Everything is getting smarter these days.
Your phone, your TV, your computer, and yes, even your home itself.
And there are more and more smart home gadgets being created these days, most of which are
actually pretty affordable.
So in this video I'm going to talk about several different smart home products that I personally
have, and maybe give you some ideas.
And none of these are super expensive either.
I'll put links in the description if you want to check them out.
And of course as usual I'm going to quickly plug my Twitter and Instagram, I post cool
stuff on those if you want to check em out, both are just @ThioJoe.
Anyway, let's begin.
First let's start off with some familiar classics, like a smart thermostat.
I personally have the Nest Thermostat, which was among the first smar thermostats out there.
But there are lots of other options, and one other major player is the EcoBee4, which has
been argued to be even better than Nest.
Anyway, the Nest thermostat is a so-called "learning" thermostat, which in practical
terms means it will look at when and how you set the temperature, and automatically create
a schedule based on that.
Of course it's WiFi connected, so you can also connect to it via your phone and control
it even if you're out of the house.
It also has some other neat automated features such as "Early-On", which can preheat or cool
your house before the scheduled time, so for example when you actually wake up, the temperature
will already be at what you set, instead of it only beginning to warm up.
But one of the main advantages of having a smart thermostat is being able to connect
it to other smart home services and devices, which we'll get to in a bit.
Now let's talk about lighting, something we use every day but might not actually think
about.
Well, with new smart lighting, you have to think even less.
One example is Philips Hue, which is a whole set of smart lighting products.
It involves a large variety of wirelessly controlled LED light bulbs, all connected
through a hub, and again can be controlled through your phone directly, or using schedules
you create.
The flagship products in the Philips Hue line are the so-called "White and Color Ambiance"
bulbs, which can produce basically any colored light, including every shade of White.
But the hue line also has accessories like a wireless dimmer switch that you can stick
anywhere to control your bulbs.
As I mentioned, you can schedule them to change automatically too, so at night I have them
fade from bright white to more yellow like an incandescent, and in the morning they slowly
fade on before I wake up.
But maybe you already have a bunch of regular lamps and lights that you like, and you want
to want to be able to control them too.
Luckily, there are other companies that make things like smart power sockets.
The kind I have are made by a brand called "Lutron" which has been around for decades,
and has rock solid reliability.
I mean they did invent the home dimmer switch back in the 60s.
Anyway, in my case, I have some of those cool "Edison" bulbs that have the big filaments
that I wanted to use, but the location I had them didn't have any light-switch controlled
socket.
Instead, I got Lutron wireless dimmer with a remote, stuck the remote on the wall, and
bam, now you can control any power socket from anywhere, without having to run a cable.
And obviously you can use smart power sockets for anything, not just lights.
Next we can talk about security.
I've been using cameras from Nest, who also makes that thermostat we just talked about.
They actually have a few models, there's the regular nest cam, the nest cam outdoor, and
the newer Nest Cam IQ, which I actually did a review on recently, you can see a link to
that in the top right corner.
At this point, I think everyone should have a security camera in their house, just because
they're so affordable these days.
Even if you never expect to need it, I think the peace of mind alone is well worth it.
It allows you to check in on your home at any time over the internet, and get notifications
if it detects motion while you're away.
They also have a subscription service called "Nest Aware" which stores all the video for
either 10 or 30 days, depending on which plan, so you don't have to worry about getting an
entire home security system, it just handles everything on the cloud.
Ok next topic, entertainment.
One of my favorites, which you probably have heard of, is the Google Chromecast.
Put simply, this lets you "cast" different forms of media from almost any device, onto
your TV.
So if you're watching a YouTube video on your phone or computer, you can play it on a big
screen.
It also works with a ton of other services, like Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and music too like
Spotify, Pandora, iHeart Radio and a ton of others.
And the important think to know is you use your phone more as just a remote, because
the chromecast connects via WiFi and streams the content from the cloud directly.
So if you're watching something on netflix, the chromecast itself gets the video stream
from the internet, meaning you don't have to worry about your phone being close by and
losing the connection.
There'a also the Chromecast audio, which is obviously just for audio, and is good if you
have a good speaker system and want to make them smart speakers.
That way, you can hook that up and play anything through them.
Another cool thing about Chromecast is it has a Guest Mode, so if you're having a party
or something, you can let people play their own music, or even add songs to a common playlist.
So lots of neat stuff you can do with it.
