Moving House With Smart Devices

Write down what you have and where it lives. Not for sentiment — for the hour on the other end when three identical white devices come out of a box and nobody remembers which was the bedroom one. A photograph of each room before you pack is faster than a list.

Find your account details now. Not the device details, the account ones. Every speaker, plug and camera is registered to an account somewhere, and reconnecting them at the new address means signing in. An account you set up four years ago with a work email you no longer have is a problem better discovered now than on moving day.

Ask the new provider one question. Whether you can choose the network name and password on the new router. If you can set them to match your old ones, nothing in the house needs touching at all — every device simply finds the network it already knows. It is the single highest-leverage question in this whole page, and almost nobody asks it.

Keep the small things together. Power adapters, mounting brackets, the little screws. These are specified per device and a generic replacement often is not adequate.

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Each device holds its own stored copy of a network name and password. At the new address that network does not exist, so every device is looking for something that is not there. Speakers, plugs, bulbs, cameras, televisions — all at once, which is why it feels dramatic.

What survives untouched: account registration, device names, room assignments, routines, preferences, music services. None of that lives on the device.

What needs doing: giving each device the new network details, one at a time, in whichever app it belongs to. There is no single place that updates them all, and a speaker cannot update a plug made by someone else.

How long it takes: a couple of minutes each once you are in rhythm. The first one is slow because you are finding the setting; the rest are quick.

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Different providers ship different router hardware, and that changes what you see when you look at the network list. A router that publishes one combined name behaves differently from one publishing separate names per band, and a mesh system supplied by a provider differs again.

None of this is a problem, but it does mean the setup screens may not look like they did last time. If you previously chose between two names ending differently and now see only one, nothing is wrong — the new router is simply arranged another way.

Worth checking on arrival: where the router has been installed. Providers tend to put it where the cable enters the building, which is frequently a hallway or a corner, and rarely the middle of the house. That decision governs coverage everywhere else.

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Remove each device from your account before you go. A device still registered to you cannot be adopted by anybody else, and the new occupant will find hardware that refuses to set up for reasons they cannot see. From their side it looks broken. From yours it is a switch you forgot to flip.

Clear anything with codes or access. A lock or a keypad may hold entry codes you issued to a cleaner or a visitor. Those should go before the keys change hands.

Leave a note about what stays. Hardwired items — a thermostat, a doorbell, a switch — are often fixtures rather than possessions, and the next occupant benefits from knowing what they have inherited and which app it belongs to.

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A speaker that worked perfectly at the old address may now sit further from the router, behind a masonry wall rather than a stud partition, or on a different floor. Signal strength is decided by distance and by what is in between, and neither of those transferred with your belongings.

What does not help: any setting inside the app. There is no option that increases signal.

What does help: moving the router more centrally if the cable allows it, adding a mesh node or a wired access point on the far side of the house, or simply putting the device somewhere with a clearer path. Older buildings with thick internal walls are the usual culprit, and no amount of configuration substitutes for a shorter path.

Worth living with the new place for a fortnight before buying anything. Coverage problems that seem urgent in week one often turn out to be one awkward corner.

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Where to go next

• Sharing a home: accounts and access
• Renting and smart devices
• Connecting to Wi-Fi at the new address

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