Smart Home Tour: Fully Automated!

Hey, what's up? Welcome to our house. It's been over two years since our last full tour, and there's been crazy amount of changes around here. Tons of new devices, automations, and everything is running perfectly. My smart home has never been this good before, so let me show you what's made the cut, what's been axed, and of course, how I'm using everything. So let's get started right here in the living room. Even though we have a smart TV, we're using an Apple TV because it integrates into our smart home so well, and we're using it in a couple of really cool ways. Once we open up one of these apps and start playing it, like Netflix or HBO Max, it will automatically dim the lights once something is playing on the TV, and if we pause it, the lights will turn back up if we're getting up to go to the bathroom or get a drink or something like that, but it only does it on certain apps. So if we're watching YouTube TV and watching a football game, we're pausing it, we're winding it. It's not gonna be changing the lights during that, so it's awesome that it only does it for certain apps. The other thing that it does is if someone comes to the door and they ring the doorbell, it will automatically pause the TV, and that way Peppa Pig isn't just blasting in the background when we go answer the door. What makes it even better is that once we've talked to whoever's at the door and we close the door, after about 10 seconds, enough time for us to walk back into the living room, the TV automatically starts playing again, so we don't even have to grab the remote. I just love this automation because it feels like it's just reading our mind and doing exactly what we want it to, and we're still using HomePods for the speakers on the Apple TV, and they've been working great. The frame TV, eh, not so much, so it's fine, like it looks really nice right now when it's turned off, it just blends in on the wall with the other pictures around it, but half of the display is just getting a little darker, and you can't really tell when you're watching just normal TV, but certain kids' shows, when it's like a solid background, half the TV is a little dimmer, which is slightly annoying. We also have a drail fan over here in the corner, and it comes in clutch with our AC because all the air from our AC just gets trapped right here in this corner of the room, and to spread it out better, we have this fan automated, so when the AC turns on, the fan also turns on and kind of helps spread out that cold air, and it helps distribute it way better, and the fan also turns off if no one's in the room, so it's fully automated, and it's nice that we never have to touch the controls. All right, let's go outside to the backyard now. There's a few changes that I wanna show you. So we had a few things back here break that have worked fine for years, like these string lights. The lights work great, but the smart outlet that controls them broke. That was Lutron, which is surprising, as well as these floodlights right here. They're Novastella, they're smart, and they just went offline one day, never came back. So I replaced the smart outlet with one from Zeus. It's a Z-Wave long-range one, and now it controls those string lights as well as powering the floodlights, and it works just fine, and all of these lights turn on when the back door opens, and they automatically turn off if no one is spotted on any of the cameras for like 10 minutes, so we never have to worry about turning the lights on and off, it just is handled all for us. One of our new additions to the backyard, and one of our family's favorites, is this bird buddy, Birdhouse. We added it about a year ago, and we made a video about it, but at the time, no birds had showed up, but since then, lots of birds have shown up, and it is so fun getting a notification and seeing the videos of the birds. The kids, Allie, everyone loves it, I love it. There's a solar panel on the Birdhouse roof that keeps the camera nice and charged up, so you don't have to worry about that. The only problem is these dang ground squirrels climb up the tree and eat the bird seed, so I still need to figure out how to stop them, but we love this thing. We're still using Rachio for our smart sprinkler controller that handles the drip for all these plants. It's doing a great job, and it came in really handy the other day when it told me one of the solenoids had gone bad. I wouldn't have known that. All these plants would have really suffered, but I was able to replace it quickly because Rachio told me as a notification, so that was pretty sweet. We also have a JBL speaker back here, and it checks all the boxes that I was looking for for an outdoor speaker, one that wasn't too expensive. It connects to Wi-Fi, so it connects to our smart home, and we can control the music that way or through our phone, and it sounds nice when we're listening to music back here. We also have an outdoor