Link has opted to put a circular light on each switch. The light glows when the switch is off and turns off when the switch is on.
This light helps you find the switch in the dark, but it also means that our rooms never get fully dark. I keep night lights in every room anyway, so we’re accustomed to a degree of ambient glow, but it’s something to keep in mind if you have blackout curtains and can only sleep when there’s no light in your presence at all. Eve light switches have a much smaller light.
Or you could opt for Lutron lights instead. Either option will cost you hundreds, if not thousands, more. Eve lights would have increased the cost of my project fivefold.
An incorrect voice command can turn off lights that others are using
Voice commands need to be precise in order to do what’s expected with certainty. A vague phrase like “turn off the lights” might turn off the lights in the room you’re in, or it may turn off all the lights in the entire house. “Turn off the lamp” may turn off our bedroom lamp most of the time, but sometimes it might interpret lamp as lights and turn off the ceiling lights. I’ve accidentally turned off the lights in the kids’ room, leading them to ask me later if the power had briefly gone out.
To play it safe, it’s best to specify exactly the light and the room. “Turn off the closet light in the kids’ room” leaves much less room for confusion than “turn off the light in the kids room” or “turn off the closet light.” I don’t want my family members angry at me for subjecting them to this whole smart home experiment, so it’s worthwhile for me to go ahead and speak the few extra words to play it safe. This is especially truly when using a product that's still in active development, like the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition.
I can check whether any lights are left on from one place
For me, the enterprise was worth the effort just to have the ability to know at a glance whether there are any lights left on in the house. I live in a rather wide single-story home that I already have to walk back and forth through throughout the day. I don’t like having to do one last trip through the house at night, especially when I’m the family member who tends to get sleepy the earliest. With a smart home, I can go to bed first but still check all the lights at a glance when my wife later comes to bed.
If we didn’t deliberately leave a few lights on for the kids, I could easy simply mutter a voice command to turn off all the lights in the house. I can even control all of these Matter devices via my watch.
This means there’s less nagging in our home, and my bedtime routine is less tiring. My family members and I all benefit from having one less source of conflict. It’s easy to sneer and ask “is it really that big a deal to get up and flip the switch” whenever anyone talks about smart lights, but having now experienced the change for myself, I would gladly pay twice as much as I did to buy the peace these lights have introduced.
This is a relatively affordable upgrade
Since I've done all the labor myself, this project has cost me less than $1,000. That's cheaper than an iPhone Pro and more affordable than many handheld gaming PCs. And this is for a house with an obscene number of light switches. Upgrading the switches in most homes would cost even less.
As a homeowner, I've come to expect home upgrades to cost more than this. Plumbers and electricians will sometimes charge a grand for what seems like relatively straightforward work. Hiring someone to paint our home could cost at least twice as much. The fact that I can convert my house into a smart home that I can control with my voice for less than the cost of standard household maintenance is a marker of how far technology has come.
