Everything my Smart Home Can Do in 2021

hey everybody welcome to the tech with brett smart home tour 2021 come on inside in today's video i'm going to walk you through my entire smart home show you all the different devices i use and the automations i have set up and hopefully give you ideas for yours let's get started [Music] welcome to my smart home i have been building this for the last four years while not perfect it's come pretty far and this is kind of a yearly video that i make to show you the progress now i do want to disclose that in this video many of the products were given to me um for review or i've been sponsored in previous videos but today's video is not sponsored and so i'm going to say whatever i want about the products that i have been using now the first thing i wanted to mention is to have an effective smart home there's really four things that you need for your devices one is your devices need to have manual control so here this light i can instantly turn it on and off with the light switch the second thing is to be able to control the lights by voice so you can ask google or amazon or whatever voice assistant you want to use to control the lights the third one would be automation so with an automation you can have certain triggers so there when i walked into this room i have a motion sensor that automatically turns on the lights and then the fourth way is maybe using your phone to control the device or even using other like remotes or buttons to use and i'll explain those during this video so those are kind of the different things that i'll be talking about so first let's start here in the living room and actually perfect timing my zebra blind smart shades turn off or close every day at sunset so i didn't have to do anything automatically those clothes every single day and in the morning they turn on or open up every morning at a set time i could also have them set on an automation or a schedule for opening up so those have been one of our favorite devices having these smart shades there's no cords or any hazards for the kids these ones are battery powered if i were to build a house i would love to have some wired into the wall so that we didn't have to keep replacing the batteries and so far these have been lasting about every six months we have to replenish them so other devices i have in here here i have a levington smart switch that was on the light above that i could turn on and off and then over here i have a wemo smart plug that turns that on and off and so if you come over here this is another device so i could say turn on the lights so this is a nice device by govi they just sent it to me and you can do all kinds of things with this you can change color you can have different scenes and so it's pretty fun now i also have the nest hub here where this is kind of the hub for this room instantly control the lights and so on over here i have my smartthings motion sensor so that is the sensor that automatically was able to turn on the light in this room with the google home by itself it can't do that so i do have a smartthings hub in the basement that is able to do certain things like that and we'll get to those hubs in a little bit so that is this room let's go ahead and turn off the lights in here and move on to the next one hey google turn off the lights all right welcome to the smart kitchen so in here we have a few different things going on over here we have our manual control where i have the lights that i can instantly turn on and off i do have a wemo let's see dimmer right here so i can instantly dim the lights in the kitchen just like that they've worked pretty good my one complaint about them is they don't work within smart things so i can't turn them on to different automations in the smartthings ecosystem so all of the other lights in here are automated turn off the lights so sorry it looks like two lights aren't available right now sometimes that happens these lights up here didn't turn off turn on the lights now in here we use the nest hub max as our main device to control everything in here it's nice that we can use for video calls and other things next over here this is a new device this is a smart faucet by moen so this is really cool a lot of people are like well why do you need a smart faucet well you can ask google to give you two cups of water it will instantly give you two cups of water ask moen to fill water bottle okay here's moen dispensing 50.7 ounces now from kitchen faucet and so previously i set up my water bottle in the app to tell it exactly how much water i need for this and then it will go until it fills it up you can also set presets on temperature and certain things like that and then you just wave your hand over the sensor on top for it to dispense the water and so there it turned off without me having to touch or do anything it was automatically able to dispense the water and it was the perfect amount the sensor right here i can just wave and easily turn on and off the sensor as well so let's talk about uh the smart display right here so i mainly use google assistant in my smart home it just kind of works the best i like everything that google offers so with this display i have instant control of all my devices so once you come in here close so i can instantly adjust the lights in the room just by tapping here i can turn those lights off if i tap again i can turn those on and then here i can control the lights in the rest of my home so if i tap on the lights here it's going to show every light that i have in every room in my house and i can instantly turn them on and off which is really nice that i have this hub where not only can i control things by voice but i can also control everything without using my voice right here on the display next we have smart cameras in the home so here you can see i have a few different cameras i like the nest camera so here if i want to look out the front door i can just tap on that and i can see what's happening out the front door if somebody rings my nest to low doorbell that you saw at the beginning this will automatically pop up so i can see who's