air quality monitor from Air Gradient. I've liked this so much. I didn't know I needed one of those, but the air quality can get really bad, and we might have the windows open or these doors. It will alert us that the air quality's really bad, so we can close those, and it helps so much for us to not get sick and breathe in all those bad pollutions that are out here, so I really like that. Now, you might remember we have these shades back here. We still really like them, and I have them automated in a really good way. When these shades are up, it gets really bright here in this main room, so I automated the shades with a motion sensor over here in the corner that also has a light sensor, and if it gets too bright here in the room, and I'm also in here, it will trigger the automation. Now, I didn't want it to automatically close the shades because what if kids are playing back there or something, so my smart home just asked me if I wanna close the shades. Hey, Reed, want me to lower the back porch shades? So I can respond right to the smart speaker right there, but sometimes our house is really noisy, and it can't hear me from across the room, so I can get voice commands on my phone with an action button, and I can just talk to my smart home like that. Yes, so that is telling my smart home to lower the shades to the perfect level, and I love how simple this is. I don't have to remember some specific voice command. All I have to do is respond with yes, and it does exactly what I want it to. Yes, we are using two smart speakers out here. I prefer the voice preview edition because everything's local. The kids in Allie really like the Echo Dot because of the new AI on it. It actually does work really good, so very high spouse approval factor on that, but whoa, hold the music. Low Reed approval score because I'm not a fan of using the cloud. Over here, we're still using the bread box to hide all the iPads and charging cables, keeping everything nice and tidy, and we also have a new e-ink picture frame that I'm a huge fan of. You just use the Reflection Frame app, and it uses NFC. You just tap it onto the picture frame, and then it uses Bluetooth to transfer the photo over to the picture frame, and so it doesn't use the cloud, and it only uses battery to swap out the image. It doesn't need battery to display an image because it's e-ink, so you can hang this anywhere on your wall, and it kind of looks a little trippy as it's swapping out the image, but it is color e-ink and looks pretty decent, maybe not as good as a normal picture, but the fact that you can swap it out and it looks way better than a screen, yeah, I like it. We also have a plant sensor from Apollo. We've had this for almost a year now, and it's kept this plant alive, which is a miracle. I am not good at keeping plants alive, and it's a really simple automation. Whenever the water moisture level in the soil gets low, the onboard light on the sensor turns blue like it's on right now. It's way easier to see at night, and then I just water the plant and the light turns off, so it's a really simple automation that helps me keep the plant alive. So here in the kitchen, lighting is super important, so of course we're automating all the lights. Now, the lights in the ceiling are just dumb bulbs controlled by smart switches. Lutron Caseta is our preference. They've been working extremely well for years, but like I said, we have some cool automation, so of course the lights turn on in the evening time, but then they dim later at night to help us wind down, but sometimes we need the light, and I don't wanna have to go over and use a switch. Like, come on! So we have a vibration sensor underneath the counter right here, and it can sense when we're getting food out or whatever, and if it senses vibration, it'll make these lights brighter so we can see better. Or there's a pressure sensor mat right here in front of the kitchen sink, and so if we're standing here doing dishes, the lights will get brighter so we can see what we're doing better, and it's so convenient because your hands might be dirty from doing dishes or preparing food, so it just makes it way easier, and I love it. Over here we have an ice maker that has a couple of unique features. The first is that you can just press a button, and it'll auto-dispense the ice, so that way you don't have to use one of those scoopers and get your hands in the ice and spread germs or anything like that. The other is that you can press a button, and it will clean itself, so you can put in some white vinegar and water, and it'll just clean all that gunk out of the ice maker, and if you've ever used an ice maker before, you know that can be a real pain, so this makes it really easy. So if you remember, we used to have an Echo Show 15 right here in the kitchen, and I love the size, but I hated the ads, so I replaced it with a Pixel tablet that's displaying a Home Assistant dashboard, and it's so much