Smart home starter

Smart home installation without losing your weekend to tutorials and a support forum. A video doorbell, a smart thermostat, two smart locks and four smart switches, fitted, wired where wiring is needed, connected to your network and set up on your phone before the crew leaves.

The devices are not the hard part. The hard part is the doorbell transformer that cannot carry the load, the switch box with no neutral wire, the lock that does not fit a door with a 40 year old bore, and the network that drops the garage. Every one of those is a normal house in this region, and every one of them is why a Saturday project becomes a fortnight.

What the visit covers

• A video doorbell, including the chime and transformer side of the installation
• A smart thermostat, wired and configured against your existing system
• Two smart locks fitted to existing doors, with the hardware adjusted to suit
• Four smart switches, replacing existing devices in the boxes they sit in
• Setup on your phone, plus a written note of every device and where it lives

We fit what you supply, which is how most clients prefer it, since device choice depends on which ecosystem your household already uses. Where you would rather we recommended, we will, and we have no arrangement with any manufacturer that would make that recommendation anything other than our honest opinion.

The doorbell problem nobody mentions

A video doorbell draws considerably more power than the mechanical chime it replaces. Houses built before roughly 2005 often have a transformer sized for exactly what was needed at the time, which produces a doorbell that works for two days and then reboots whenever somebody presses it.

We check the transformer before fitting rather than afterwards. Where it needs replacing, that is a small piece of work, and where the existing chime is incompatible it gets bypassed properly rather than left half connected. The result is a doorbell that works in February, which is the only real test.

Switches, neutrals and where our line sits

Most smart switches need a neutral wire in the box, and a great many older Michigan houses do not have one at the switch. That is not a fault, it is simply how houses were wired for decades, and it decides which devices will work in which rooms.

We check before you buy four of the wrong thing. Replacing a device in an existing box is work our crews do. Running a new neutral, adding a circuit, touching the panel or dealing with aluminum branch wiring is licensed electrical work and we bring in a licensed electrician rather than improvising. If we open a box and find something that should not be there, it goes in writing.

Three way switches, where two switches control one light, are the other common surprise. They need a matching pair of devices and a specific wiring arrangement, and a household that bought four identical switches usually discovers this at the top of the stairs.

Locks, and doors that were not built for them

Smart locks assume a standard bore, a standard backset and a door that closes properly. Older doors frequently fail the third test, and a lock that has to fight a misaligned strike will eat batteries and eventually fail to throw at all. We adjust the door and the strike as part of the fitting rather than treating it as somebody else’s problem.

Weather matters here too. An exterior door that swells in August and shrinks in January moves enough to change how a deadbolt lands, which is why a lock that worked in summer starts complaining in winter. Where the door itself is the problem rather than the alignment, that becomes exterior door replacement on a longer timeline.

Households that have just bought a house usually want the locks changed regardless of whether they are smart, and rekeying the rest of the doors at the same visit is straightforward. That whole list sits in the new homeowner package.

Thermostats, and the wire that is missing

Smart thermostats need constant power, which usually means a common wire running to the unit. Older installations frequently have four wires where five are needed, and the honest options are running a new cable, fitting an adapter at the furnace, or choosing a device that works without one.

We check what is behind your existing thermostat before anything is bought. Systems with multiple stages, a heat pump or a humidifier need particular attention, and we will say plainly when a thermostat change should involve whoever services your furnace rather than a carpenter with a screwdriver.

What a thermostat will not do is fix a cold room. Uneven temperatures come from air leakage, insulation or duct sizing, and no amount of scheduling changes that. Where leakage is the cause, the fix is draft sealing and weatherization, which is cheaper than most people assume.

The network, which is where most of this fails

Devices at the edges of a house are the ones that drop, and the edges are exactly where they get installed. A doorbell at the front, a lock at the back, a garage that sits behind a masonry wall. Plaster with metal lath is particularly unkind to a wireless signal, which catches out a lot of older houses here.

We test signal at each location before mounting rather than after, and where coverage is the issue we will say so rather than fitting a device that will frustrate you. Sometimes the answer is moving a router. Sometimes it is a wired run, which is real work and a permanent fix.

What we do not do is take over your network, hold your passwords or set up accounts in our name. Everything is registered to you, the written note lists what was installed and where, and nothing depends on us being reachable later.

Garages, and the door people forget

The overhead door is the largest opening in most houses and the one most often left unconnected. A controller that tells you the door is open, and lets you close it from a phone, solves the single most common household worry of the whole category. It is a small addition to this visit where the opener supports it.

Older openers frequently do not support it, and the honest answer there is that the controller is not worth buying for that unit. We will check the model before you spend anything, and where the garage is being worked on anyway it is a sensible moment to look at the opener as a whole.