at the door and if i want to talk to the doorbell i just tap right here and now i'm talking out to the front door and i can hear them in their response now here you can see i have smart locks i can change my nest thermostat i can control speakers and devices i have nest wi-fi so i can check my wi-fi speed and other things like that even pause the wi-fi and then here we have routines so routines is like the automations i kind of talked about in the beginning and really there's so much you can do with the nest hub max so i like having this as kind of the main hub for my smart home now over here behind you again these are just a wemo light switch that turns this on and off and i recently reviewed this this is the lenovo smart frame so this allows you to show a clock or different photos that you have from google photos and it will automatically display those photos and it will change and you can also set up different things that it will go to so it's really nice to have a big bright picture of all the photos you've been taking with your phone it's been really fun to have around one other device that i have in here is a philips hue recessed light so that's the light right there and this light i can turn it on and off right here so it has a set scene and i'm using the lutron aurora dimmer to control the light i want to show you one of my favorite automations i have here in the kitchen so over by the sink i have a philips hue recessed light and right here i have a phillips hue motion sensor so when i walk in night to come get a snack or fill up the milk bottle or whatever it is that light automatically turns on and when we leave it automatically turns off without us having to do anything and i really like how i can set it at a nice dim level so it's not too blinding and we don't have to fiddle with any of the lights or the voice assistant now one other thing that i have here in my kitchen turn on the lights is let's say it's getting late at night and we have a lot of windows here and we want it a little privacy close the kitchen blinds all right let's get my smart ones okay so thanks to my smart blinds i have all of these set up where they are automatically able to close now i also have them set up on automations where they close at night automatically and open in the morning and during the day at certain times of the day when it's too hot right here it automatically close them as well to save on energy in the home for the kitchen i also have a few controls here so i talked about having a remote to control things so over there i can control the sink light right there but i also have this button that allows me to control the sink if i want to control the blinds i also have a control for that as well and then here i can control my fan and the hall lights now one thing about fans this is a lutron caseta smart fan control but i would say the best way to have a fan is if you have a light and a fan switch if they're separate then i would get one of these so that you could automate both of them but that's something i need to explore a little more on the best way to have a smart fan so down here in the hall it's a caseta dimmer as well so i can dim the lights to anything i want them to be so it's nice at night i have them automatically turn on to a low setting so we can see down the hall and then i have them automatically turn off right here this is how i can control all the heating and cooling in my house i use the nest thermostat this is the new style i really like how it works you can instantly change the temperature by swiping up and down on the side or i can tap to change different modes and such so next we have the uh what is this the laundry room so in the laundry room it does have a smart bulb but it's much easier to just flip the light on and off because it's such a small room now i mentioned i have nest wi-fi here is our second nest wi-fi point so this also acts as a google home speaker so if i wanted to play music in here while i'm doing laundry we are able to do that it is nice to have the mini speaker in it we just don't use it a ton now here these are the first automated appliance that i have so these are samsung washer and dryer and they work with smart things so is what we have happen is whenever a wash is done or the dryer is done it will automatically notify us on our phones via smart things saying hey your washer is done or the dryer's complete so we know it's time to come and switch the laundry now there may be a few more things that you can do with that you can remotely start a wash but we found that just the notification is the most helpful to know that we need to come and change the laundry now next heading over here into the bathroom this is another one of my favorite automations so whenever we come into the bathroom the lights automatically turn on now here i have a caseta dimmer and up here in the corner i have another one of those smart things motion sensors so whenever we walk in the room it automatically detects we're in here and it turns on the lights now one of the cool parts is is when it's late at night maybe the kids are coming in i can have it automatically set the lights to a lower brightness so that it's not blinding them at night so i think i have it set to like 10 so instead of super bright like that it looks more like this when we come in at night so it's not as bright and we can use the restroom and then we can go back to bed and they will automatically turn off after some time now this hallway is a three-way and this is a pico remote for the hallway so i can instantly change it and i can set a preset favorite right there i just did a whole video all about how to install these and how cool the whole system is that i'll leave at the end of this video next heading into the kids room so this is uh one of the kids rooms and the only room that is used with amazon assistant so over here we have a echo dot kids edition the tiger version and we have the echo glow here this is kind of fun you just tap and it will change the color and so we might like that as a night light and they work together and then i can use it to turn on