better. I still have our calendar, but I also have what's for dinner here on the dashboard. We're using a shared to-do list between me and Allie, so if the kids ever wanna know what's for dinner tonight or tomorrow, they can just look right here and see for themselves. I also have some simple smart home controls. I'm trying not to over-complicate it, just display only what the family uses, and so it's super family-friendly and so much better than that stupid Echo Show with ads. Over here, we have a Dreo air fryer that Allie is obsessed with. I think about half the dinners that are cooked every week use this at one point or another, and of course, I have it automated. I have a millimeter wave sensor plugged in right next to it, and so whenever it's on and running, if we walk up right in front of it, it will sense someone's standing in front of the air fryer and immediately turn on the light so you can see what's being cooked inside. Yes, definitely overkill, but also a lot of fun, and we still have the pet feeder, I mean, candy dispenser for the kids. They love it. I love it. Having a smart home is a blast. Speaking of which, let's go in here into the theater room. The theater rooms are notorious with being difficult to turn on, so I made it as easy as possible for my family to work. There's three different ways that you can turn on this theater room. One is by a button on a dashboard, like on your phone or the dashboard I showed out in the kitchen, or you can use this sofa baton remote. You just press one button, and it turns everything on. Then you can use the remote to control the TV, the system, and all that. Super easy to use. My family's really like this. Or the most fun way is with some percussive maintenance. Hit the cabinet, and the vibration sensor will turn everything on for you, and it still uses this sofa baton remote hub thing. It'll control the projector, amplifier, and all of that. So it's been working super well. For the speakers, I'm still using Klipsch. It's a 5.2.4 system. Sounds amazing. And for the screen, it's 120 inches. This is as big as it would go with our short throw projector. So I'm making an upgrade. And this is the projector I'll be using. Valerian is sponsoring this video, and I'm excited to try out their new Vision Master Max. I already liked our old short throw 4K projector, but as soon as I plugged in this one, we noticed a drastic difference. The black level was much darker, but the highlights stayed bright at the same time. And that's because the native contrast ratio is 5,000 to one. And many smart projectors are around 1,000 to one. And you can see the difference. Even the average viewer will be able to see the improvement. The black tones are also enhanced. And look at this scene from the Batman. So much detail in the shadows. But I am the shadows. Yeah, I need to rewatch a ton of movies now. This Vision Master Max is Valerian's new flagship, and it has some upgraded tech that prevents rainbow effects and laser speckle for distraction-free viewing. It also has vertical optical lens shift, which makes it way easier to install. I can just shift the image up and down for the perfect placement without any distortion. Oh, and by the way, the projection size goes up to 300 inches. Yeah, I'm gonna need a bigger screen in here. My screen is 120 inches, but the projector could easily fill up this wall and still look good. Another very unique feature for this model is external lens support. You can swap out the lens for an anamorphic lens to have an ultra-wide cinematic experience. So cool and crazy that this is possible at this level. Plus it has extra conveniences like several IO ports, including gigabit ethernet, and a built-in Google TV with Google Assistant and Amazon. I never want to leave this room now. And Valerian Vision Master Max is offering a super early bird discount. Pay $100 deposit and get $1,000 off. Reserve yours at the link below. And thanks to Valerian for supporting the channel. So there are a few things in this room that haven't been working so well. One are these Valencia seats. They're extremely comfortable. The motors still work perfectly fine, which is impressive since we have three kids that are always climbing on them. But two of the chairs, the LED lights stopped working, so you can't see the buttons to recline it and all that. Valencia was gonna charge me a couple hundred bucks to replace it myself. That was gonna be a pain. I don't want to do that. The other thing are the Nanoleaf lights. They look incredible, but they'll work fine for a couple of months, and then the next couple of months, they'll just completely stop working. And then they'll start working again, and I won't have done anything. I don't understand why they're so unreliable, but all the rest of the accent lighting here works extremely well. Most of it is just Kasa light strips. I think they look great, and it makes this room so much more fun to hang out in. Here in the