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Home Automation Business Smart Switch Guide

Update time : 2020-06-01 18:08:10

The smart home becomes more and more popular support from many public. This also led to the rapid development of the smart home automation business. There are many IoT devices, which is the best internet of things business opportunities? From the smart home business market capacity and acceptance, obviously the smart switch is playing one of the most important roles in smart home products nowadays.

What is smart switch?

Smart switch is known as the unit that uses the combination and programming of the control board & electronic components to realize the lighting control systems for homes of the circuit by the intelligent switch.

Compared with the traditional toggle switch, the home automation switches is more functions, safer control way, and more kinds of designs.
In the innovation of function meantime to give switch decorative effect. And a more convenient, faster, and more humanized operation automated lighting system for home.

How to choose the smart switch on the market?
Here have some tips for reference.

Choose smart products with certificated
Different countries have required different certifications. Such as domestic certification is CCC, US (FCC/ETL/UL), Europe (CE, RoHS), Canada (cETL, cUL), Australia (SAA), South Korea (KC) and so on.
PS: The products with certification have met the safe of the market. Quality is guaranteed relatively.

Choose the appearance of products

Recently, Smart switch divide into 3 types, including Traditional switch design, Touch screen design, LED touch screen design. Choose the best one according to your requirements and the decorated style of your house.

The traditional switch design is more suitable for the Simple, pastoral decoration style(choose white color will be better)
Touch screen design is waterproof, maintain easily, which is suitable for Kitchen and bathroom
LED Touch Design will show the numerical value that looks more technical, surely it’s more expensive than the other two designs.

Choose the smart home automation technology of products according to your needs
Nowadays, there have five mainstream communication technologies:
WiFi vs RF vs ZigBee vs Zwave vs Bluetooth
Below are some advantages and disadvantages for your reference.

Wifi Technology

WiFi is a wireless network consist of AP (Access Point) and wireless network cards.

The AP is generally called a network bridge or wireless access node. It acts as a bridge between a traditional wired LAN and a wireless LAN, so any PC equipped with a wireless network card can share a wired LAN through the AP. Even the resources of the wide-area network,
WiFi working principle is equivalent to a HUB or a router with a built-in wireless transmitter, and the wireless network card is the CLIENT device that is responsible for receiving the signal transmitted by the AP.

Now it has been optimized from AP mode to EZ mode which is a fast connection way to help users connect products easily and quickly( The user can interchange between AP and EZ according to their requirement).

For users, the smarthome combination based on WiFi home automation is the most convenient, and the network can be directly purchased by purchasing equipment.

Smart house products that be based on WiFi technology are the most common. It’s famous for not only quick transmission speed rate but also low product cost. Wireless home automation remote products are widely used in daily life. For users, Based on WiFi smart home product combination is the most convenient way that they can connect all different kinds of products together just only purchase smart house devices to pair the phone app through the same wifi router.

On the other hand, even if WiFi has a high-speed transmission and widely used in life. Wifi router scale could not over 15 unites home automation devices as a household router( company wifi router scale can hold 50-100 units device)

Zigbee Technology

1. Support for scenario configuration, users only need to pair the gateway when they start living in the house and easily control it.
2. One key to add sub-device, meanwhile, support more devices join in the network. As well as support to add the device without network
3. Quickly pairing, optimized user experience
4. It can control more devices at a time without mixing up the network.it has good home control systems experience under the big scale network working.
5. Accept local scene linkage, as well as support another brand gateway local linkage
6. Reliable local group control service can be acceptable
7. Support Each step OTA service, such as a home automation hub, Zigbee terminal, and MCU what is Zigbee terminal module matched
8. Based on Zigbee 3.0 standard protocol development, products can be passed Zigbee alliance 3.0 certification.
Support to access Mainstream manufacturer 's Zigbee device, such as Hue, Smart Thing, etc
9. Support the function of preventing users delete accidentally, effectively deal with customer touch by mistake, cause sub-device out of the network.
10.Expand 3-grade sub-device framework
11.Can be remote gain the local blog of the gateway, support sub-device error code, gateway blog, etc all will be a report in real-time. It has good ability of Later maintenance

What’s more important, Zigbee home automation technology has high security and confidentiality. Confidentiality is stemmed from its systematic design as follow:
1. Zigbee Adopt AES encryption(advanced encryption system);
2. Zigbee adopts a honeycomb structure for networking. Each device can correspond with the gateway through multiple directions. The stability of the network is higher.
3. Zigbee gateway can connect device quantity reach to 100 units, moreover, it adopts such low power consumption design, energy-saving, and environmental protection.

The weakness of the Zigbee network mode is that it has to need a Zigbee hub.
In the case of Zigbee hub have issues, then all Zigbee devices could not work.
But each wifi device is an individual host, which can be operated independently as well it can be connected to the network without any Hub.
The Global statistics ZigBee3.0 unified correspondence protocol, Therefore Zigbee 3.0 devices can be concentrated in one Hub at the same time. There have disadvantages is that each manufacturer has their s own characteristics for all ZigBee protocol products under the ZigBee3.0 unified correspondence protocol. It will cause the products from different manufacturers are completely incompatible.

RF (Radio Frequency)

Radio Frequency switch needs an extra remote control to operate. RF wireless remote control technology: Frequency is often in 433 MHz or 315 MHz, signal transmit in one direction, and could not access the network. It cant reflect the current status of the device.