Moving on, let's talk about virtual assistant devices.
Probably the most popular today is Amazon's Echo speakers, which has the Alexa voice assistant.
There are several versions of the Echo, from the regular big cylinder, to the echo dot,
and now they're opening it up so companies can even integrate the Alexa assistant into
their own products.
For example, that Ecobee thermostat I briefly mentioned before also has the echo assistant
built in.
Now any good smart assistant is going to have a whole bunch of different uses.
The main one is get information, whether it's just the weather, or convert units, or do
a search.
And it will also be able to set timers, take down reminders, add things to a shopping cart,
stuff like that.
Also, you can use it to control other smart devices in your house.
With Echo at least, it supports a bunch of brands natively, including philips hue.
You can set groups of lights like for each room, and then can tell it to turn them on
or off, or dim them for example.
Amazon also has a directory of so-called "skills" which adds functionality that isn't natively
supported.
One is the Nest thermostat skill, which lets you control your nest thermostat.
And obviously the echo also work as a smart speaker, and play music from any supported
music services you have, like spotify.
The other big smart speaker assistant is the Google Home.
In a lot of ways it's really similar to the Amazon Echo.
It can play music, do searches, and control smart home devices.
Being made by Google, the Home also works with Chromecast devices, which the Echo does
not at the moment.
Also, the Google Home seems to be way better at searching for information.
As you might know, Google has spent years building their "knowledge graph" feature into
regular Google search, which tries to find exactly what information you're looking for
before you even look through the results.
For example, if you search, "When was the 44th president born", it's smart enough to
not only figure out who you're talking about, but then go another step and answer your question
about that person.
The echo is able to answer simple straightforward questions, but the Home is a bit better at
understanding how people really talk.
But one thing that I really can't understand, is the Google Home STILL can't set reminders.
So it's obviously not perfect.
Finally, we should go over "smart hubs", which are designed to bring together all your smart
home devices under one roof.
The Google Home and Echo can work as smart hubs, but there are also dedicated products
such as Samsung Smart Things, or the Wink Hub 2 that I have.
The benefit of a smart hub is mainly if you have a bunch of different smart home devices
from different companies, and want them to be able to interact together in a way they
normally might not.
So maybe you want to control your Nest thermostat, and smart bulbs, and your camera all with
one app.
In my case, I have all my devices linked with my Wink Hub, and I can create actions to make
them behave based on certain conditions.
Like if my nest camera detects motion, to turn on my lights.
Or I could create a single command I could use when leaving the house, that would turn
off all my lights, turn down the thermostat, and lock the door if I had a smart lock.
Normally, you'd have to do these all individually.
If you don't have a bunch of different smart home devices from different brands, a hub
would probably be pretty pointless, but if you have everything from smart shades, to
smart locks, smart lights, thermostats, even smart lawn sprinklers, it'll be really useful.
One thing I should point out is that if you specifically have a lot of Philips Hue bulbs,
the Wink Hub has pretty poor integration with those.
They work, but it controls them incredibly slow and unreliably, so don't get it if you
mainly want to control Philips Hue bulbs.
I hear it works find with other smart bulb brands though.
If you're wondering about what other kind of smart devices are out there for your home,
I can quickly run down a list to give you some ideas, but I don't have any of these
myself so I can't really talk about them.
There are smart doorbells like the Ring or SKybell, there are smart locks like the August
Lock, as you probably know there are robot vacuums like from the company iRobot, and
they even make robot mops now.
But that's not all, there are WiFi controlled coffee makers, refridgerators, washing machines,
ovens, and even... robot lawnmowers.
So yea, I think if you didn't know too much about smart home gadgets before, you should
now.
You obviously don't need to control everything via WiFi, and a lot of this stuff is admitedly
overkill.
But even if you don't want to build an all out "smart home", I think everyone can use
at least some of these things.
For example the Nest camera I mentioned, or even something really basic like a remote
power outlet, which is a great way to get started, and control dumb appliances remotely
to some extent.
In any case, I'd love to know what you guys think, like if there's some crazy new smart
gadget that I completely missed, be sure to check the comments, I'm sure someone will
point that out immediately.
If you want to keep watching I'll put some other videos right here, you can just click
on those.
And if you want to subscribe, I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday.
Again I'm looking forward to hearing from you either here or on other social media sites.
So thanks for watching, I'll see you next time, have a good one.
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