laundry room, I have the automations dialed in so well, and it starts with my laundry basket in my closet. There's a pressure sensor underneath it, and once there's too many clothes in the laundry basket, it gets too heavy, and it notifies me at the perfect time to start my laundry. That way it never gets too full, and I forget to start it or anything like that. And a lot of people were making fun of me, saying, Reed, you don't need an automation for that. Just look at your laundry basket. But that's why I have a smart home. So I don't have to remember those types of things. I'm busy, and I can have my smart home manage that for me. And so once I start my laundry, I have a smart outlet on the washing machine and a vibration sensor on the dryer, and I can just scan my phone on the NFC tag, and once those are done, it only notifies me. It doesn't bother anybody else in the home, and it works extremely well. And here in the laundry room, I also have the server rack, which I've made some updates since the last tour. I have a patch panel, so I finally added one of those. The cable management is a lot better. I also have a keyboard and a monitor to access the mini PC that I run Home Assistant on, as well as the Reolink NVR. And of course, I added some light strips that make everything look so much better, and I put a millimeter wave sensor in here, so as you walk up to it, it will only turn on if you're standing right here in front of the server rack, and if you're just doing laundry or whatever, the lights don't turn on, so it's awesome. I'm still using UniFi for all my networking equipment. It's the same hardware I've been using for the last four years. It's incredible. Our Wi-Fi is fast anywhere around the house, and I love all the tools in UniFi that can get more advanced for things that I wanna do. And I have some UniFi cameras and Reolink cameras that are hardwired on the outside of my house that plug straight into here to the server rack, and that way, I don't have to deal with any cloud fees or anything like that. It's so much more reliable. I'm a huge fan of hardwired cameras. Of course, there are other smart home hubs and bridges in here to control all the smart devices around here. If you wanna see more on that, I've done a whole video on it, but everything runs perfectly fine offline, which is really important to me. That way, if the internet goes down, our smart home does not miss a beat. And next to the server rack is a robot vacuum, which is also crucial to our smart home. It's automated, so once everyone leaves the house, it will start cleaning, and it's so nice to come home from being tired with dealing with the kids and everything, and our floors are spotless. They've been swept, vacuumed, mopped, and they look so good, and not having to do that is such a time-saver. Out here in the garage, I've really decked it out with tons of automations and smart devices since the last tour, and there's a device over here that I use every single day that I feel like doesn't get enough credit, but is super crucial, and it's this flame detector. When we have our e-bikes over here charging, I don't want them to catch on fire or anything in this hot garage, so this doesn't detect smoke, but actual flames, and it's instant, right when the flame comes up, it sounds off an alarm, alerts my phone, and it's so fast and responsive, so I love having this in here, as well as one other spot in our house that I'll show you a little bit later. For the garage doors, I have Meros on this big one and Ratt GDO on the other one. I have both of them for testing. They both work extremely well locally. The garage doors, I use it for all sorts of automations. If we've left it open, we'll get notified, or a light is on inside the house, or if the garage door is open, and someone walks on our driveway, and our camera sees them, it will notify me. That way, things are less likely to get stolen in here, and I love the lights here in the garage. They make everything so bright, and of course, they're smart, but they're just dumb LED lights that are plugged into smart outlets in the ceiling by the garage door openers, and whenever you open up a door, it automatically turns on the light. It's basically instant, but I also have some motion sensors in here to help keep the lights on, like one right here that's magnetized, and that way, if I'm working in here, it doesn't turn the lights off on me. We're still using Tesla Solar. We have the three Powerwalls in here. Besides the few hiccups that we had right when we got it installed, everything's been running flawlessly. There is something in here that did stop working in the garage, and that is this HomePod. I was using this to listen to music out here working or watching TV. I think the heat killed it here in the garage, so yeah, I'm really disappointed about that. Those things are expensive, ugh. Here in front of the house, we have some smart home devices, like some hardwired