Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to make a smart home for $200”.
Even just a few years ago, smart homes were not a thing. Or they were, but you had to be a total nerd or super rich to have one. Now everything’s different.. If you have an Amazon Echo, you have the beginning of a smart home.. If you have any appliance, you can turn on or off from your phone.
You have part of a smart home.. It turns out that smart homes are really easy to start building now a days., And you can do some pretty cool things with them. Like control your lights, your heating, your TV. You’re, often more limited by what would be dumb and excessive than what you actually want to do.. So how do you get started? We’Re gon na go to my apartment and I’m going to show you what you can do for under $ 200 dollars to make you’re home a little bit. Smarter. (, snappy, upbeat music, ), Alright, so the first place to start is a voice. Assistant.
I’ll admit these. Can be kinda creepy, but once you start to get used to them, they actually turn into a fun and pretty convenient way to control your stuff.. I chose the Google Home Mini., It’s $ 49, but they’re on sale all the time, so don’t pay that much..
Obviously, you can use this to look stuff up or play music or podcasts, but I mostly use mine to turn my lights and air conditioner on and off.. I could just use a button or do it in my phone as I see a lot more convenient a lot of the time, especially if I’m on my way out the door or going to bed.. Now we’re going to get into the smart lights and how. I turned a dumb air conditioner into a smart one, but before I do that, I want to talk about how all these devices are talking to each other.’Cause. There’S a lot going on and it can get pretty confusing. (, energetic, music, ) You’re, probably familiar with Bluetooth and Wi-fi.. Bluetooth is great for things like fitness, trackers, headphones mice and keyboards., And Wi-fi is great for well bringing internet to your laptop smartphone, smart tv and so on., But they’re using different gagets for a reason.
They’re designed to do different. Things. Bluetooth is pretty slow at transferring data and it can’t travel very far, but it doesn’t use a ton of power.. Wi-Fi is really fast and can travel farther, but it does use a ton of power.. There’S really only one distinction that you have to remember.: Bluetooth gadgets usually aren’t connected to the internet, so unless you connect them to some kind of hub, you can’t control them, while you’re out of the home., Where things get more complicated, is when you get deeper into Smart home tech. Turns out Bluetooth and Wi-fi just don’t fit the bill for everything.. Neither are great for things like lightbulbs that need to be reached at the way, far end of the house.. For that there are other wireless technologies like Zigbee and Z-wave..
These use really tiny amounts of energy., So you can have sensors sitting around on battery power for months., But that means they’re super slow at transmitting data. They’re also built to travel much farther because their messages can jump around., So one lightbulb can transmit an off command To the next one and the next one and so on., What this means is that, if you’re buying something you’ll have to make sure it actually works with your stuff., One of the things that you’re gon na need a hub for is smart lights.. I think the best smart lights are from Philips Hue and you’ll want to start with their starter kit, because it comes with that hub, which is gon na hook up to your router, so that everything can talk.
Together., The starter kit costs $ 64 dollars.. It comes with a bunch of bulbs and while Philips has a bunch of like color changing stuff too., Don’t worry about that., It’s just more than you. Need..
Smart lights are great for just a bunch of little conveniences.. You can have them automatically come on when you come home or when the sun goes down.. I bet you have at least one speaker in your house that isn’t smart or could be smarter.
For $ 35. You can plug a Chromecast Audio into it and it will be able to do a lot more.. So I have this two speaker system – here., It’s old, it’s from 2004 or something, but if I hook the Chromecast Audio up by pluging into the AUX port, I can now control it from my phone or do this I can say: “: Hey, Google play Childish Gambino On those speakers” [, Google Voice, ], Alright, Donald Glover from Spotify …, And there we go. [ Google Voice ] Playing on both speakers. ( “. This is America” playing on the speakers, ), Alright.
So the last thing is a smart plug.. It’S basically just an individual outlet that you can plug something into and then turn on and off.. I got TP-link’s Kasa.
You can get a two pack of them for $ 45 bucks.. So these things are really cool because they’re all at once, really versitle but also really limited, because they literally just turn things on and off.. So I connected my two air conditioners to them so that I can control them and turn them on when I’m coming home.
From work. Now some caveats., They are literally just killing power to these things and turning them back on.. They can’t control anything at all., So my air conditioner, it turns out, will automatically resume it’s prior state when it turns back on.. So because of that, this works out really well, because I can just flip it on and it’s just gon na start making things cool again.. You can use this for things like fans and lamps too, that are just gon na automatically resume their same state.. So that’s it! That’S just about $ 200 dollars., But there’s a lot more.
You can do with the stuff you already have. If you want to get a little bit more complicated. Using apps in your phone, you can hook things together to do even more..
There’S a service called IFTTT If This Than That. That’s really good for this.. So, for instance, I set up a rule saying that, if it’s over 80 degrees in Brooklyn, my air conditioner will automatically turn on and you can do that for all kinds of stuff.
With your lights, with your speakers. Now, I really think the best way to get into your smart home is to do it piece by piece like this.. Buy one thing see how it works for you and then get whatever else makes sense. Next. Now I went with the Google Home Mini, but it might make more sense for you to go with Alexa or if you use tons of Apple devices, to go with the HomeKit system.
Just start with. Whatever works for you and then add on bit by bit and before you know it, you’re gon na have a much smarter, home., Hey thanks for watching.. If you like, what we’re doing you might like what our friends at Life Noggin are doing., They make a bunch of animations explainging stuff like who is winning the global tech race. .