• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 30, 2016

A lot of the creating of a smart home for a consumer is hardly a do-it-yourself proposition.

It looks like the most consumer satisfaction in smart home device setup comes from others who provide for the installation of devices rather than from consumers doing the tasks themselves.

While some consumers are up to the challenge of setting up their own smart home devices, the most satisfaction seems to come when service providers do all the work, based on a new survey.

It also turns out that those who have others install their systems focus three to four times more on home security than do-it-yourselfers, according to the report by Argus Insights, which monitored more than 56,000 app and device reviews.

Self-installing consumers, on the other hand, have climate control systems on the top of their minds.

But whether smart home devices are set up by homeowners or some outside entity, the number of smart homes is growing.

The number of smart homes in North America and Europe reached 18 million last year, according to new research from Berg Insight.

Most (13 million) of those smart homes are in North America, a growth of 56% from a year earlier.

North American smart home growth is now predicted to reach 46 million within four years, according to Berg.

The most successful products on the smart home market include smart thermostats, security systems, smart light bulbs, network cameras and multi-room audio systems.

Amazon’s Echo continues to dominate as the most popular hub for a smart home, at least at the moment.

There also continues to be a relatively healthy number of brands creating or marketing various products. These include Philips Lighting, Honeywell, Belkin, Nest, Ecobee, MyFox, Sonos, Canary, Netatmo and D-Link

For whole-home smart home systems, such as those dealing with energy, security and communication services, there are companies including Vivint, ADT, Comcast, Control4 and AT&T in North America.

No matter how it gets done or who does it, more and more homes are getting to be made smart.