cameras that I mentioned earlier. My favorites are from Reolink, the ones that have 180-degree field of view. You can see so much. There's basically no blind spots around our house. I love those cameras. Over on our front door, we have the Schlage Encode Plus. I think I was using this lock on the tour I did a couple years ago, which shows how good this lock is. It's super easy to use. You just tap your iPhone or your Apple Watch to it, and it unlocks. I know the ultrawide band locks are coming out soon, which I'm excited for. And for the doorbell, I'm using the UniFi G4. I know that there's better doorbells out there. This one records 24-7, and I have it integrated really well into my smart home. If someone delivers a package out here and we don't open up that front door, a notification shows up on our dashboard to let us know, hey, there's a package out here. We don't want to forget about it. Once we open up the front door, that notification banner automatically goes away. And if a person is detected right here in front of the front door, the live video doorbell feed will show up on the dashboard automatically so we can see who's there. And my favorite thing is that I don't get pointless doorbell notifications. So we only get notified if someone is spotted here at the front door, and the front door has not opened in a little while. So check this out. Say I'm going out in the front to grab a package. I open up the front door, come out on the front porch. My video doorbell sees me, but since the front door just opened, I do not get a notification on my phone. It's so nice having my smart home not annoy me. Here in this front room area, we have a couple lamps, one in the corner, and here on this table, they're both from Ikea with Philips Hue bulbs inside. And I know Philips Hue is expensive, but they're reliable and they match the ceiling lights extremely well, which can be turned on here in this front room from the piano because there's a vibration sensor on the piano. So if our kids are practicing and the lights are off, then the lights will turn on for them. But my favorite part in this area is... No. But my favorite part of this whole area are these hallway lights. I automated them so well. So we're in this hallway area. These lights are automated with this millimeter wave sensor. It's super accurate and keeps the lights on while the kids are putting on their shoes. And then these hallway lights are automated from this motion sensor right here. And I like this third reality motion sensor because it doesn't require batteries since it plugs right in. And it has a little nightlight on it so you can use it for notifications or when it's really late at night, instead of turning on the hallway lights, it just turns on the nightlight so it doesn't blind anybody, but you can still see where you're going. Much better. So I've always wanted to be able to do something in my smart home that's very difficult to do. Be able to tell which direction I'm walking and turn on lights where I'm going. So for example, in this hallway, I have some lights right here as well as around the corner down that hallway. And I wanna be able to walk down here and have the lights around the corner turn on for me before I even get there. Now I'm able to do that with this new millimeter wave sensor from Apollo that actually has two millimeter wave sensors in it. And it can tell which direction I'm walking. So it knows if I'm walking this way to turn on those lights. So let's try it out. As I enter this hallway, this turns on and then the other lights turn on. You probably saw it, it was so fast. And I didn't even have to walk around the corner. They're already on for me. And if I'm walking back this way, see how those hallway lights are off? As I'm walking this way, they turn on. It knew I was walking this direction and it turned on those lights for me. It's so smart. Here's the millimeter wave sensor. It's so versatile and so accurate. I can't wait to tell you more about it. So make sure you subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. I have a lot of cool things to show you. So now that we're here in the bedroom, one of the cool things that happens with my smart home is it will automatically switch my smart home dashboard to show the controls for this specific room. And that's because I'm using ESP presence, using the Bluetooth on my phone. And no matter what room I'm in around the house, it will automatically show the controls for the room I'm standing in, which makes it way faster to turn something on or off. I don't have to scroll. Yeah, it's super convenient. Over here, I have my charging stuff for my phone, which I'm using an iPhone. I try to switch it to Android. It's a long story, but I'm not using an Apple Watch. I'm actually using a Garmin. I love it. It has 30-day battery life. I still get all the notifications from my phone in my smart home. So I'm a really big fan of that. But I'm not using the pressure