Smart Home Tour 2024! Over 100 HomeKit and Home Assistant Devices)

Hello and welcome to my Apple and Home Assistant smart home. If you're new to this channel, I talk about smart home tech and some Apple news and stuff like that. So we're doing a smart home tour. So let's look at the outside of the house. First off, let's talk about cameras. So I use HomeKit secure video cameras because I am an Apple user. So let's talk about the Reolink Duo camera right up there is a 180 field of view. So I can see far left, far right. So Reolink doesn't support HomeKit secure video natively, but with the power of a Raspberry Pi and a software called scripted, you can get it into your Apple secure video, which means I can view the footage. It records it. It's great. Speaking of HomeKit, let's talk about my doorbell. So here is the Logitech Circle Mute doorbell. I love it because it's just set and forget. I just plugged it in and it works really well. It is kind of at an on angle. So that's why the Reolink is really helpful. So it can detect packages. What I love is when you hit the doorbell, all my home pods inside are actually the doorbell chime. So and I can decide which rooms will chime and which will not. So absolutely love this thing. There's not much to say about it because it just sits there and does its job really well. For lighting, we have Philips Hue light bulbs and they are always on. And what I have them do is if I happen to open the door with an Acara smart sensor, which I'll show you inside, they will turn on the lights if it's dark outside. And when I close the door, they'll wait about five, ten minutes and then automatically turn off. And if for some reason I turn them on, they also have an automation to turn off at midnight. Last but not least, let's talk about the lock. I absolutely love the Schlage Encode Plus. The reason why I got this lock is because it's got Apple HomeKey. It was actually one of the first locks to get it. And I got it as soon as it came out. I waited like 100 days for shipping for this thing. What I love is you just tap your watch up against it and it will automatically unlock or lock. It's got a keypad so that if you want to give access to like a guest, you can just give them a temporary code and they can type right in and they'll actually tell you in the home app who unlocked your door. And since it's a smart lock, you can run automation. So I have an automation run every night that if the locks are unlocked at night when I go to bed, they can automatically lock or if I leave the house and forget to lock them, they can automatically do that. So let's go inside and see all the other automations of this smart home that I have. Come on. So before we take the actual tour of the inside, I'm going to explain a reason of my thinking behind everything. So I am a HomeKit Apple user, but my wife uses Android. So I'm using Home Assistant so that she can have a UI so that she can control the smart home. But then everything ports through Home Assistant and into HomeKit. There's also a lot of devices that I have that don't natively work with HomeKit. So I put them into Home Assistant and through a plugin, you can get that into HomeKit, which is really nice. So everything I do through Home Assistant, all the automations and all the devices are in there. And then I control them with my app, with the HomeKit app. Okay, so let's start off the actual tour. So this is that Aqara sensor that I told you about outside. That runs the automations for the lights. But inside the dining room, it's pretty simple. I've got a smart bulb in this lamp right here. And all it does, it's kind of a security light. So in sundown, it will turn on, in that sunrise, it will turn off, just so that there's always some light somewhere. So if someone's looking from the outside, there's always a light, just kind of a security thing. What I really love is this chandelier is controlled by a Pico remote. So this little Lutron Caseta Pico remote is not an actual, there's no wiring behind it. It's just a little tiny remote right here that runs on a little battery that will last 10 years. And I can turn it off, just like that, and it's dimmable too. And I can turn it on, and you can have a preset in the middle. I love Lutron Caseta, I have them in almost every room on my house, because they are reliable. They act with a hub that I'll show you later in my server room, and that's what they all connect to. So let's go into the kitchen and see that. Okay, so we're now in the kitchen. So we have two Lutron Caseta switches right here. These are wired, and that's what controls, this one's the dining room, which is what the Pico also talks to, and then we've got the kitchen, which is just on and off. Right here is the Pantry SmartWalk with a fingerprint reader. I was given this to make a TikTok video of. I don't really need my pantry to be locked right now, but when my kids grow up and want to steal snacks or something, I can lock them out, but I can get it myself. Over here, we have some LED smart lights right there that you see that the cats have obviously gotten into. I saw another smart home YouTuber do this, and it's really cool to have lights on top and the bottom of the cabinets. Unfortunately, it's kind of falling apart, and I need to get that fixed up. Over here, I have a HomePod Mini on a little stand. I'll have all this stuff linked in the description below, but that HomePod we mainly use for timers and smart homes. So we don't use really kitchen timers except on the HomePod when it works. Over here, we have two more Pico remotes. These have no wiring behind them. They are controlled with the other two that are actually wired. They are great. Again, 10-year battery life, and they have been fantastic. Over here, we have a dumb $10 coffee maker, and we have a smart plug right here that makes it smart. So if I prep this correctly, I can then set an automation for the next day that will turn on the coffee maker, let's say at 7 a.m., and I wake up to fresh coffee. Then I have a LimpTek motion sensor or presence sensor. So what I use that for is if I'm not in the kitchen for more than, I don't know, 10 minutes, it