Since we were both in IT in a prior life, we love tinkering in technology and home automation was an fun topic for us to focus on. Home automation has really taken off in the last few years, with huge benefits to us short term rental owners.
Adding even the most basic home automation in your STR will change your life! LOL
Even if you aren’t a techie, it would be time well invested for you to spend some time on home automation.
In this post I’ll go over some of the basic components that are a MUST (in my eyes) in an STR.
If this is your first time digging into the home automation realm, here’s a little insight into the different types of home automation. In our days there’s pretty much three types of home automation devices:
WiFi – The WiFi devices connect directly to your WiFi and have an app you install on your phone that allows you to control the device. If you have no interest in doing advanced automation and want to stick to the basics WiFi is what you should stick to. You’ll install the device, it’ll connect to your WiFi and you’ll be able to control it using an app on your cellphone. For example, if you have a wifi door lock and wifi thermostats you’ll have an app for your door lock and another app for the thermostats.
ZWave and Zigbee – These are two different device types that DO NOT talk to each other, I just lumped them together since they have the same requirement. Both ZWave and Zigbee devices require a hub to work. A ZWave device would need a ZWave hub and a Zigbee device would need a Zigbee hub.
The device connects to the hub wirelessly and the hub connects it to the internet. We personally have WiFi, ZWave and Zigbee devices in our STRs. The hub we use is able to connect to all of them.
For simplicities sake, if you’re not planning on getting complicated with your home automation then skip the ZWave and Zigbee devices.
Here’s our list of the basic STR Home Automation devices:
Automated Door Lock
This is the first piece of automation you should have. There is no reason in this day and age for you to deal with giving guests copies of the keys and worry about them losing them or making copies.
The automated door lock will give you the ability to set the door code to a different code for each guest (we set it to the last 4 digits of the guest’s phone #), lock/unlock the door remotely, and never have to worry about a guest losing the keys… Well almost never. If the battery in your door lock dies you’ll have to give them access to your back-up keys.
There are all kind of automated locks on the market today, we have personally had great success with Schlage.
We use Schlage door locks in all our properties. One great thing with Schlage is the lifetime warranty, If the lock fails you can reach out to them and they send you a replacement. The lock pictured here died on us after 8 years, I sent Schlage an email and we got a replacement sent to us.
A Note On The Lock Above: That lock is a ZWave Door lock, which requires a ZWave Hub to control it. If you want to mimic what we did and do more advanced automation , that is the door lock we use and would recommend.
If you plan on sticking to the basics and have no intention of getting fancy with your home automation then you can get the model that is a WiFi lock. With the WiFi lock you connect it to your WiFi network, install an app on your phone to control it and you’re off to the races!
Tip: These door locks use batteries, and it may happen that the lock runs out of juice right before your guest enters their door code. Because of that, it’s important to have a lockbox with the key to open the lock… just in case.
We actually have two lockboxes each with different codes and we don’t give the guests the code for either of the backup keys unless they need them.
If they do need to use the backup key make sure to ask them to return the key to the lockbox at the end of their stay.
We have one on the wall close to the front door and another in the back of the house. That way we have a back up of a back up. Just in case someone uses the key and forgets to return it in it’s proper place.
Thermostat
This is another big must! Every thermostat in your short term rental should be a smart thermostat.
They will give you the ability set the temperature for guests coming or if you won’t have guests at the house then you can set the thermostats to away.
Again, there are a ton of options with wifi thermostats. Each of our houses currently has a different thermostat. We have ZWave Trane, WiFi Lennox and WiFi Honeywell thermostats. They all work with the hub we use.
Out of the ones we use, I like the Lennox thermostats the best.
Cameras
This isn’t so much in the home automation realm, but it is a must have for vacation rentals.
Cameras give you piece of mind when your property is sitting vacant. It also allows you to know when someone is around your property, check when the cleaners get to the house, see if the handyman is there yet, etc…
Just make sure to install them in areas that wouldn’t be considered an invasion of privacy. Our cameras are by the front door and along each side of the houses. No cameras by the pool enclosure or indoors.
We use Arlo cameras in our houses. Again tons of choices out there, but Arlo has worked well for us.
When we purchased our first Arlo cameras it was from Costco and the bundle included an Arlo Hub. There is no need for the Hub unless you’re going to save the footage to an external device.
So, going forward when we install cameras in an STR we just buy the cameras and connect the cameras directly to the WiFi. It works perfectly.
They also have small solar panels you can use to charge the cameras. We use those on the sides of the house were there is no outlet, otherwise we buy a long extension cord to plug it in an external outlet.
Tip: If you do decide to install cameras, make sure to indicate that in your Airbnb listing. Airbnb is pretty touchy about having cameras anywhere without disclosing it. We also have it in our rental agreement that there are camera on the outside of the house, and they are there not for their security but to monitor the house when no one is there. That way if God forbid, something happens you aren’t on the hook because you didn’t catch it on the security cameras.
Conclusion
So that’s it, installing those three things in your STR will improve the STR experience for both you and your guests!
Now, if you have even a little bit of interest in doing more automation than a door lock and thermostats, make sure to check out the next post, Advanced Automation.
There I’ll go over the Hub we use in each house along with the additional home automation devices we install in our STRs.
Then in future posts I’ll cover the automations we setup.
Things like:
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- Setting the thermostats to guests coming or guests away based on the calendar
- Turning on all the common area lights when a guest first opens the front door
- Turning off/on the thermostats based on doors open for too long
- Turning the pool heat on/off based on guests coming or when guests are away
- Send us a text when it’s a back to back, it’s 10:30am and the cleaners still aren’t at the house
- Automatically set the door code to the last 4 digits of the next guest’s phone number
- If guests haven’t arrived after sunset turn on the front entrance light
- Turn on/off the exterior front lights based on sunrise/sunset
- Turn the spa off after x number of hours
- Turn off the pool light at sunrise
- Cleaners were at the house, they just locked the front door and the back door is still open
- Cleaners locked the front door, set the thermostats to guest coming if they are scheduled today otherwise set to away
- Keep track of thermostat, pool and spa temps over time with pretty graphs
And many, many other nifty automations. Hopefully the list above peeked your curiosity into more advanced automation. 🙂
