Part 1: The Light That Wouldn’t Stay On
In Chapter 14, I mentioned that I decided to take a completely different approach to building an automated self-storage facility.
Instead of traditional control systems, I planned to use smart cameras, smart lighting, and a cloud server to run everything.
To make this work, I hired an Indian freelancer to build the cloud logic.
During development, he called me several times to check whether the devices were responding to commands sent through the cloud.
At first, everything looked promising.
Smart locks received passwords automatically.
Access codes were enabled and disabled correctly.
Lights switched on when cameras detected movement.
For a brief moment, I thought:
Maybe I’ve just built a high-tech system at a fraction of the cost of my competitors.
That moment didn’t last long.
The cloud logic suddenly went completely wild.
Every five minutes, the system would stubbornly switch our lights off.
My two children found it hilarious.
My wife did not.
The most embarrassing moment came when my wife invited her cousin and three children over for dinner. The lights kept turning themselves off in the middle of the evening.
My reputation as the household “technology expert” did not survive that night.
To make things worse, the freelancer refused to fix the issue unless I paid him more money.
Originally, we agreed on £200 for the demo at my house and £2,000 for the full system at the storage facility.
But like many freelancers, he kept asking for additional payments whenever he claimed a “breakthrough.” By this point, I had already paid him £2,000, even though the demo still wasn’t working properly.
So I was left with a difficult question:
Do I pay more and hope it gets fixed?
Or admit that this is beyond my capability — both technically and financially?
Next Chapter: The Broken Cloud Logic — Part 2: What Is a Tuya Developer Account? and Why Do I Need It?
free to follow my BSS journey — a real, unfiltered account of building an independent self-storage business in the UK, one problem, mistake, and hard-won solution at a time.
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