Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Smart Home Tech I ACTUALLY Use!”.
This video is sponsored by Best, Buy hey. What’S up, I’m kimbhd here coming at you from the new basement home studio. So I remember a couple years ago. I think it was I was approached or I was asked to take a look at these.
Like 30 million dollar New York City skyscraper Apartments, just like, maybe it could be a cool video. I thought yeah, maybe I’ll check it out that maybe there’s some cool Tech in these spaces like there’s, got to be something cool for 30 million dollars right and it turns out nope not really. There was, I think, one of them had like a an iPad Mini bolted to the wall, with like light switches or smart Shades, or something like that.
But it wasn’t that much. Basically, what I’m saying is the Smart Homes of the future that we were hoping, maybe we’d have by now, mostly don’t really exist yet um. I did a whole retro Tech episode about that, but there is some smart home Tech around here that I do actually use now.
So welcome to my current basement studio in progress, I’m going to be working on this as it gets better over time, but this is a Smart Home Tech that I currently use right now and honestly, I’m hoping this list also improves over time. This is just the stuff that I’ve gotten to work in this home and I’m gon na walk through it all now there is some stuff that is actually more baked into the home itself, like I shared recently on Twitter about getting my first zero dollar electricity bill. Now that I have solar on my roof, which is pretty incredible – maybe leave a thumbs up for that if you’re interested in a separate video on that, but for now this one’s about like the gadgets like the tangible physical stuff, you could pick up today in a Smart home now I realize some of you might be expecting that I have some sort of like crazy super high virtualized, crazy, smart home thing, with like robot vacuums everywhere and smart home stuff all over the place, and I kind of don’t like I kept it. Pretty simple, I do have mostly regular light bulbs everywhere. I have one set of smart lights, which I’m going to show you, but really the choice at the beginning, for me, was what ecosystem do? I want to jump in you sort of have to set up everything in one place, and so the choices would be Google’s, it would be apples or it would be Amazon’s with Alexa, and I chose Google’s just no regrets so far. My main phone is typically an Android phone. I like and use Google Assistant all the time, and so that’s just where I started by making sure everything would be compatible with Google home.
So many of you may remember: Google bought Nest. The downside of Google buying Nest is the nest. App was amazing, but now all these new things pretty much require the Google home app, which is missing a couple of those features. So it’s slowly gotten better over time and I’m still hoping they can add things like the ability to pair some older Nest, products and temperature, sensors, Etc, and the ability to see and adjust the nest, thermostat’s temperature schedule, I’m hoping this will come in future versions.
So I can make the most of this Nest Hardware all on a single app, but for now yeah Google ecosystem means Google home app. So most of the tech live is actually down here in this little basement studio, and that’s where I have the Hub over here, which is the Google Google Nest Hub Max. So just like the home app on my phone. This is where I control you know all the lights ask assistant for things view the doorbell camera when somebody Rings it Etc.
I’Ve had this guy for a few years and it’s been Rock Solid. Then the first big thing that this talks to that I have is Nest thermostats. These are already like the most popular things ever you’ve, probably most likely already heard of them. They learn your habits.
They let you set schedules, so it saves energy by not running things. As much when you’re away and then cooling down or heating up the house for you as you get home, I have this working hand in hand with my solar and Battery setup. It is super handy, but also Nest, isn’t just a good looking smart home thermostat. It also has Nest renew which looks at the cleanliness of the power coming into your home. It helps optimize for pulling the cleanest power anytime. You actually do pull from the grid, which, for me with solar, is a little more rare, but then next up. I also have a smart doorbell, this one’s more new to me, so this is a Google Nest. Doorbell battery, it’s super for Handy.
It’S got good camera quality, a wide enough angle that you can see the ground so anytime, there’s packages. It gives me an alert for those and it talks to the app and the nest Hub Max no problem. So if a delivery person’s at the door and I’m not home, I can just tell them through the microphone to leave the package.
I’Ve done that a few times and then it lets you specifically set your zones for where it should look to send you notifications, so you don’t get tons of unnecessary ones from cars driving by or things like that, all the classic features you’d want from a smart Doorbell now as a heads up for me, so there is battery charging required with this one and I’ve been getting only maybe three weeks or so on a charge, even after playing around with the settings to get less notifications now on their site, they’re saying even if You’Re busy it should last at least a month. Luckily, it’s easy to pop off the door and plug into USBC charge a few hours and then you’re back in business. Of course, you could always just get a hardwired version to avoid this altogether, but I cover all the other points of Entry here with Google cameras, so indoor camera and outdoor camera with floodlights nothing too special about these other than they are, of course, working in the Google, home app they’re, basically versions of the nest doorbell without the doorbell, so they’re high quality cameras, smart alerts, a recognized set of faces, and again they let you draw smart zones for where to notify you of certain movements and then the last thing on the outside.
