My Ultimate Smart Home Blueprint： Aqara, UniFi & Lutron

So what if you could start your entire smart home from scratch? Maybe you're in that position today, getting ready to move into a brand new home, or maybe you're like me, and it's just a fantasy of some future life. But in this video, I want to talk about if I had to buy a completely new smart home today, what products would I get? And how would I set that up? Because I think even if you're not trying to actually buy your entire smart home tomorrow, there are some ideas here that might help inform what you should be interested in for your next smart home upgrade. If you're new here, I'm Eric Wielander. I've been talking about smart home and Apple on YouTube since 2018. So if you're into that, consider subscribing for free and hit the like button as well, because why not? Now one of the themes that went into me selecting a lot of these products, and I think it's important for you to consider with your own smart home and that's systems that scale. There's plenty of talk out there about this universally interoperable smart home thanks to the matter standard and other things that will just mean that all the things you get in your home will talk to each other. And that's all nice, but it's just not realistic most of the time to have complete compatibility across so many different products. So I think by picking a system or two of different things that then all work really nicely together from the same company, and then also work in a way that can scale across your home today. And in the future is a nice way to just get a bunch of problems solved all at once and then move on. And one great example of this is Aqara's little trio. They have their U400 smart lock, which does ultra wide band with Apple home key. So you just walk up to it and unlocks, and then they have their W200 thermostat where you can control your home with Apple's adaptive temperature. And then they also have their home gets a gear video compatible doorbells with the Aqara G400, or if you need the battery version, the G410. And those all work nicely together, where if someone rings your doorbell, then you see snapshots of them on the Aqara thermostat. And from there you can unlock the front door. Now, if you want to save a little money, maybe don't go with the U400, but I think the U400 is a fantastic lock and a great deal, especially when it all integrates with the doorbell and the thermostat. Now, if you rent your place and you don't actually own it, then I would look at something like a smart retrofit deadbolt. My choice here is the Nuki deadbolt and their keypad. I've done videos on these in the past and they're very good. And these deadbolts are designed in Austria. They're made in Europe and they just have this really great feel to them. Definitely. You can't go wrong renting a place and putting one of those on. And the important part there is because it's a retrofit, it just goes in the inside of your door. So the same keys work to unlock your door from the outside. But you add that smart control. Now, moving on to networking and giving your whole smart home some Wi-Fi signal. Now, this is an area where you could potentially put it off if you already have something that works, but you don't want to put it off too long. And systems at scale is another key thing to consider here. Now, if you're setting up a new smart home for someone who's, let's say, less technical, I would still go with something like Eero because I think they're kind of a set it and forget it Wi-Fi network. They also do a bunch of stuff with thread networking with their pro series, which is a great thing to have around your smart home is some extra thread border routers. But I'm picking this smart home out for myself. So I'm going to go with Ubiquiti and choose their cloud gateway fiber. Now, I currently use their Dream Machine Pro, which is kind of getting older. It's completely fine for me, but I wouldn't buy that new. I'd get their cloud gateway or cloud gateway fiber. If you have a smaller place, the Dream Router 7 might also work well. But cloud gateway fiber, I think, is what I'm going to go with for this dream new smart home. And the reason is because it works with really fast, modern fiber Internet connections. And it can also scale with Ubiquiti's whole unified networking system of different Wi-Fi access points and switches. So you can build out the network across your entire home. I'd probably start with a couple of U7 Pro walls just to install on a couple of walls here and there and give me some basic Wi-Fi. Now, what about camera needs? Well, cameras, I really break into casual or more advanced. And I think if you're in the casual side, if you are you with the Aqara trio for the front door, then you might consider just building out a smart home with a bunch of Aqara G100s. These support Apple's HomeKit secure video if you're into Apple Home like I am. And they're also just great cameras. You can mount a lot of place in your home inside or outside, although they are not battery powered. You do need to run power to them. Now, if you want something more advanced, you want something that is always recording video all the time, then I would look at something like Ubiquiti's unified protect system. Again, going back to that system that scales of your Ubiquiti networking setup. Now, since I went with the cloud gateway fiber, I'd also need to get one of their network video recorders to then record video for all these cameras and then run Ethernet around my home to get power to those new Ubiquiti cameras, something like a bunch of G5 turret ultras for things I don't need 4K on and then maybe some G6 turrets and G6 pro bullets for the places where I really want the good video quality, like a driveway or a main entrance to my home. So we still have a couple of big categories that I need to finalize for this dream setup, and one of those is smart lighting. Now, back to the whole systems that scale the concept. I think Lutron Caseta still has a really great option. Yes, you have to use one of their bridges. Yes, there's more smart switch options than ever these days with all kinds of cool details of touchscreens and millimeter wave sensors and other stuff. But I think just sticking to Lutron Caseta would keep things simple and work across the board in your home. They have a switch for all kinds of things, including a smart fan control. So you can really stick with one brand across your entire home. They also have some nice solutions for smart plugs. So they have a lesser known lamp smart plug, which is actually dimmable. So then you can plug this into a lamp and then it will dim the light bulbs in the lamp. And it usually comes with a Pico remote so you can control it remotely from, let's say, the comfy chair in your living room. And then, of course, it all ties back into the Lutron lighting system. That doesn't really help that much if I'm not going to tie all this together. And that's where the whole Apple Home thing comes in for me. And I would pick an Apple TV 4K high end version with the Thread Radio and Ethernet. And I know these days, especially in the summer of 2026, it is crazy to think that an Apple TV 4K that was introduced in 2022 costs $250 here in the U.S. and pretty equivalent prices elsewhere in the world. Now, that is a lot to pay for a streaming video box. But when you consider that this is also the main hub for your smart home, then it starts to not look as crazy because anything like a Home Assistant Green or a Homie Pro Mini, they have fractions of the specs of this Apple TV and they cost about the same amount of money and they don't serve as streaming boxes for your TV. So I actually think low key, the Apple TV is still a good deal for what you're getting as long as you're doing the smart home stuff alongside of watching your favorite show. And then speaking of systems that scale, you can buy then a bunch of different home pods to go around your home and those expand your Thread Network as well as give you speakers to play audio. I'd also get Sonos soundbars and surrounds and subs for any TVs where that made sense. Of course, all the modern versions of the Sonos speakers support Apple Airplay, so you can really still use Apple's Airplay as a way to have multi-room audio between your home pods and, of course, the Sonos speakers. Now, I know the Apple TV can technically be an Airplay destination as well, and so you wouldn't necessarily have to use Sonos. I just like also having the flexibility of Sonos' whole system. You can then link it up with things like your Lutron lights. We just talked about with special remotes there. So it just gives you some long term options down the road of ways to automate audio in your home that you don't necessarily have if you just went with a bunch of random other non-Apple Airplay speakers or bought something like a Denon speaker or receiver. Nothing wrong with those systems. It's just not what I would be interested in if I bought a whole new smart home today, even after having reviewed the Denon Home 200, which I have linked somewhere here on the screen. Give this video a thumbs up if you liked it. Subscribe to my channel if you aren't already. Thanks again so much for watching and hope to see you in the next video.