How to set up your smart home when someone moves out

Organizing a luxury home machines into one perfect thing are already a nightmare. You seem to have some sort of smart speaker – Google Nest or Amazon Echo – and a collection of smart bulbs, thermostats, locks or cameras that the same company may or may not make. Many work together, but most services assume that one person owns the home and that they set up everything. This can make it a little difficult to separate all the tools you have when someone moves out, or after a break. Who knows what buried position is going to give someone access to lights or locks that they should not be able to control?

Fortunately, it is possible to separate your smart home appliances if you know what you are doing. This guide should help with that.

Factory reset all your devices

This is the most poignant part of getting rid of your fancy home, but it’s worth it for peace of mind to find out that no one else is going to turn off your lights unknowingly (or deliberately) from outside the home. Many smart home devices, including some versions of Google Home or Amazon Echo, can be reset with a physical button. This means that even if you have an inactive or ex estranged roommate who does not voluntarily disconnect the accounts from your devices, you can still reset them on your own.

Even if you can gently remove appliances from your setting, it may be best to reinstall as many as possible. Older smart home devices connected to Wi-Fi networks, shared homes, or personal accounts that recognize the voices of individual users, and have standard third-party usages and skills, may not all be set them up as you want it in the new location. Sometimes it’s just easier to start from scratch.

Remove any tools that you could not reset

Some of your devices may not have their own physical reset buttons. The Philips Hue Bridge, for example, features a reset button, but no individual bulbs. In that case, your best bet is to use the app from the company that made the device to reset it instead.

There are two ways to do this. Ideally, if you are still on good deals with whoever set up the smart devices in your home first, they can find the devices in their apps and remove them one by one . If you no longer have access to the first account used to set them up, many devices can be reset manually, usually using a serial number on the device itself. For example, when setting up Philips Hue lights by default, the Hue app automatically detects new bulbs – but you can also apply the six-character code to each bulb to have them replaced. to it, which overrides any preexisting account links. This is also a good time to go through your Google Home or Amazon Alexa apps to make sure accounts are not yet connected to any of your devices.

Disable any paid subscriptions that you no longer use

Some smart home devices offer paid services that add additional features, such as Nest Aware, which adds 30-day recording for any home security cameras you use. However, if you’re moving somewhere you no longer need your own security cameras – or you won’t need the same features – check to make sure you’re not charged for a membership that you don’t use more.

Change your passwords and delete your old profiles

If you were sharing accounts with a partner or roommate – anything from an Amazon Prime account to Netflix – it would be helpful to change your password when you move out. While resetting hardware devices may prevent older homeowners from taking control of your devices later, if they still have access to the account you use to make new devices established, there is little benefit.

.Source