You can get a Smart Lock installed on pretty much any door you want. So I chose this Yale Smart Lock, which is as simple as it looks. It’S an Internet connected passcode, lock and it’s awesome that you’re able to know that the door is locked from wherever you are and you can lock it if it’s not locked if you’re ever not sure.
So that’s a piece of Mind win for me. Now, uh smart lights as far as those I have two in the basement here, and these are Philip Hughes lamps. These are on the pricey side, but I got them because so there’s only one light in the middle of this room.
So when I’m at the computer and the webcam is pointing at me, I’m basically backlit by this one light. So I have one pointed at the wall over here just to brighten up on my face, which is nice and then the other ones over here here pointing at the wall to brighten up the rest of the room. So, instead of getting more lights installed, I just got them pointed at the wall. I kind of like pointing lights at the wall now the Philips Hue app also has these intricate scenes and effects, for example, there’s a candle effect or a fireplace effect which does actually work. It changes the mood of the whole room, but I typically don’t use these very much again. It’S nice knowing that they’re Internet connected, so I can change things from afar remotely with the app. I think my next upgrade will be adding a smart light switch in this room, so I don’t have to open the app every time I walk in the room.
I want to turn the lights on. I just walk in and hit the light switch like any other normal light, but anyway tying it all together. You got ta have internet around the place for it to be smart home, so I was previously using Google assistant, so they have these little pods that double actually as assistant, so they have a microphone in them. You can just ask them anything anywhere. I was using that before, but with the walls of this house and the way it’s laid out, I was not getting the speeds I wanted, so I did some research and read a lot of reviews and eventually that’s how I found these monstrosities here.
These things are netgear’s Wi-Fi mesh system. The link is below now. These are a lot bigger and a lot less friendly looking.
So hopefully you have somewhere to hide them, but the average speeds I have now across. My house have literally tripled. So I see why the reviews are so good and I’m definitely keeping them and then here’s the last somewhat interesting piece of Hardware. It’S a smart plug. So I had to look this up because I’d had this for so long, but this is the casa.
Smart Wi-Fi plug pretty simple: basically, you set it up once it’s got its own app and then it shows up in the Google home app and then it’s a Smart Wi-Fi plug. So if you want to turn a normal lamp into a smart lamp like I’ve done easy or if you want to turn the Christmas tree on and off automatically for the month of December, it’s perfect for that and it’s cheap, so yeah once that’s all set up The fun part is like really setting up everything to work. For you, that’s kind of what I’ve done in Google land, the version of a bunch of things working under one command is called routine. So in the app you can string together a bunch of tasks into one command.
So when I say, hey G, how is my day in the morning? That’S how I start the day. It reads off the weather. It shows me what’s on my calendar for the day, it tells me my phone’s battery percentage in case I forgot to charge it.
Fires up the news for the day tells me the traffic on the way to the studio and opens up all the smart Shades upstairs. It’S not much, but it’s pretty convenient to me. I I have this thing where I like to not touch my phone first thing in the morning.
I actually highly recommend trying this I get up feet touch the ground walk away from my bed without touching my phone. So it’s kind of nice to just ask Google what’s going on with my day as I’m going through the morning routine and not sit there scrolling on my phone. That’S why I start my day.
Oh a side note I also didn’t I forgot to mention Sonos beam and sonos’s uh subwoofer best sounding speakers. I’Ve ever heard, at least in my own house, and they also do work with Google Assistant, which is a nice bonus. But anyway, that’s my current smart home stuff. Coming out, you live from the half empty being built currently basement Studio. Maybe some of this is inspirational for you if you’re setting up some of the smart home stuff for the first time, but also this is the type of video where I know I’m going to get better suggestions, I’m going to get some ideas from the comments, so You guys leave on this video for stuff that I can do in the future down here and we’ll keep this updated. We’Ll keep this posted and I’ll actually be doing more videos from here once I finish getting it set up so yeah, that’s pretty much! It shout out again to Best Buy for sponsoring this video everything that I mentioned in the video can be purchased on Best Buy. So all the links are below, like I mentioned, and I’ll talk to you guys in the next one base.
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