Signal is the other constraint, since a detached garage behind a masonry wall is usually the worst covered spot on a property. We test before mounting rather than after, which saves the conversation where a device works beautifully in the kitchen and not at all where it is meant to live.

What we will not claim

This is not a security system and we are not a monitoring company. A video doorbell records visitors and a smart lock replaces a key, and neither one summons anybody. Households wanting monitored security should buy monitored security, and we will say so rather than letting a doorbell stand in for it.

We also make no claims about what a connected thermostat saves. It depends on the system, the house and the habits of the people in it, and any number quoted at you without knowing those three things was invented. What we will say is that a thermostat you can turn down from a hotel is a thermostat that gets turned down.

Devices carry their manufacturer’s own warranty and support. Our installation carries the coverage described in our workmanship warranty, which covers the fitting rather than the software behind it.

Lighting, scenes and the things people actually use

Four smart switches is a deliberate number. Households that automate every light in the house end up with a phone as a light switch, which is worse than a light switch, and visitors who cannot turn a lamp on. The switches worth connecting are the ones nobody can reach conveniently or the ones that should come on without being asked.

In practice that means the exterior lights, the stairwell, a basement light at the top of the stairs rather than the bottom, and whichever fixture the family argues about at bedtime. We will make suggestions during the walkthrough and then fit what you decide.

Exterior lighting on a schedule does more for a house that sits empty than any camera does, and it costs almost nothing to run. Where the lighting itself is inadequate rather than uncontrolled, that is a different job, and improving a dark lower level properly is basement lighting work.

Older relatives and the accessibility angle

Connected devices get sold as convenience and they are quietly an accessibility item as well. A lever handle solves a hand that cannot grip. A keypad lock solves a hand that cannot manage a key in the cold, which for somebody with arthritis is a genuine daily obstacle rather than an inconvenience.

Motion activated lighting belongs in the same category, since the walk to a bathroom at three in the morning is where a large share of household falls begin. It is worth fitting before anybody needs it, and it is the item families say they should have done sooner.

Where the household is going further than lighting and locks, the physical work sits in aging in place modifications, which covers railings, ramps, lever handles and the bathroom. The two packages are frequently booked as one visit.

Keeping it working in year three

Connected devices age differently from the rest of a house. Batteries need changing, manufacturers withdraw support, apps get rebuilt and a device that worked perfectly in 2024 sometimes stops being updated. That is a real downside and it is worth knowing before a household wires everything to one brand.

Our practical advice is to keep the physical fallback intact. A lock that still takes a key, a switch that still works as a switch, a thermostat somebody can operate on the wall. Anything that only works through an app is one server outage from being a problem, usually on the coldest night of the year.

The written note we leave lists every device, its location and the date it was installed, which is what makes the eventual replacement straightforward rather than archaeological. It also means the next owner of the house inherits a document rather than a mystery.

Who this suits

People who bought the devices months ago and have not opened the boxes. Households with somebody arriving when nobody is home, a dog walker, a cleaner, a contractor, where a code beats a hidden key. Owners of a property they are not always at, and families keeping an eye on a parent’s front door with that parent’s agreement.

Owners who travel for stretches get the most from it, particularly combined with somebody physically walking the building. A camera tells you something is wrong. A person is what fixes it, which is the monthly vacant home check.

Households with pets should think about where a doorbell camera points and what triggers it, since a motion alert every time a cat crosses the porch stops being useful by the second day. Wider thinking about designing around animals is in our pet friendly renovation notes.

Houses across the region

Pre war houses in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti produce the neutral wire problem, the plaster signal problem and doors that have moved a great deal over a long life. All three are solvable and all three add time, which is why we check before recommending anything.

Newer construction in Novi, Northville and South Lyon is generally straightforward, with neutrals at the switches and doors that close as designed. There the work is mostly configuration and coverage rather than wiring. The full town list is on our service area page.

What to have ready

• The devices, unboxed, with any hub or bridge they depend on
• Your network name and password, and access to the account that manages it
• Which ecosystem the household already uses, if any
• A note of any switch that controls a light from two places
• Somebody available at the end to have the apps set up on their phone

That last point matters more than it sounds. Devices installed and never configured are decorations, and the 20 minutes at the end where somebody actually uses the app with us standing there is what makes the difference between a working system and four boxes on a wall.

Booking it

The work runs through the repairs and service side of the company, on its own calendar, so a single day booking does not wait behind a larger project. Clients setting up a work space at the same time usually pair this with the home office setup package, since both involve the same walls and the same cable routes.

Detectors are the other common addition, and connected units belong in a properly planned set rather than scattered, which is covered by the fire and carbon monoxide package. Anything larger follows our normal project process.

To see what the same crews build on bigger work, View our Portfolio across Southeast Michigan. When the boxes have been sitting in a cupboard long enough, contact us now for a free quote, or book a consultation if the house needs wiring first.