The BRAINS of my Smart Home!! (Installing a Network Rack)

today's the day i'm finally gonna tackle my network closet it's been neglected for quite a while now i've accumulated a lot of hubs and things for my smart home so honestly it's just a mess and it's time to clean it up so i'm gonna install a network rack something i've been wanting to do for quite a while i'll add a switch surge protector all that good stuff and you'll get to see kind of the before and after and i'll show you everything that i'm using with my new network rack setup all the hubs all that good stuff i'm going to show you everything let's go [Music] yo what's up guys my name is shane if this is your first time here and this channel is all about building an easy smart home using apple's home kit with new videos published every sunday and live streams every wednesday so it's kind of embarrassing to be honest but i'm going to take you behind the scenes and just show you everything even my current mess that is this network clause my goal is to finally organize this so i can have a nice place for all my smart home hubs and things like that so i can easily get to them if i need to but first let's talk about what is really the foundation of any good smart home and that is your router and your wi-fi network today in addition to fixing up this network clause i'm also going to be upgrading my wi-fi to the new netgear orbi quad band wi-fi 6e mesh system big thanks to netgear for sponsoring this video and sending me this incredible mesh wi-fi system and yes you did hear that right i did say quad band wi-fi this gives me you know the standard two point four and two five gigahertz bands and a new six gigahertz wi-fi band so i really recommend to everybody if you're building a smart home do yourself a favor and start with the solid mesh wi-fi network again that really should be the foundation of any smart home this system here with one router and two satellites delivers up to nine thousand square feet of coverage add three thousand square feet of coverage with each additional satellite that you add get up to 10.8 gigabits per second wi-fi speeds connect up to 200 devices to your network i really love the orbi app so it makes setting up and managing your network super easy probably one of my favorite apps as far as routers go that i've used you can set up a separate guest network they even have an option to configure a separate ssid for your smart home which i just absolutely love of course this means you can separate all your smart home accessories from your main network which is you know kind of just a best practice anyways and did i mention the speeds the speeds really are just incredible and the coverage best that i've ever had here in this house so i'm super impressed by this thing highly recommend it for anyone you know that's building your smart home use my link down in the description below for more information that also helps out the channel and again big thanks to netgear for sponsoring today's video all right so this is the closet here you see the light comes on automatically if you have a little eve door sensor here uh thread version but this is it let me take a step back such a mess such a mess so this is the mess i've got this big old file cabinet which i'm going to try to either move or get rid of eventually i can even get to this stuff so this is where all my coax cables are coming in that aren't being used also we got ethernet cables run wild um i've got some stuff plugged into an outlet right there it's just a mess here is my modem my current router and i do have a little switch back there lots of hubs and things plugged in you see a ufe hub right there so yes this is a disaster i got my synology nas running up there so this is what we're gonna fix today uh but before i can do any of that i've got to clean out this closet and uh yeah that's where my rack is gonna go and we're gonna make this look nice finally so this is just an uh nave point i think it's how you say it 9u wall-mounted uh network rack that i just picked up on amazon i'll put a link to this below and everything else that i'm using today all right so i'm in here and i want to mount it on this back wall sorry the audio is so bad in here but uh i couldn't find any studs so i had to run to the store and get me some of these these are like toggle bolts so i can put these in there and uh should be able to hold against the drywall the heavy weight of that rack so we're gonna go with this and get these installed i think i got a buddy gonna come and help me actually get it on the wall because uh just be a lot easier with two people i also have a power strip with eight outlets that i'll be installing i have a shelf just a simple shelf and i also have of course our network switch this is just a tp-link 24 port gigabit ethernet switch it's an unmanaged switch so it wasn't too expensive so i think maybe the best thing i can do is just uh start from the top and maybe work my way down it's kind of difficult to get any decent lighting in here so i hope this looks okay but let's go ahead and i'll just walk through and show you everything we got going on starting up top of course over here i decided to put my synology nas back up here just for space you know i can kind of keep that over there don't really need to access that much so it should be fine up there it's where it's been forever actually if you look closely i have a switch bot that i went ahead and put over here i didn't have this before but i figured this would be cool because the synology is one of the only devices that i have that does not automatically come power back on after you know a power outage so if i have a power outage now i can just use my little switch button to turn the synology back on no matter where i'm at so that's pretty cool next up over here so you can see i have an additional kind of shelf this was sort of a makeshift shelf that i grabbed from something else and uh basically attached it to the top here so that i could have an additional shelf up top so i've got my surge protector my network and then a shelf for the rack and then i kind of wanted to put the my router and my modem up top so they're kind of not back in there first just regarding how it's all connected so this is my modem okay from the isp and this is connected directly to my new netgear orbi 6e router all right so that is getting internet from my modem my isps modem right here alright i got this wired down to my switch so now i can plug everything into that switch and get internet and actually the number two port on uh this switch is running through here and i am actually hardwiring a second orbeez satellite so i have one hardwired to this basically to this switch so i can get the best speeds and internet coverage through the house by hard wiring it you can do it wirelessly and connect the satellites wirelessly and believe me the speeds are still amazing with this wi-fi 6c router but if you can hardwire it always better and that