Living in the Future: My DIY Smart Home Tour 2023

[Music] hey guys what's going on my name is Alex and welcome to techflow so over the last few years I've been investigating Smart Homes I've talked to professionals and I've also been building my own smart home and I've been in my new house now for three months so I've wanted to get something up and running which has meant it's needed to be easy it's needed to do the job and it's needed to not be Messy Smart Homes can get very messy very quickly so today I want to talk you through what I've got set up here what I can do with it whether it's multi-room audio security control of all my lighting and how it helps me and one thing that people always say to me is that Alex you've got all these Gadgets in your house surely your electric bill is through the roof and to be honest with you it couldn't be further from the truth my house is very economical shall we say and that's because of the smart things I have in place so without any further Ado let's jump straight into so one thing that I've found over the years to have a functioning smart home network in your house that doesn't always go offline it's important to have a solid backbone now what do I mean by that well the infrastructure that runs around your house and that's things like the Wi-Fi and the network so this is my sort of temporary forward slash permanent setup at the moment you can see I've got my router here I've got my modem I've got my Nas which is some internal storage for this house and then I've got one massive network switch here which basically goes off to four different access points around the house and all of my external security cameras all of these security cameras record in 4k and are recorded internally to this udm Pro so nothing is leaving my house which I really like the other things that I've got here is these two Bridges this is my Philips Hue bridge and then just over here we've got my acara Gateway as you can see these are really small and are hardwired into the network the only other things I've really got up here here are these vessel streamers so just remember that vessel streamers akara Gateway and Philips Hue Hub and that is basically it as well as obviously the Wi-Fi access points that go all around the house that is the backbone of my smart home now obviously I've got other smart home manufacturers around this house like lifx lights for example and that swiftly moves us on to how do we tie all of this stuff together and one thing that I have really been liking recently and it's something that I never ever thought I would say is Apple's home kit now everything that I'm going to go over in this video does work over on the Google side of things but just know that I am doing everything through home kit and if you've got an iPhone or an idevice it really is worth taking a look at and in this video I'll show you why what I want to be able to do though is play music in any room that I'm in and it's an added bonus if I can join them all together and luckily enough I can with AirPlay so you remember those vessel streamers those little black boxes is that are set up in the Loft those are connected into my kitchen speakers here these are a set of really thin kef speakers because I had nowhere else to play speakers in this room now those vessel units are compatible with AirPlay and Spotify connect so as you can see I'm in the Spotify app here and I can connect to Kitchen here via the Spotify app click play and this starts playing out the speakers this is basically where AirPlay 2 comes in so I'm going to swipe into Control Center and you can see here on my iPhone that I have access to all of my rooms again so what I'm going to go ahead and do is select on kitchen here it'll Circle round and there we go and I click on here raised platform what it's going to go ahead and do is create an audio group and now I can control the volume in here and the volume in the kitchen now the speakers in here are the other vessel streamer that I currently have up there in the Loft however I do have these krks on my desk with my MacBook connected so because this is through AirPlay my MacBook Pro is actually an end device so I can add it into this speaker group here and as you can see now these are playing the same as these I'm the same as what's in the kitchen multi-room audio with different end devices now when the majority of people say multi-room audio the first people you think of is Sonos and yes I do like Sonos they have a soft spot in my heart and in my upstairs shower we have a Sono speaker above there but luckily enough it works with AirPlay so the tracks that are playing all over the house also play up here all I've got to do is turn it up and there you go there's so no speaker up there is synced with the rest of the house through AirPlay and it's a Sonos speaker working with non-sono speakers you get the point so next in our smart home Journey we need to talk about security because it's really really important and actually quite easy to implement so this is a little Nifty thing that I've recently installed this is called the easyvis cp4 and it's a peep hole camera so basically my front door used to have basically a little glass hole in it you'd have to put your your eye all the way up to it and it was really kind of foggy and it was like getting loads of condensation it was getting loads of condensation in it so you couldn't see