will automatically turn off the lights just so I'm not wasting electricity. Over here, we have a smart cat feeder for my cats. I can't really get it into Home Assistant, but it's on an automation, just a timer, three to four times a day. It will just feed them. So I count that as smart. And then here is the last wired Lutron Caseta switch, and it just turns on the Nook, and that's what that other Pico remote goes to. So my two-month-old baby just woke up. So my wife, who's also my camera operator, had to go take care of it. So I'm going to be continuing the tour on my own, but she'll be back. Okay, so inside my laundry room, the tech things I have is this network rack. So I have a Synology NAS. I've got a DAS, which is a direct access storage, so no network to that one. Got an old Mac Mini. Got the Philips Home Hue hub, and then I've got the Lutron hub way up there. They're all connected to a Cisco switch that allows PoE, power over ethernet. Never mind the cable wiring and all that. I will tidy that up some other time. And I have a UPS connecting to all that. And I actually have a cool animation currently. I made a TikTok video about this, and it kind of blew up and went crazy. But I have an old MacBook Pro up there that, when it stops charging due to a power outage, and I have it plugged into a non-battery UPS port, that Mac is running Home Assistant. And when the power goes out and it stops charging, it will send me a notification. I can run all sorts of automations based on that. I can have lights flash, and my network, Wi-Fi network, is on the UPS, so I'll have my network even if my power goes out. I will have Wi-Fi, and I'll have some lights and stuff. But yeah, I thought that was a really cool automation. I might change it, make it a different device that tells me when the power's out. But hey, I've got that Mac sitting there, so it was free, and it works. So okay, let's go to the garage door. I've got a Acara contact sensor right there. And whenever I open this door, it will automatically turn on my garage lights. So before we show that, I also have another Schlage ENCODE+. So I absolutely love these guys. I talked about them at the front door, but I use this way more because I use my garage way more. So let's go into the garage and see how that looks. Okay, I'm in my garage, and what I love about that Acara sensor back there is it is so quick with Home Assistant running the automation to turn on the lights, that it feels like I just left the lights on. As soon as the doors open, these lights, I've got some lights over here, and then the Acara camera. And then I also have some lights over here. These are Philips Hue lights up here, automatically turn on when my door opens, when the garage door opens, and it's really cool. I have a timer set. So after a few minutes of being turned on, once that timer turns off in Home Assistant, it will then turn off the lights. And I can have certain automations run, like a motion sensor in the garage, that when it sees motion, to automatically re-trigger that timer and reset it, so then the lights don't just turn off on me. What I also have is a Miros garage door opener up here. And that makes my dumb garage door smart. So it adds it to Apple HomeKit. It also goes into Home Assistant. And my favorite automation about the garage is when I pull up to my garage door, the garage door automatically opens. It is phenomenal. I use a Home Assistant zone, and then I use Apple CarPlay in my car right here. And I have a dummy switch. When I connect to CarPlay, that dummy switch turns on. And then when I pull into that zone from Home Assistant that says I'm home, it will check to see if that toggle is on. And then if it is, it will open my garage door. So if I go check the mail, leave that zone, and then I come back into that zone, it won't open my garage door. So it's been a pretty foolproof, and it works really well. And I absolutely love that. So let's check out my smart sprinklers. Okay, so please ignore the wiring, but I have the Yardian Pro, which makes my sprinkler smart. Adds them to HomeKit. I can also get them into Home Assistant. What I really love is it can check if any of your valves are not working or not, but you can automatically just set automations. You can check in HomeKit, turn on and off any of the valves to water any part of your yard. Really smart, really good. Absolutely love it. And while we're in the garage, my internet is actually connected to a UPS. I've got a whole bunch of UPSs around my house on all the important stuff. So if the power happens to blink and flicker, then my internet won't go out and also some lights and stuff. But just wanted to show you that I had this connected. This goes to my fiber box outside. But yes, UPSs everywhere, really cool. I also just got solar installed on my house. So I am using the SolarEdge inverter to control all that. And yes, it does go into Home Assistant. And now we are in the living room. So let's start off with lighting. So I've got Philips Hue bulbs and Nanoleaf bulbs down here. I used to do everything with Nanoleaf, but since I'm using Home Assistant and HomeKit, the thread protocol is not really working very well with Home Assistant and my Nanoleaf bulbs were falling off line a lot. So I just made the jump to Philips Hue. Yes, they're more expensive, but they're a lot more reliable. So I have about four Philips Hue in this room and I have three Nanoleafs. I've got the Matter version behind you there. I've got a 75 inch TV right here, a Samsung, and I use Apple TV 4K for almost everything that I watch. I actually use two original HomePods as my speakers. They sound fantastic. Absolutely love it. Then I have this little P-Sync or Sysync, or I think they want it to be called Sync. It's a little motion camera that has like AI built into it that will... Basically, it's a babysitter for my cats. When I'm away, I can watch what they're doing and it can track them. For Wi-Fi, I use the Eero Pro 6 or 6 Pro. Basically, it's Wi-Fi 6 and it works really well. And that was my cat telling me something. Down here, we have our just e-Ray player, nothing too smart, but this little Intel NUC is running