and off the lights and looking over here we have a standard light switch kind of rare but you just use it to turn on and off the light and then over here we have a cool little rainbow light alexa turn on rainbow okay so there it turns on the rainbow light and so that's a little bit better lighting for at night and then i'm using a v-sync outlet there to automatically turn that on and off and then that's pretty much it in here we also have an automation where at night i just say alexa night night okay and that will automatically turn off all the lights so that we can go to bed and that also turned off the hallway light it's really dark another room here um we have a standard switch so we haven't automated that over here we have a um smart light bulb from philips hue so my daughter likes this little remote that we can instantly change the type of light it is so if it's a night light or if it's brighter we have the remote here to control that and then over here we have the lenovo smart clock so that's how she controls all the devices in her room it's nice that she has the different pictures that she can see on it and she uses it as her alarm it can charge her fitbit and so it's been a pretty fun little device to have here in her room and again it can control all of the different smart devices and then this little philips shoe remote it just has a magnetic light switch that it can stay in now in this room this used to be a baby's room and one of the first devices that i had was the nest protect this will tell us and notify us on our phone if there's smoke or anything near the one thing about these is they have a seven year life so after seven years they automatically disable and that's just to make sure that they are working and in the latest condition that's available and the reason i bought this is because when you walk past it it has a sensor where it will automatically turn on a little night light so if we were coming here to change the baby's diaper at night or whatever it would be it would automatically turn on the light and you can adjust the brightness and it's pretty cool and that also works with the new nest thermostat so it knows somebody's home if you walk past it and the other thing that i really like about it is it knows the difference between moisture and smoke so in our room we have a smoke detector that keeps beeping every time somebody uses the shower so this doesn't do that it automatically knows the difference between that so i need to replace the one in our room speaking of our room let's head into there now turn on the lights so with one command all of the lights in the room turn on now i do want to mention something that my brother just told me he didn't know about so if you have a google home speaker in one of your rooms and you have smart lights make sure you put them in the same room they are in then all you need to do is ask google to turn on the lights or turn off the lights and it will only turn on the lights in that room and that's how i've been doing it throughout this tour instead of saying turn on the lights it's turning on every single light it only controls the ones that are in the google that i am talking to so here in this room we have a lot of different lights going on over here i have a wemo smart plug that is turning that lamp on and off over here on this side i'm using a lifx candle light so it can be changed to all kinds of different temperatures now here we just installed a new fan while the switch is smart the fan's not very smart but it does come with a remote so this is nice i can easily turn on the light and off with the remote but once i installed the fan i realized the lighting was absolutely terrible so if i don't have all these other lights on you can barely see anything so over here i mentioned this is a smart switch and it's connected to smart things because it uses z-wave i think it's a leviton smart switch so with this whenever i have it turn on the light switch not only is it turning on this switch it's also turning on a phillips hue strip that i have up here so watch when i turn this off that turns off as well so when i turn it on instead of it just turning on this tiny little light in the fan it's able to turn that on as well so i have much more lighting in this room now over here you'll notice i do have an echo show 5 here i'd use that sometimes just to test things and make sure everything is working but it's not used a ton but it's definitely a really cool device now right here behind my lamp i have a hidden button so this is a smartthings button now with this i can control quite a bit of things so with one push i can instantly turn on and off my light so that's great so then there's a double press and if i double press it's late at night and some of these lights are on i don't want to wake up my wife with a voice command or go through my phone and turn off everything so i double press and then it turns off some of the lights in the room not everything is connected through smart things so that doesn't always work and then i can hold it down and it will then turn off these lights here and it looks like i need to fix some of the automations there now over here i have another button that is with the flick um i did a video about that so if i push that button it is able to turn on and off her lamp and then i can double press and that will turn off the main lights in the room now one other thing that i have here in the bedroom is a smart bed now you're probably like what's a smart bed well actually right now it's not functioning as a smart bed but i bought it for the goal of it being a smart bed so this is actually a reverie bed frame and so i can lift up the bed here you can see that it lifts up the bed it lifts up the feet you can do zero gravity so my wife has pretty bad back pain and so this has been helpful to relieve that and i really want it to be smart so they just released a brand new updated firmware um controller so i'm waiting to get that and then i'll make a video all about my smart bed but that's the goal of here and then over here in the bathroom turn on the potty light so here i do