Smart Home and Home Network Installation in Syracuse and Central New York

1. The network

   Access points placed for the floor plan, wired backhaul where a cable can be run, and a gateway that can separate traffic into its own networks. Everything above this layer depends on it.

2. The devices

   Cameras, video doorbells, smart locks, lighting, and thermostats, chosen for the house and the wiring that is actually there, not for a catalogue page.

3. The setup

   Naming, grouping, app access for the people who live there, and automations that run on a schedule or a sensor instead of on somebody remembering.

4. The support

   One local firm that answers the phone in year two. Express IT Solutions already runs a support desk, so a system that stopped working is the core product rather than an exception.

Four ways to get a smart home installed in Central New York, compared on structure rather than on price. No company other than Express IT Solutions is named in a cell, so nothing here can become a claim about a specific firm.

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The work itself

What a job actually looks like, start to finish

Six stages. Most of the value is in the first one and the last one, and most of the labor is in the middle. None of it is glamorous, and all of it is the part that decides whether the system still works in three years.

1. The site survey

   We come to the house. It takes a couple of hours in a normal home and longer in a big one, and it is free and it commits you to nothing.

   We walk it room by room with the floor plan and note where a device is actually wanted, which is almost never where a catalog would put one. We measure signal in each of those rooms rather than guessing, including the garage, the basement and any outbuilding, because a device sitting on a weak signal fails intermittently and intermittent failure is the hardest kind to diagnose later. We find where the internet enters the building and what the connection actually is. We look at what is already in the walls, because a lot of Central New York housing stock has one generation of cable in it already and some of it is usable. We look at the panel and the existing doorbell transformer. We look at whether the attic is walkable in August and whether the basement is finished, because those two facts change what a cable run costs in hours more than anything else. We look at the doors: how they sit, how they swing, whether they are wood or metal or glass, because that decides the lock. And we list what smart devices you already own, what carries over, and what is worth replacing and why. Nothing is replaced to make a sale.

   You get a written scope out of it. No charge, no obligation, and no pressure in the room.

2. What gets decided before anyone drills anything

   This is the stage that separates a system that works from one that mostly works. Nine decisions get made and written down.

   Where the equipment lives. Somewhere with airflow, somewhere a person can reach, and not on the floor of a basement that takes water. This is a real decision and it gets made once.

   Which console. Sized against the camera count, not against a price. Ubiquiti publishes what each console will carry and we plan to that table, because the failure mode of getting it wrong is missing recordings rather than a slow menu (Ubiquiti, help.ui.com).

   How much storage, and how long you keep footage. Retention is arithmetic, and it is done against usable capacity rather than the number on the box. Ubiquiti's basic protection leaves 67 to 75 percent of raw capacity usable, and the better performing option leaves 50 percent (Ubiquiti, help.ui.com). Drives have to be 1 TB or larger CMR at 7200 RPM, and Ubiquiti warns against 5400 RPM drives in multi bay consoles (Ubiquiti, help.ui.com). We tell you the honest number of days before we order anything, not after.

   The PoE budget. Every powered device on the plan gets its wattage added up against what the switch will actually deliver given how the switch itself is fed. This one line prevents the most common month two failure.

   Which runs are worth pulling, and which rooms get a wireless link instead. Ubiquiti states that access points can mesh wirelessly to one another so dead zones are eliminated without running additional cabling (Ubiquiti, ui.com/wifi), and that is a genuine option, not a consolation prize. But wired is better where wired is possible, and the survey says which is which in your house rather than in general.

   How many networks, and what each one can reach. Typically three: the family devices, the work laptop and its corporate VPN, and everything cheap. Ubiquiti's zone based firewall groups networks into LAN, WAN, Guest and IoT zones so the rules are written once for a zone instead of device by device (Ubiquiti, ui.com/cloud-gateways).

   Camera placement and what each camera is for. A camera is not a decoration and it is not a deterrent poster. Each one gets a job written next to it: the driveway approach, the side door, the package landing spot. Mounting height and angle follow from the job. A camera mounted where it looks tidy and points at a roofline is a camera nobody ever gets anything useful out of.

   Fail safe or fail secure, per door. Decided deliberately, one door at a time, and written down.

   What happens when things fail. Which devices keep working with the internet down, which stop, and what sits on battery backup. Ubiquiti's Mission Critical switch is a PoE switch with a 368Wh battery inside it and two AC outlets on the back, which is enough to hold up the modem and the gateway along with the powered devices (Ubiquiti, help.ui.com). Whether a house needs that is a conversation, not an assumption.

