A Bristol man who invested eight hundred pounds in smart home technology to save time now dedicates between two and four hours each week to turning his router off and on again.
James Whitmore, 34, purchased seventeen connected devices over the past eighteen months. These included three smart lightbulbs, two smart plugs, a video doorbell, a smart thermostat, a robot hoover that gets stuck under the sofa, and a wifi-enabled kettle that he has described as “absolutely pointless” on four separate occasions.
The kettle cost sixty-two pounds.
Whitmore’s problems began in earnest after adding a smart smoke alarm to his network in February. The alarm, which sends push notifications to his phone, now alerts him six times daily that it has disconnected. It has never alerted him to smoke.
“I just wanted to turn the heating on from the bus,” Whitmore told reporters whilst waiting for his living room lights to reconnect. “Now I’ve got passwords for nine different apps, firmware updates that only install between 2am and 4am, and a doorbell that announces visitors thirty seconds after they’ve left.”
His partner moved out in March. She took the smart speaker.
Dr Rebecca Mortimer, a technology researcher at Imperial College London, said the issue was entirely predictable. “The average home router can handle approximately twenty to thirty devices before performance degrades significantly,” she explained. “Mr Whitmore has thirty-four connected devices, including his phone, laptop, and a digital radio he forgot was connected in 2019.”
The radio has been off for three years but still shows up as active on the network.
Whitmore maintains four separate accounts across three competing smart home ecosystems. His lightbulbs cannot communicate with his thermostat. His thermostat cannot communicate with his door lock. Nothing can communicate with the robot hoover, which speaks only Mandarin and has been trying to update its software since January.
“The promise was convenience,” said Martin Ashworth, consumer technology editor at Which? magazine. “The reality is a man standing in his kitchen at half past eleven on a Wednesday night, having an argument with a kettle.”
Whitmore briefly considered simplifying his setup by removing some devices. He spent two hours researching which ones to disconnect, then accidentally factory-reset his thermostat and had to spend another ninety minutes on hold with customer support.
The support agent was a chatbot.
He has since added a smart doormat to his Amazon wishlist. It monitors footfall and sends weekly reports. The reports require a paid subscription after the first month.