Smart home: Six tech upgrades to make your house even smarter

When we arrived in Atlanta, I thought I was done with Xfinity for good. Google Fiber is nearly ubiquitous in our new neighborhood, and we were able to get hooked up with a 1GB fiber connection for a flat $70 per month in our temporary home.  

The Google Fiber lines run right past our new home, too. Unfortunately, they don't extend inside the building, which means we're back in Xfinity's clutches. I signed up for the Gigabit Extra plan (download speeds up to 1200Mbps, with uploads limited to 35Mbps); the hardware was delivered to my door on moving day, and I was up and running within minutes. 

The latest Xfinity box, the xFi Gateway 3rd Generation (aka XB7), is compact, good-looking, and full-featured, with four Gigabit Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi 6 support, and a surprisingly usable app to control it all. I'm also willing to pay the $14 monthly rent for this device. Purchasing my own certified DOCSIS 3.1 modem with W-Fi 6 support (like the ) would cost $360 or so, a payback period of more than two years. And if anything goes wrong with it, Xfinity support would tell me it's not their responsibility. Thanks, but no. 

I'll miss two things about Google Fiber. It was convenient having the ability to upload files at gigabit speeds, a feature Xfinity doesn't currently offer. That might change soon, though, with the arrival of a next generation gateway called the XB8, which promises "symmetrical gigabit speeds," along with support for Wi-Fi 6E. Or maybe I can talk Google Fiber into hooking up our building.

With a wired connection to the Xfinity gateway, I'm able to get full Gigabit Ethernet download speeds. That's more than enough most of the time, but it's not quite up to the maximum speeds that I get from the box.

One thing Xfinity barely mentions in its documentation is that one of the four ports on the back of the XB7 (the port with a faint reddish-orange line next to it) is capable of delivering up to 2.5Gbps. For $30, I added a  and connected it to my main workstation using that high-speed port. I am now getting download speeds that are consistently at or above the rated 1200Mbps I'm paying for.

(Upload speeds are, unfortunately, stuck at a pokey 40Mbps.)

We had a Nest thermostat in the apartment we've been living in for the past six months, which performed admirably. The hardware is good-looking, the user interface is easy to understand, and it's all controllable using a very slick mobile app. 

Alas, the HVAC system in our new home won't work with Nest hardware. It uses Honeywell Redlink technology to manage communication between the roof-mounted heat pump and a programmable wall thermostat. Connecting a  ($95) to the network gives me full access to the system through the Total Connect Comfort app on my mobile devices. 

Regardless of the technology, having a smart thermostat means big savings on energy bills, along with the option to control the system remotely. That comes in handy for hot summer days, when we can give the AC a break while we're gone for the day, then turn it on remotely when we're on our way home, so temperatures are cool and comfortable when we arrive. 

I've had the luxury of structured wiring in previous home offices, with Ethernet cable neatly distributed to every room for high-speed connectivity. Our new home, built around the turn of the 21st century, has no network wiring whatsoever. 

I could make do with Wi-Fi at my desk, but that's not my preferred solution. For starters, even under the best of circumstances, the maximum download speed over a Wi-Fi 6 connection using my hardware is about 600 Mbps, and for video calls and other latency-sensitive tasks, a wired connection is much more stable. 

Fortunately, there's a coaxial cable drop in the office, which offers an elegant solution thanks to MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) technology. The latest revision, MoCA 2.5, supports speeds up to 2.5 Gbps. After turning on MoCA support in the Xfinity gateway, I connected the coax port on a  to the cable outlet in the office and then plugged a four-port switch into the RJ-45 Gigabit LAN port on the MoCA adapter. The result is a stable, fast, low-latency wired network that runs at Gigabit Ethernet speeds. 

The setup was easy to configure -- literally plug and play. Because my internet gateway already supports MoCA, I only needed a single adapter. Suppose your internet connection doesn't have MoCA support built-in. In that case, you'll need to install a pair of MoCA adapters, with one adapter connected via Ethernet to the gateway so that both ends can send and receive data at full speed. 

The good news about all this technology is that it works well with any of the leading voice control platforms: Amazon's Alexa, Apple's HomeKit, and Google Home. 

We've gone all-in on the Google Home platform, which can be controlled using the Google Home app on a mobile device or with voice commands using the Google Assistant. We've got smart speakers in every room capable of understanding those voice commands for controlling lights, setting the thermostat, and managing connected devices like TVs.

Eventually, we'll add more smart stuff, with smart locks and perhaps a robot vacuum cleaner. The Google Assistant reportedly works with more than 50,000 devices from 10,000 brands, including a long list of smart home products, so we have plenty of options. 

One thing we're not likely to do anytime soon is to upgrade our appliances. Yes, it would probably be convenient to have the dryer notify me when the towels are ready to fold, and I'm sure it would be useful to have the refrigerator remind me to pick up a quart of milk while I'm at the grocery store. At several thousand dollars a pop, though, those aren't casual upgrades. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go unpack another box. I still haven't found a smart device to handle that task.