Guide To Smart Homes - Part 5

Wired Vs Wireless

Wireless ‘Does It All’… or so the inexperienced will tell you.

Wireless should only ever be considered for ‘End User Devices’, Phones, Tablets & Hand Held Remote Controls.  These are for the most part roaming devices and are usually ‘low bandwidth’, therefore, are suitable for wireless communication.

When it comes to Wired versus Wireless, the answer is very simple, if you can get a dedicated cable to the piece of equipment then you should! This ensures ultimate reliability and allows ‘high bandwidth’ services to work. A good example are TVs, if you want to watch 4k Netflix on your TV that is the other side of a property to the main router, then Wireless is not going to work, however, an inexpensive Cat6a Cable or even Fibre cable at the design & 1st fix stage, will give you that dedicated communication channel down its own wire with no interference or signal issues to cause problems. The best analogy would be to think of water and plumbing, you wouldn’t expect to fill a glass of water in the kitchen from a short hose by the garage would you? Water would go everywhere and not all of it would make it to the glass!

The other point to note with wireless is, if every sub system is using wireless, that is a lot of wireless signal bouncing around your property making each system much less likely to be able to work reliably.

Please have a look at the two diagrams below as they show the difference between a very modest 3 Room Smart Home that is wired or wireless. With the Wired example, there are only 3 Devices (Smart Phones) on WiFi, with the Wireless Example there are 18 or more. Now if you take this example to a large property, or even a property with difficult construction materials such as Foil Backed Insulation, Block or Granite walls, then you will have many WiFi related problems which will not be solvable.

The point is simple, make sure you run cables for all services!

Wired System

Wireless System

A professional Smart Home System is one that has many cables for many services that requires a good design. An example of some of the design that goes into a Smart Home can be found below.

For More Information On Smart Home Systems Please Contact Us.

Next - Part 6: ‘Pitfalls To Avoid & Basic Design Principles’.