through it now this is basically a techie peephole so you've got on the other side of this door an actual camera system with a doorbell ringer in it and then on this side it's a full display now one of the most awkward things is having somebody on the other side of the door whilst you're creepily coming up to the door trying to see who's there if somebody has rung the doorbell and somebody's there this screen will automatically be on so from a distance you can see what's on the other side of the door which is something that I didn't think I would like but I really kind of like so it's basically a full 1080p color camera on the outside and one thing that I really liked was how just responsive this touchscreen interfaces you can go back and check through the days upgrade your firmware connect it to your Wi-Fi so obviously you can get notified when somebody is at your door it has AI detection and loads of other features like that one of the most annoying things with something like this on the front door is getting false alarms let's say if like a bird flies past or something so the cp4 actually has a human shape algorithm and a PIR sensor to mitigate all of these false alarms that can come with having something like this at the front door so you know when it rings that somebody is there and the cool thing I like about it is that this door is from 1890 and I've managed to bring it in to the 21st century about half an hour with this peephole kit so moving on from security I've actually got Wireless PIR sensors in pretty much every single room and these serve multiple purposes whether it's to turn lights on and off whether I'm in that room and turn them off if I leave or basically for security so with the acara Gateway what I can go ahead and do is alarm my house so within Apple's home kit I can change this to night time which will only arm my downstairs sensors I can change this to away and all of my sensors will be armed and basically with this mode what it's going to go ahead and do is if any of the motion sensors in this house detect motion it will ping me straight through to my phone if it's armed as away These Are Wireless powered by battery and they are really really small so you can hide them in places that you wouldn't even think I wanted all of this to be easy okay so let's move from security over to lighting because it's another big part of a smart home now you will have noticed the Philips Hue Hub that I had over in my temporary network setup now I do like Philips Hue and yes there's videos of me online sitting on Philips Hue I do like them I think their products are good and they work and that's why I install them in the main rooms in my house this is my master bedroom now there's no point in having smart lighting if it's difficult to control right so you've got to go on your phone and download an app so the reason why I like the Hue is because you can buy their little controllers I've got one right here which is right next to the door and believe it or not this is a Philips Hue button does the exact same thing controls the light so when there's people that aren't me in this room they can control the lights and that's why I like you because of these things control devices the lights are a bit nap now lighting is all well and good Philips Hue if all of the lights in that room are Philips Hue they can be controlled with the Philips Hue controller great but what if you've got a situation like in my kitchen or in my studio through there where I've got a mixture of different lights from different manufacturers this is where Smart Homes become complicated when they shouldn't be now how are we going to turn our Philips Hue Lights on at the same time as our lifx lights now my remedy for this is home kit because lifx and Hue can both talk to home kit if home kit creates a scene that turns both of the Hue and the lifx lights on we are on to a winner so this is my wireless switch so this talks to the acara bridge which talks to home kit which can then tell the lights from the different manufacturers to turn on so for example under my counter I have a Philips Hue strip and behind the cactus I've got a lifx strip so if I click on kitchen bright here what that's going to go ahead and do is tell home kit to turn on the Hue Lights and the lifx lights all from the one switch and obviously if I click that they're going to go off again simple now I'm not sure if you've seen the tick tocks about there where it's like we don't use the big light I very rarely use the big light because it's kind of jarring but in the places that I do and I want to control these big lights I've used these acara switches again these talk to home kit so I can control this light switch from my home through the Apple home app or I've actually bound it to one of the buttons on this wireless controller so hallway dining room spotlights hold to turn them off There You Go wireless switch for the big lights so let's talk about how this smart home is saving me money because if something can help you out and save you money at the same time why wouldn't you do it so this is my studio desk there's a lot of things going on here even though it seems very minimalist however nothing on this desk is currently powered and that's because this entire desk is powered by one power strip which goes to a Philips Hue smart socket so as I approach my desk I have this little wireless acara button here I click