way i'm actually going to hook up probably a second switch and my poe cameras to that satellite in another room uh and i can kind of do even more and hardwire stuff over there since it is kind of a you know a hardwired backhaul uh to this so here we're starting to get into our smart home hub so the first one is the thinka z-wave home kit hub now this is not available in the u.s yet it is only available in europe right now this basically allows me to connect any z-wave product natively to homekit so really awesome device i haven't done a review yet i'm waiting on it to become available in the us so hopefully sometime soon we'll be able to do that but really cool device i can add a lot of z-wave products to home kit natively thanks to this over here we have my ufe hub so this connects to my wireless my battery ufe cameras that i have outdoors i have a couple of the yuffie cam 2 pros that connect to this right here we have my lutron caseta smart bridge so this connects to all my lutron caseta smart switches my the smart light switches the smart fan controllers i have a number of lutron shades which are amazing that connect to this also the outdoor plug so that's what that is for over here we have a phillips hue so i have a few phillips hue lights throughout the house that connect to this bridge right here moving down you see right over my switch i have this little basically a raspberry pi but this is the soma connect and i'm using this to connect all of my soma tilt shades to home kits so i have a bunch of these did a whole video on that whole setup really cool it's worked really well but i just have this kind of tucked back in here and underneath this is of course our switch so one thing i would recommend is either color coding your ethernet cords or either take a photo and or kind of write down and take note of each port and what's what just so you know when you come in here to troubleshoot you'll know what's what uh so just kind of a good thing to do if you can and underneath here i it's hard to see but i actually have velcroed let's see if i can pull that out a little uh usb wall charger made by anchor so i'll put a link to this and everything else down below uh but i just have that because some of these hubs like this one right here can actually just you know is powered through a usb this is a usb micro cord so i actually have this plugged in here and that frees up some of the outlets on my surge protector also i have my wall mounted ipad plugged into here so that's coming in from this wall right here that's what this is so my wall mounted ipads just on the other side of this wall and i'm getting power you know that's my usb power cord and i have that routed to this right here so that's always getting power and i'm not having to use up an outlet or anything just using that little usb power source on the bottom of course we have our 8 outlet pdu power distribution surge protector so this is all nice working well turn it on and off here a little tip especially when you're dealing with hubs and a lot of these things like that a lot of these power sources like you can kind of see one right there sometimes they're kind of big and might actually get in the way of other outlets you can get some of these little pigtails on amazon and you can plug it in to your surge protector or your power strip and don't have to worry about taking up you know more than one outlet on your power strip so get some of these if you need to if you have some of those big power sources that are kind of blocking up multiple outlets and finally over here i just put a little um eve room sensor this is like a little air quality sensor just measures the temperature and stuff like that which is kind of nice to have in a room like this all right so i wanted to bring you in here and show you a real quick update um of what i got going on here just to give you a complete picture of my network and everything i'm using for my smart homes so this again is that orbeez satellite that i have hardwired to my main router over there in the network closet now i'm only using one satellite because my house isn't really that big and these things have such good range and coverage that one is plenty again it's hardwired and since it's hardwired or even if it wasn't hardwired i could plug in other things to that because it has a bunch of ethernet ports but since it's hardwired i it's just as good as plugging in directly to the main router so i have down here my abode hub that i use for my security system sensors and things like that that's plugged into the satellite over here is my nvr for my poe cameras that we talked about in last week's video you can see i actually have one of the cameras sitting right there i'm still working on installing all those cameras around the house i might actually add a little monitor or something over here for my nvr system i don't know i haven't decided on that but have the nvr plugged directly into the satellite as well which is really cool so i can actually have stuff up here you know instead of cluttering up my network rack even more or if i want certain products up here i can do so and plug them directly into the satellite and if i ever get to a point where i need even more ethernet ports than the orbeez satellite gives me i can always use that extra switch that i took from the network closet that i was using before i can use that up here and since that is hardwired directly to the main router i should have no issues and that should work just fine overall i'm pretty happy with the way the cabling and everything turned out uh maybe do a little tidying up still i got some different little cable management things where i've tied some stuff down here and there some velcro and stuff like that that you can use to kind of tidy it up but as you can see much better than it was now i can get in here anytime i need to add some stuff move some stuff troubleshoot some stuff all right so i think it's safe to say that my setup is much better than it was i can now easily access everything that i need to plus i have room to expand if i need to add more stuff to my network which will probably happen i'm sure all in all i couldn't be happier again links to everything i discussed today are down below in the description and if you have any questions about anything that i've done or anything that i'm using feel free to drop a comment below again thanks to netgear for sponsoring today's video here is that video that i briefly mentioned earlier on my new poe camera system that is integrated into home kit and over here is another video that you'll probably like if you like this one thanks so much for joining me and i'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Shane Whatley

Views: 154,592

Keywords: homekit, Apple Homekit, smart home, homekit apple, homekit devices, homekit smart home, affordable homekit, affordable homekit devices, home automation, smarthome

Id: 3dXjxM6tVB0

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022