3. Wiring day

   This is the unglamorous part and it is most of the physical work.

   Cable gets pulled. That means a fish tape, a drill, holes in top plates, an attic that is 130 degrees in July and full of blown insulation in every month, and a crawlspace nobody has been in since the house was built. It means going around a plaster and lath wall rather than through it, because plaster does not patch invisibly and anyone who tells you it does has not done it. It means asking before every penetration, and it means exterior holes get sealed properly on the way out, because a camera lead is a path for water and for mice and both of those cost more than the camera.

   Every run gets terminated at both ends, labeled at both ends in a way a stranger could read, landed on a patch panel rather than a pile, and tested. Not that the light came on. Tested. A run that mostly works is a service call in eighteen months.

   Cameras get mounted for the scene, not for the symmetry. That usually means lower than people expect and angled harder than people expect, because a face at 40 feet on a wide lens is not a face. The G6 Bullet and Turret give a horizontal field of view of about 110 degrees, which covers a lot of ground and does not magnify anything, so the camera has to be close to what it is meant to see (Ubiquiti, techspecs.ui.com).

   Doors get their hub, reader and lock, with the lock wire in 18 AWG and the total run kept inside 100 meters. Readers with a camera in them go at 48 inches, which is the height Ubiquiti states captures the faces of people up to 6 feet tall including wheelchair users (Ubiquiti, help.ui.com).

   If a job needs line voltage work, a licensed electrician does that part. We are an IT and network company and we say so on this page for a reason.

4. Configuration

   The devices come up. Firmware goes on first, before anything is configured, because feature availability across this ecosystem is gated on specific application and firmware versions and configuring an out of date device is work you do twice.

   Then, in order: every device named for where it physically is, so that a year from now Garage AP means the access point in the garage. The networks built and the rules between them written. The wireless networks created, with the guest network actually isolated instead of just differently named. Recording mode set per camera, always on where always on is worth the disk and detections only where it is not, with the pre and post event buffers set so a clip does not start at the moment of interest. Retention set against the arithmetic from stage two. Unlock methods enabled and credentials issued to the actual people, with the visitor QR code path explained to whoever manages the house. Access hubs paired to the cameras that watch those doors, so every unlock carries its footage.

   Notifications get tuned, and this matters more than it sounds. A system that notifies on every motion event is a system whose notifications get switched off inside a week, and a notification nobody reads is worth nothing. We tune to the detections that mean something, and we tune again a couple of weeks in once you have lived with it.

   Remote access gets set up through Ubiquiti's own encrypted path. No port forwarded to a camera. Ever. An open port to a camera is a standing invitation and it is still the most common shortcut in this industry.

   Then we break it on purpose. Pull the internet and confirm the recording keeps running and the doors still open. Pull the power and confirm what comes back up, in what order, and how long it takes. You should find out what an outage looks like on the day we are standing there, not at 11pm in February.

5. Handover

   You get the credentials. The local administrator account for your own console is yours, and it is written down somewhere you can find it. This is not a courtesy, it is the point: the system is standard networking hardware with a local admin account you hold, so any competent network technician can take it over. That is deliberately different from a platform where the programming tools live with the company that installed it.

   You get a photograph of the labeled patch panel and a list of what is plugged where. You get an as built, which is the scope from stage one corrected to match what actually happened, because something always changes when a wall turns out to be a chase.

   Then we sit down at the kitchen table for twenty minutes and show you four things, because these are the four things people actually need and nothing else sticks on day one: how to pull up a clip and export it, how to add a person and take a person away, what the notification you will get looks like and what it means, and what to do first when something goes offline.

   And you get the honest list. What will need attention and roughly when. The drive is a consumable. The sensor batteries are rated up to six years, not forever (Ubiquiti, techspecs.ui.com). Firmware needs to keep moving. None of that is a surprise if somebody says it out loud in month zero.

6. What support looks like after

   This is the part an AV project business and an alarm monitoring business are both structurally bad at, and it is the reason an IT company is a different animal. An integrator's revenue arrives when they install and stops when they leave. A monitoring company's recurring revenue is tied to a central station, not to whether your app works. For a managed IT firm, a system that stopped working is not an exception case. It is the core product, and there is already a desk that does it.