just have a smart bulb in there in the closet and in the little toilet room there so it's nice that we can instantly turn that on and off in here i have a smart light switch it's connected over smart life so it doesn't integrate into smart things i really think i need to change that out but that's nice that we can turn that off at any time and then the last thing that i have here is serena shades or their smart blinds so with this remote i then have the option to control my blinds here so they already shut because of the automation this one actually just controls the blind right here but i can also say hey google open the shades and so there i have both of these connected these go through the lutron bridge and so then they automatically open and close and they adjust based on the sun during the day close the shades and that's actually been really nice right now my wife is currently pregnant and so some days she has migraines and she's not able to get up and close and open the shades so we have a little pico remote right by her nightstand where she can instantly close the shades and turn off the lights without having to get up or ask somebody else to do that so that's been one of my favorite things to have smart is so that we can have control like that when maybe you're not feeling as well or maybe you don't have the option to get up and turn off the lights i really enjoy a smart home there now i do like having where i don't have to go and open and close the shades all the time it just makes it so i have more time to play with kids alright we have a few more rooms to do let's head downstairs turn off the lights that's so old school before we head downstairs let's take a look at the porch so here we have the nest hello so this is my smart doorbell where it will automatically display who's at the door on the nest thermostat here we have the lockley vision which i'm currently testing it's a smart doorbell and a smart lock and then for the porch lights inside here we have a wemo smart switch and then next to it this is the main entryway which is a lovington three-way switch and then i have another ge switch here that controls some plugs here i have some smart switches where it can automatically turn this off this is another wemo smart switch and i like it where i have it so it automatically turns off after a few minutes so in case we forget to turn it off it can automatically turn off after 10 minutes or so or so so next in here i have just updated this where i have brand new candle lights they're actually wafer lights they're not real cans but i put them on a lutron dimmer so now i have full control of these lights so i can say hey google turn off the lights there you can see they have a nice way that they turn off and dim set the lights to 50 and then all the lights are able to turn on now over here i also have a smart light bulb and a lamp which is just kind of nice if we want just a little light and then over here these cans are actually completely separate they are philips hue recessed cans but they can change color set the lights to blue so there you can see it changed just those lights and so that's fun if we want to have some different mood lighting or accent lighting we can do that now one of the things about smart lights so i've talked a lot about different smart switches i have but if you have a smart bulb there could be some problems with your smart home so if somebody comes over and turns off the light switch and you use a smart bulb you no longer have control of that bulb we ran into that one or two times while we have been making this but i really like how if you have philips hue you can get this little attachment right here so this little attachment i mentioned it upstairs but if you have philips hue like 100 you need this thing so is what it does is it keeps the light switch on so there's no way somebody can come and turn off the light switch all i need to do is press it to turn on and off the lights and then i can rotate it to change the brightness so without the lights ever losing connection they're always connected they're always they always have power and this makes it so i can control them manually like i talked about in the beginning having that manual control or i can change them by voice or by the app or whatever because if you have smart devices in your home and somebody comes and tries to use it the way you taught them and the light switch is off they are never going to want to use your smart home stuff again so this is a great option where it gives you the smart bulbs and you have the manual control as well one other item we have in here is the serena smart shades open the shades so these have been really nice they automatically open and close every day at sunrise and sunset and when the sun's beating down into the room and the kids are trying to play it's nice that they can instantly close the shades by voice or on the light switch i actually have a pico remote there that they can close and open the shades now these they have actually lasted a long time they're battery powered they use some d batteries and i think i'm almost more than a year using these without changing the batteries and i think that is because it is a smaller shade than the ones that i have in the front room but it's been really nice to have these smart shades close the shades one other thing i like about them is how quiet they are you can barely hear them in here i use a google nest audio over in the corner now for the entertainment center here um typically i'm using a google chromecast i have the new chromecast in here but with the new samsung tv its interface has actually worked really well it seems pretty snappy and the internet works great on it so that's been the main focus here with this entertainment center now for the other rooms we actually used to have a bunch more tvs but we ended up removing them all just to have a little more control of what the kids we were watching and now it's nice that on the google nest hub and the google nest hub max we can use those if we ever want the kids to watch something if they need a little break but now this