Smart Home Installation on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard

Islands that empty out every fall

Nantucket lies about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. Its county had 14,255 residents at the 2020 census, and with tourists and seasonal residents the island grows to around 80,000 people in summer. Martha's Vineyard follows the same rhythm at a larger scale: about 20,530 year-round residents in a 2023 Martha's Vineyard Commission report, more than 200,000 people in summer, and about 56 percent of the Vineyard's 14,621 homes seasonally occupied.

Getting there is part of the equation. The Steamship Authority is the only ferry operator that carries cars to the islands, running year-round to the Vineyard from Woods Hole and to Nantucket from Hyannis. If a pipe bursts in February, the person who can fix it may be on the island, but you're probably not. A house that can tell you what's happening, and shut the water off on its own, makes that gap a lot less stressful.

What we set up for island homes

• Freeze and heat alerts. Temperature sensors in the coldest rooms and any crawlspace, with a text the moment a reading drops below your threshold, so a failed boiler is a phone call, not a flood.
• Leak sensors and an automatic shutoff on the main, plus humidity monitoring for a closed-up house in the damp off-season.
• Opening and closing routines. One text to put the house in winter mode in the fall and to warm it up before your first ferry in the spring. Our guide to closing up a summer house for winter was written for the Hamptons, and it applies here almost word for word.
• Caretaker and vendor access. Codes that work only when you say so, with every entry logged. See smart homes for house managers and caretakers.
• Power and storm alerts, with the hub and network on battery backup and an optional cellular backup for when the internet goes down.

The freeze, leak and power alerts guide explains how to set thresholds, and our second-home monitoring service puts it all together.

Historic houses and salt air

Nantucket was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1966, and the National Park Service calls it the finest surviving example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town. We keep installs inside the house wherever possible. Anything that would show from the street, we flag at the walk-through so you can check with the local historic district commission first. Outside, salt air is hard on electronics, so we favor indoor placement and coastal-rated hardware for anything that has to live outdoors.

How a travel install works

Kotoh Home is based on the East End of Long Island and in Miami. We don't keep an office in Nantucket or on Martha's Vineyard; we come to you. It works in three steps:

1. Video walk-through. A free call where you show us the house, the network closet and the devices you already have. We agree what the assistant should handle and give you a fixed price.
2. Install day. We fly in, set up the hub and your private AI, secure the network, connect your accounts and devices, and show everyone in the household how to text it.
3. Care from a distance. Updates, monitoring and new routines happen remotely under your care plan. If something ever needs hands on site, we quote the trip first.

Travel is billed at cost and quoted with the project, so there are no surprises on the invoice.

Private by design

Every install puts a smart-home hub in your home that runs your devices and routines locally, so they keep working when the internet doesn't. With Private Home, the AI runs on a dedicated computer in the house that you own, and your household details never leave it. With Private Cloud, it runs an open-source model on a private server we operate for you in a U.S. data center, with no conversation logs kept and nothing sent to OpenAI, Google or Amazon; the AI chat pauses during an internet outage while the hub keeps the house running. Messages travel through Apple's or Meta's encrypted networks depending on the app you use, and connected accounts like email and calendars stay with their providers. More in our guide to local vs cloud AI assistants.

Getting started

Book a free video walk-through through the form or at hello@kotohhome.com. You'll get a fixed price before any work: Private Cloud from $4,995 or Private Home from $24,995, plus travel at cost. Care plans are $199 a month for Private Cloud, including your private AI server, or $399 for Private Home. Our home base, Shelter Island, is an island-and-ferry community too, so we know the rhythm.