RF big scale used in many places, such as TV, broadcast and radar, etc. The best solution is to combine with the WiFi device e to realize interactive working.

Z-wave technology

Z-Wave's data transmission rate is 9.6kbps, and the effective coverage of the signal is 30 meters indoors (more than 100 meters outdoor). It’s suitable for narrow bandwidth places and has certain security and stability, however, it is currently only applied to home lighting automation.

The disadvantage of Z-wave technology :
First, the upper limit of the network is 20 - 30 devices.
Second, the tree-like network structure. Once the upper end of the branch is broken, all the devices at the lower end will be unable to communicate with the gateway.
Third, there is no encryption method, poor security, easy to be attacked.

After Z-wave is networked, all the major platform vendors just support their own Z-wave gateway and their own products.It’s incompatible with other manufacturer’s Z-Wave products.

Bluetooth Technology

Everyone is familiar with Bluetooth technology. We guess people know that technology comes from the Bluetooth function of the mobile phone.
The power consumption and product cost are higher than wifi but slower than Zigbee. However Bluetooth Technology transmission distance is shortest, it belongs to point, the correspondence method of short -distance.
Because it’s transmitted between mobile devices or short distances, Bluetooth products will provide some private user experience. Such as Bluetooth air phone, Bluetooth speaker, Bluetooth smart scales, and so on.
Thanks to it’s transmit distance is shorter, the method of adding WiFi transfer to Bluetooth become Bluetooth Gateway based on original technology. It is used to connect to all Bluetooth products.

The feature of Bluetooth gateway

1. One key connect sub-device, support multiple sub-device access to the network at the same time.
2.Support 128 units Mesh sub-device and BLE single point device control, stable working.
3. Random sub-device heartbeat algorithm, support online/offline prompt of sub-device, and can quickly display sub-device off-grid status;
4.Support reliable local linkage and group service.
5. Support OTA services of all links, gateway, Bluetooth master control, Bluetooth terminal, and MCU connected to the Bluetooth terminal module.
6. BLE gateway is based on Bluetooth SIG standard protocol development, compatible with other manufacturer’s products based on the BLE SIG protocol.
7. Original sub-device online status maintenance algorithm, implement monitoring and display sub-device online and offline status and reduce the possibility of data concurrency in the network,
There is no- online state display for other gateways in the whole industry;

The function of household automation smart switch

The most important of selecting wireless smart switch is the product’s function.
To consider whether it can meet the user’s personal requirements. Same as a traditional normal switch, the smart switch has different like below:

1. Classify 1 gang, 2gang, 3 gang switch in terms of the switch button
2. Classify 1 way or 3-way switch according to the quantity of different location switch which controls the same light.
3. Classify “on/off a light switch, 3-way switch, dimmer switch, curtain switch, fan switch, sensor switch in terms of switch function.
If you want to make an old normal switch become smart switch, then you can purchase the wifi switch module and connect between normal switch and wires from the wall. It’s quite easy to wire connections.

Smart home automation products can work for third party speakers, such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, etc. After connecting the speaker, people can voice control of the products by the speaker.

Smart products have a modern function. People can set up the scene and house automation according to the change of weather, environment PM2.5 value, sunrise &sunset, temperature, humidity, etc. It can be connected to our products after setting the scene or home automation solutions mode.

It can set up Arrive home mode through Scene(All home automation equipments and devices include lights, curtain, TV, Air condition, water heater are turned on when you arrived you're home. Make your life more convenient.
Moreover, it also can be set up “leave home model”, “sleeping mode” on the app.
“Leave home mode” means all devices will be turn off when you go outside. Make safer and no worry whether you forgot to turn off the home appliance.
“Sleeping mode” The corresponding products can be more rationally arranged through product settings. You can even change the temperature of air-conditioning during the sleep period by setting. Bring a more comfortable experience.

Timing: Users can set the time to turn on or off devices according to user requirements. (e.g During we are traveling or stay outside for some days or months, this timing function can pretend someone at home. It’s effectively used for anti-theft)

Please pay attention to check the following points:
1. The wire connection needs to be confirmed when installing the product. (The product require Neutral or not)
2. If install the products suit like Zigbee device needs to be purchase Zigbee gateway together. If you have a corresponding product or use APP before, you don't need to buy the gateway repeatedly.
3. Check the details instruction manual is required before installation.
4. DIY home automation needs to be installed by professionals or under professional guidance.
5. It can be powered on for pairing after making sure finished installment.

Last not the least, choose high-quality products from reliable smart home companies or suppliers.
Shenzhen Hidintech is one of the top home automation companies in China. We have been devoting to the best smart home devices since 2013. we are a modernized smart home automation company that integrates R&D, and home automation manufacturers. Our products and quality are recognized by our customers worldwide with certification such as ETL, UL, CE, FCC, ROHS, etc. We obtained the certificate ISO9001 for our factory in July 2017.
Every year, we launch some new home automation products to keep up with the market. You could see our new products at the HK exhibition.
We are striving to become one of the best home automation companies.

If you would like to start an IoT business with a smart switch and try samples, or any problems about home automation services, please click Milfra smart to contact us.

In the next article, we will write about how to choose the best smart home tech companies and factories to make OEM ODM orders.

Next : Hidintech smart home products pursued by young consumers