this it's going to go ahead and turn on that smart plug which Powers up my entire desk how does this save me money well basically if I didn't have a smart plug there this desk would be on constantly and yes obviously I would turn off this TV but it still sat there on standby sipping power so I can basically cut the entire power to this desk with this little remote and the scene as well how do you tie scenes into this so scenes are really powerful and I've got a few set up inside of home kit but to have all of this stuff accessible inside of home kit you need to basically have Smart plugs on everything and that's basically what I've done my gaming desk upstairs runs to a single plug and it's connected to a Smart plug so I can turn everything off all of the TVs in the house have Smart plugs on them because I don't want them sat there in standby if I'm not here so basically I've set up a scene in my home kit and if I say Eco house all right it cuts the power to everything and when I say cuts the power I really do mean cuts the power because it's basically turning off all the smart plugs in the house that's all the TVs this house is using very little if any energy at all because everything is turned off at the plug so this makes more sense what I thought I'd do is I jump into home kit here and show you my eco house scene so as you can see when I say Eco house it turns off all the garage lights it turns off all the hallway lights turns off all the kitchen lights it turns off all the lights basically I could go through this go through this forever this is the bit that I need to talk about sockets so Loft AV this is a single smart plug that controls three different TVs in my house all of the audio gear that's up there all of my Apple TVs games consoles are completely cut from The Grid and from power so nothing even when it a sat in standby is sipping power studio desk like I mentioned is this desk so the speakers my MacBook dock everything that would just be sat on here idle sipping power and then I've got a subwoofer in the kitchen which I'm sure is sipping power even when I'm not playing any music so with that one command Eco house as I'm leaving in the car for example in a rush I can just say that it turns off all the lights turns off everything saves me money and this scene also runs at 3am every day so should I go to bed and not say Eco house at 3am Italy Eco house itself just does it by itself because it's a smart house and that's how it's meant to be hey Siri kitchen lights on [Music] so as you can see it all also works with voice assistance however I find myself using them few and far between because I just think they're a little bit enough however it does come in handy sometimes if you just want to change the color of something or turn something on and off now one last thing that ties in with security that I didn't mention about is all of the doors in this room have sensors on them so if you have a look up here I actually painted uh this one black but this is basically just a little Wireless contact sensor and again this works with home kit works with the acara Gateway and sends me notifications directly to my phone if the alarm is set if the door opens if the alarm isn't set it doesn't send me a notification but yeah there you guys have it that is sort of my temporary but semi-permanent smart home setup basically I've installed all of the things that I deem necessary and I just want it to be simple wanted it to work didn't want to run loads of wires and I've been really really happy with it easy did send out this sensor kit which works in a very similar way to the kit I have deployed in this house from acara you've got things like a button here and this sensor looks absolutely awesome it's magnetic here like that and then there's your little motion sensor so if you guys want to see a more in-depth video on this sensor kit then let us know you've even got a door sensor there which seems awesome too one last thing to mention as well is I do my lighting via um motion sensors in this house for example my garden lights only come on if somebody is in this kitchen and that's because you can only see the garden when you're in the kitchen so what's the point in having the garden lights on if you're not in here burning through your electricity bill they should only come on for five minutes when you're in the kitchen and then when you leave again they turn off so yeah it's just about thinking of automations and how you can make one cent sir do something to maybe save your money or make your life easier that is what this smart home thing is all about and I think a really important thing is to keep it simple because your smart home isn't meant to cause you a headache or be a hindrance to you it's meant to help you out it's meant to save you money it's meant to make things easier if I want to listen to music here I can if I want to turn those lights on when I'm in Spain I can in this house do you know what I mean it makes things easier and it works really well so that's what I've got going on guys I hope you have a good New Year I'm not sure when this video is going out but yeah mine has been Alex this has been techflow and we'll see in the next one peace [Music]

Channel: TechFlow

Views: 235,168

Keywords: techflow, techflow review, New tech, new technology, alex brooks, marzbar

Id: Biv5ZfNEGAE

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2023