Home Assistant. This is the brains of the whole operation. Back here, I've got two UPSs so that if for some reason the power blips, none of my entertainment system will go down. I actually have a power station that if the power goes down for more than four or five minutes, I will plug those UPSs into the power station and we can complete any movie that we're watching. Let's look at the ceiling fan. So this guy was not smart at all, but with a little device that I bought from Amazon, I was able to get it into the Toya plug-in, which allowed it to be smart. And you basically just put a device up there, wire up the fan and the light individually, and you can turn on the lights like so, or turn on the fan and even control the speed of the fan. So I don't really recommend Toya products as much because they're a Chinese company, they use the cloud, and it's really hard to get them locally over Wi-Fi. So eventually I might switch this out with something else like a car that has like the T2 device that kind of allows you to do the same thing, but still it's really, really cool. And yeah, that's about it for the living room. Okay, so now we have this hallway. So I have a bedroom and my child's nursery on the other side. We won't go into there today, but inside each room is a HomePod mini. It has smart plugs, Philips Hue, and basically I can run automation, especially in the bedroom. I love this. I've got a fan on the smart outlet plug. I've got Philips Hue light bulbs. And when I say to my HomePod night-night, turns off the lights, turns on the fans, and I can sleep just as well without getting out of bed. Absolutely love it. So in this hallway here, we have another Pico remote. This one actually controls the light switch or the lights right above me here, but I have this middle button programmed to turn on and off the living room. And all it does is you click it, it toggles the living room off. You click it again, and it toggles the living room back on. It's really cool with the Home Assistant that you can get these Pico remotes kind of as actual remotes into to control anything. Absolutely love it. So let's turn this back on. For my thermostat, I have been using the Ecobee. This is like one there for older gens. It works absolutely well. And I love being able to leave the house and it automatically sets the temperature to one thing. When I come home, it sets it to another. It's got a motion sensor and a temperature sensor that's also a motion sensor in the living room. So it's not just taking the temperature from right here. It's actually taking the temperature from the actual living room, which is where most people will be. I just wanted to give a little shout out to the Third Reality Smart Night Light. So it is a matter-enabled smart light, which when I walk into the bathroom with the lights on, it will turn on the little night light so I can find the light switch. So just a quick shout out to Third Reality. Here is my office. First thing is the automatic lights. I have a RoomSense IQ right here. This is one of their very first generations. And I walk into the room, turns on my lights. I walk out of the room and it turns off the lights. Really handy. The light bulbs, they're all Wi-Fi bulbs. They're actually my very first bulbs that I got for HomeKit. They're from Miros. And as long as you have a good Wi-Fi mesh system, Wi-Fi bulbs are actually really good. And yes, I am switching over to Philips Hue, but not yet in here because I've got like six bulbs in here. That would be a lot. Speaking of lights, I have a Dung motion sensing light bulb in my closet here and no Wi-Fi or anything, but just open the door, the light turns on. Super, super helpful. The light switch I have here is a NS panel and one side will turn on and off my fan. The other side will actually control the lamps in here. So if I physically want to turn on the lights or not, depending on motion, I don't have to worry about the motion. If for some reason it doesn't track me or anything, I can turn on or off the light switches. And non-tech related, but you've probably seen this instrument on this back wall over here. This is a Hammer Dolcimer. I play it. I've actually won second place in nationals last year. And yeah, you might see it in a few videos. So that's what it is. I have some music on a different YouTube channel called Gage Milton Music. If you want to look up that, you are free to, but just so if you know, if you see that instrument on the wall, that's what that is. Let's go to my desk. I am a Mac user. So I've got a MacBook Pro connected to two 32 inch 4K monitors. I've got a Insta360 webcam, 4K auto follows me and everything, really cool. I've got the other Hero 6 Pro Wi-Fi system here and my HomePod, which I use a lot. And last but not least is a standing sitting desk that I've also just added to this room so that I can do some standing up work or sitting depending on that. But that's pretty much the office. I had this smart lock installed after I made the video. So here it is. It's not Wi-Fi enabled, but if you put your fingerprint on there, it will unlock it or lock it. So there it's unlocked and then it will auto lock momentarily. So now it won't open. So this keeps people out of my office, but only I can get in with my fingerprint or thumbprint. So just thought I would show you this, really cool. And that is it for the smart home tour. Again, I use HomeKit on the front and Home Assistant on the back for all the automations and everything. If there was something in my smartphone that interests you and you wanna learn kind of how I have automation for or how I even got it into Home Assistant, feel free to let me know so that I can either make a dedicated video showing you how to do it or answer in the comments. I have TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. YouTube is dedicated to smart home. TikTok is more of the wild west of tech. I kind of post everything onto TikTok and then just my premium content, mainly smart home comes here to YouTube. So if you wanna follow me on there, I'll have links down below, but yeah, thanks for watching and remember to subscribe. See you in the next video. Peace out.