   In practice that means: we look at it remotely first, because most of it can be fixed remotely and that is faster for everybody. Firmware gets kept current on a schedule rather than whenever somebody remembers, because unpatched devices stay open and because half this ecosystem's features are gated on versions. Storage gets watched, so a drive is replaced before it takes the recordings with it rather than after. And when it needs a person in the house, a person comes to the house, and it is a local phone number with a person on the end of it.

   We have been doing exactly this kind of support work for Central New York homes and businesses since 2005. The smart home is a network with devices hanging off it, and the support model is the same one we already run.

1. You want somebody watching the house at two in the morning

   Then this is not it, and we will say so before you buy rather than after. We do not operate a central station, we do not dispatch police or fire, and nobody at our office is watching your cameras. What you get from a locally recorded system is a recording and a notification on your own phone. If what you actually want is a monitored alarm with a human being who responds and dispatches, that is a monitoring company's product and it is a legitimate thing to want. Hire one for that. We will build the network under it and work alongside them, and we are not offended by the question.

2. You want one app that runs your lighting scenes, your shades, your audio and your voice assistant

   UniFi is not a lighting or AV control system and it does not replace a dedicated control platform. Ubiquiti's own automation layer for connected devices is single action: to schedule a device to turn on and off at set times, Ubiquiti states you have to build two separate automations, one for each (Ubiquiti, help.ui.com). There is no scene engine and no conditional logic in it. There is also no Ubiquiti documented Alexa, Google Home, HomeKit, Matter or Thread integration for UniFi cameras, doors or sensors, so if telling a speaker to show you the front door is the reason you are buying, this is the wrong system. Dedicated lighting and control platforms exist and are programmed by AV integrators who do that for a living, and there are good ones locally. Hire them for that layer. We are glad to build the network underneath it and to be honest about which parts talk to which.

3. You want the cheapest thing available today, or a lock you can install in ten minutes

   A recorder and real cameras cost more on day one than a doorbell off a shelf, and we do not pretend otherwise. The trade you are making is a higher cost up front against no recurring fee and ownership of your own footage, and whether that trade is worth it depends on how long you intend to live in the house. Two honest additions to that. Local recording is not a backup: if the house burns down or the recorder is stolen, the local copy goes with it, which is a genuine advantage cloud recording has and the reason we talk about offsite copies and where the recorder physically sits. And hard drives are a consumable that will need replacing. Separately: there is no UniFi retrofit deadbolt. Door access here means a hub, a reader, a wired lock and cable pulled to it, which is exactly why it is reliable and exactly why it is not a weekend project. If a battery deadbolt off a shelf is what you want, buy one, and we will put it on the network properly.

Every price in this table is the vendor's own published figure on the vendor's own page, linked in the cell, and correct as fetched on 13 August 2026. Prices change, so check the link. Express IT Solutions publishes no prices, and nothing in this table is an Express IT Solutions figure or implies one.

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• Syracuse

  Century old city houses with plaster over lath and a lot of interior masonry. Coverage here is a placement problem, not a hardware problem.

• Fayetteville

  Our own town. The office is on East Genesee St, so a Fayetteville survey is a short drive and the follow up visit is the easiest one on this list to schedule.

• Baldwinsville

  Larger lots, and more detached garages and outbuildings than the inner ring towns, which turns coverage into a cable question rather than a router question.

• Cazenovia

  Older housing stock around the village, much of it plaster over metal lath. That one construction detail is the most common reason a single router does not cover the house.

• Chittenango

  Longer driveways and more distance between the house and the garage, so the doorbell, the gate and the driveway camera are usually the first cable runs anyone talks about.

• Lafayette

  Rural properties and hilltop lots where the internet service itself varies. We work behind whatever service is already there, and the survey records what the connection actually is first.

• Jamesville

  Hilly ground, split levels and walkout basements, where the finished lower level is where the office ended up and where coverage was never planned for.

• Liverpool

  A mix of post war ranches and newer builds, and a lot of finished basements. Coverage down there gets planned from the basement out, not hoped for from upstairs.

• Manlius

  Professional households with a real home office and an employer issued laptop, which is exactly the case where the work network and the family network should not be one network.

• Minoa

  Smaller village lots where a neighbour's wireless sits in the same channels as yours. Channel planning and access point placement do more here than a bigger radio.

• Tully

  The furthest south of the towns we cover regularly, with real distance between buildings. Anything crossing a yard is a cable decision or a point to point decision, decided on the survey.