is kind of the main entertainment center here and we also have this samsung sound bar where it's got a sub and it's got rear speakers back here and it's been very impressive it's like having a movie theater at home now next let's check out the garage so there's not a ton of smart things in here but over here i do have a few hubs so here i have the chamberlain my q hub to control the garage so i can automatically close the garage by voice and then i can use the app to open and close the garage and then here i have the rachio smart sprinkler system so this one has 12 zones most of them i think have eight zones and then it can automate my sprinkler so i don't really have to do anything right now of course it's in like hibernation mode so the sprinklers can't go off and then i have a camera in here to keep track of what's going on and i also use a portable jbl speaker so i can bring the google assistant out here and listen to music while i clean the garage which definitely needs to be done now there is one more thing for the chamberlain so this is uh the hub that's the main hub that it uses and there's a sensor on the door but i really like that it's worked pretty good as long as they're not charging me which currently they are not all right one more little section to show you now in here again i have some phillips hue lights i have the lutron aurora dimmer here that i can turn them on and off so i have the brightness controls here now behind you there's not much to see that's my office we'll get to that another day but in here nothing smart just a standard bathroom the kids always leave this light on so that's like the perfect option to put a smart switch i can have it automatically turn off every night so i don't have to come down here and do it myself now the last place i want to show you is kind of the hub or the brains to how all of this works so it gets a little crowded so come on in now this is the brains of my smart home now actually consider my smart home more of a frankenstein smart home just because i'm using all kinds of different pieces to put them together so i can make these different videos and review them so i would recommend finding one solution and sticking with that so you don't need all of these different devices your home should not look anything like this but this is kind of what i have just so that all these different devices will run so first here we have the internet coming in which right now i'm using some coaxial but next week getting fiber very excited about that so you need the internet then here i have the nest wi-fi so this is what gives all the devices wi-fi if they require wi-fi here i have my smartthings hub so that's able to connect my z-wave and zigbee devices so all the smart sensors or motion sensors door sensors they're all plugged into this this is the flick 2.0 hub so that little button this is what controls that then here i have the philips hue hub so all the philips hue devices control with here there's also phillips whiz devices that require the wi-fi i really liked the philips hue devices here i have the lutron smart bridge so that's how i'm able to control the caseta wireless dimmers over here i have a wise outdoor camera bridge or hub there and then here i have a tp-link switch that's able to plug in a lot of the different devices that we're using in this home and a lot of the stuff i have in the office so that is how everything is connected in my smart home now when the internet does go down it is a little frustrating because things won't work with voice assistant and all that but some of the things like the lutron hub you can still have your automations run and the philips hue the auroras still work because it connects to the hub so you can still use those light switches so that's the brain of my smart home now one other cool thing that you can get is a new samsung smart tag so with this it's kind of like one of those smart things button on the go so if i push this it will then turn off the light and i can push it again and it will turn on the light again now i can also use this to remotely find my phone as well as find my keys so it's kind of like samsung's version of tile but with the smartthings hub there's really a ton of different things that you can do for your smart home and so that is the tech with brett smart home it has taken me a few years to compile all of these different devices i just didn't go out one weekend and buy them all you could and it would be really fun but it's been fun to build it over time and find little devices that would improve on what i already have so my goal this year is to improve some of the automation so that things automatically run without our interaction and making it so my wife isn't upset with certain devices so that's going to be kind of the goal this year and if you are a fan of smart home devices and you want to know more about things that are coming out make sure you hit the subscribe button is that's kind of what my channel is all about now almost every device that i've shown here today i've actually made a video all about and i'm going to leave a full playlist right here and you can go through and check out any of the specific products you want and if you want to see what it's like having a smart home where everything is done under kind of one hub you can check out the video over here on the side thank you so much for watching we'll see you on the next one smart light bulb in a little um what is that called oh my gosh what is it called what is this the laundry room lamp

Channel: Tech With Brett

Views: 775,983

Rating: 4.8222127 out of 5

Keywords: Tech With Brett, Smart Home Tour, Smart Home Tour 2021, home automation, smart lights setup, Google Assistant Smart Home Ideas, Fully automated smart home, Smart Lights Tour, Smart Shades, Smart Blinds, Smart House, Smart Home Hub

Id: sJmplWe_cX0

Length: 31min 8sec (1868 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/techwithbrett]

This is pretty much everything I am currently using in my smart home. Let me know if you have any questions about specific devices I used or automations I currently have.