sensor underneath my mattress anymore. I was using a Withings pressure sensor mat, doing tons of cool automations. Like if I'm still in bed, it will wake me up in the morning. Or when I lay down in bed, it will lock everything down in the house. I relied on that a lot. And when it stopped working, I had to find a different solution. So I'm using an Aqara FP2 sensor, and it knows if I'm laying down in bed, it will run all those same automations, and it works just the same. So it's a bummer that the pressure sensor mat stopped working, but hey, there's other good solutions out there. And in all the bedrooms, we have smart lamps that turn on at night when we're about to go to bed, and the ceiling lights automatically turn off. It's way easier to wind down that way. But I made sure to put smart buttons on all the nightstands, and that way the whole family can turn the lamp on and off if they want to. So it's still extremely family-friendly. Now, going into the bathroom, we have a fingerprint door lock, and I've had this for a few years. It's working extremely well. It's not smart, but it doesn't really need to be. You just use your fingerprint if it's locked, and me and Allie can go in and out really easy, but it keeps the kids out. Here in the bathroom, I was using a HomePod mini, but just like the other one, it stopped working. This time, it was like phantom touches that were happening on this. I think it's because of this case or holder thing that I was using. So if you're using something like this, I would stop using it immediately. I think Apple's rumored to be coming out with a new HomePod mini soon, and if they do, hopefully it's more durable than their other HomePods. So I ended up buying a Sonos smart speaker, and the sound is incredible. I love listening to music on it while I get ready in the morning, and I can still do all the same smart home announcements and all of that on it, so it works really well. So here in the studio, I have a lot of expensive camera equipment. So I have a smart lock on the outside to make sure no kids come in here and break anything. This one is from Acara. It uses Matter, so it connects really well into my smart home, and I have this lock fully automated, so if I'm on a video call on my computer, my smart home will recognize that and make sure the lock is locked so kids don't come in here and have any disruptions. The only downside with this is that it takes AA batteries, but I put rechargeable AA batteries, and it works just fine. I've been trying to use more rechargeable batteries around my smart home with sensors using rechargeable batteries, and it's made a huge difference. I hate buying batteries, so I have a pretty good system where I always have some charged up. I just swap them out, and it's super convenient. So a lot of the stuff here in the studio is the same. I've made some improvements to the lights, though. These are the Govee Skyline Kit, and these are some of my favorite lights ever. They bounce light off the wall and the ceiling, so it's nice and soft, nothing harsh in your eyes. They also use Matter, so they integrate extremely well into my smart home. They look incredible. And I switched out how these WLED lights light up. So when we're working, it doesn't light up here on the bottom, so that way light's not shining in your eyes when you're sitting at a desk, but they turn on up above. So anywhere you're working here in the studio, there's no lights that are shining in your eyes. It's just a nice, soft glow that makes it really easy to work, which is important to me because I'm in here working all the time. And just like the garage, I have another one of those flame detectors here in the studio because I have a lot of camera batteries that I charge up all the time, and it's a great peace of mind knowing if a flame did start up, I would be notified immediately and could quickly put it out. Here at the side of my desk, I have a dashboard where I can quickly turn things on and off, but what's really cool is that before I leave and it shuts everything off, my smart home will save a snapshot of all these devices, lights, fans, speakers, and then when I walk back into the room, everything turns on to the way that I left it. So convenient. All right, that about does it for the smart home tour. There was a lot of stuff around the house that I had to leave out for the sake of time or else this video would be way too long. But if you're building out your own smart home, make sure you're following the channel and don't feel overwhelmed with all the stuff I showed in this video. It took like four years to slowly build out our smart home to be where it is right now. And so just take your time, enjoy the journey, and have fun. Thanks for watching. Hey Reed, do you want to try Amazon Music? No, stop asking. Sorry, I thought the 187th time would be the charm. Hey Reed, do you want to try- Again, seriously, stop it. Brownies. Wait, oh, I'm sorry, brownies.