Testing Smart Home Tech
I’ve tested a lot of different smart home tech products over the years, and some have been good and some have been bad. In this one, we’re going to cover the ones I enjoy using the most. Welcome to my home. Amanda and the kids are out of town, so I’ve got the entire house to myself, which is great for filming, but it also gets very quiet when the family’s not around. One of the most boring things about good smart home tech is that you rarely notice it when it’s working. It usually takes a bit of time to set up, so a lot of people never actually spend the time to get it working, and it turns into frustration more than an experience.
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Smart Lights
The first thing that comes to mind when you want something seamless and easy to set up is smart lights. I love being able to change them up. I bought some of my very first Philips Hue strip lights over eight years ago. They’re still working to this day. Some of the bulbs we have here in the house were actually bought back in 2018 when we moved into our previous apartment. I basically filled the entire house with smart lights. Let me show you the bedroom. I’ve put some light strips under the bed to get a nice glow, and we’ve also got a Philips Hue over here and a Twilight over here. The more Philips Hue lights you have, the bigger the effect when you’re walking around the house.
The Twilight Bedside Light
The one I like the most is the Twilight, which is a bedside light. If I press one button, it turns off the entire house. So I don’t have to walk around switching everything off. Press the next button and it turns everything back on. What I like most about Philips Hue is how easy it is to get started with smart lighting. The downside is that it’s expensive. But I’ve been using Philips Hue for over eight years now, and in my experience there hasn’t been a single issue with the lights or the setup.
The Tap Dial Switch
The thing that usually scares people off from a smart home setup is losing the regular light switch. But you can just get something like this, called the Tap Dial Switch. It’s basically four buttons in one switch, with a dimmer you can twist and turn. Instead of regular light switches, you put up Tap Dial Switches around the house, and you can control all the lights no matter where you go. It ends up being about as simple as flipping a normal switch. If someone turns off a light at the switch itself, there’s nothing to worry about. Because when you set it up you just make sure power loss recovery is turned on, and it goes back to whatever setting it was on before, whether that’s off or on.
Sensors and Automation
There’s also a bunch of sensors you can use to automate your lights, so they turn on or off based on motion or how bright it is. I put one in the playroom so that if it gets too dark and it senses motion, the lights turn on. These sensors are smarter than you’d think, since they’ve got a lux meter built in along with motion and temperature sensing, though you can’t actually see the temperature reading in the Philips Hue app. You can with Homey Pro, though, which we’ll get to shortly.
Yale Smart Lock
Next up is the Yale Smart Lock. What I like most is that you don’t need a key, just a code. It’s simple to install, and it gives the whole family easier access, so my son can get in even when I’m not home. I can also unlock it from my phone if I need to. The biggest drawback after using it for over two years is that you need to change the batteries roughly every six to eight months. Not a dealbreaker, but it can be a little annoying if you’d rather not think about it. We still keep a regular lock as a backup in case anything happens to this one, though I doubt it will — there haven’t been any issues, and it’s worked great. I’ve also set up my fingerprint on the doorbell so I can lock the house that way too.
Homey Pro
The brain behind my smart home is Homey Pro, which connects all the different smart home units in the house into one device and lets me control them together using what they call flows. For example, starting the AC when you’re not home is hard to do without the remote in hand. I picked up a TTO smart AC controller and connected it to Homey Pro, which let me build a flow. Now I can just press a button here and start the AC without touching the remote.
Controlling the AC
From there you can switch fan modes, put it on fan one, fan two, adjust the heat, whatever the flow calls for. It’s a fairly clean design too, with a little LED ring glowing at the bottom that gives off a nice ambience in the dark. The whole point is you only need one app instead of switching between separate apps for every device. You just build a flow between the different units and let them talk to each other.
SmartWings Blinds Flow
One of the best flows I’ve set up is with our SmartWings blinds. About 15 minutes before the sun hits its highest point, the blinds go down automatically. You can control the conditions for that, too. I’ve connected our Netatmo weather station so it feeds in weather updates: if it’s cloudy, the blinds stay up; if it’s clear or partly cloudy, they go down; and if the wind is above a certain point, they stay up regardless. It’s a neat way to build flows that fit how you actually live.
Learning Curve
The biggest downside after using Homey Pro for more than two years is the learning curve — it takes a while to get comfortable with it. You don’t need to build advanced flows right out of the gate, though. You can start simple, like turning on a light when you wake up. But once you’ve got a solid flow going, like the SmartWings setup, you stop thinking about the individual units altogether. They just handle themselves.
UniFi Protect
It’s actually a Homey flow connected to UniFi Protect that lets me unlock the door with my fingerprint. UniFi Protect is probably the smoothest experience I’ve had with surveillance cameras. What I like most is that everything is stored locally, no subscription, no cloud storage, so you’re in control of your own footage depending on where you place the cameras. The cameras themselves are well built, too. This one here has been running continuously, 24/7, for over two years without any issues I’ve run into. I’ve used Arlo and other similar products, but nothing else has been as reliable, in my experience, as UniFi Protect. I also just like their design language, and they pack a lot of features into these units.
My Camera Setup
There are a few different ways to set up UniFi Protect, and the setup I’ve got is honestly overkill for most people. But if you’re dealing with a lot of 4K footage and moving those files around regularly, a setup like this becomes pretty important. I won’t go full nerd on it in this one, but I’ll put together a separate video on the whole thing soon, since it’s genuinely interesting, especially for other creators — we’re talking 140-plus terabytes.
Roborock Saros 20
Then there’s my favorite: the Roborock Saros 20. This is probably the single thing I’d recommend to anyone starting their smart home journey. I tried a Dreame robot vacuum a while back and wasn’t satisfied, so I went back to Roborock. It’s got two mops on the bottom and a split roller brush in the middle. It also rises up surprisingly high and can climb thresholds, which isn’t something we strictly need in this house, but it’s nice to have the option.
Cleaning Performance
The mops swing out to the side, covering more area and getting into corners more easily, and the brush does the same. It leans into corners and makes the whole job simpler. It hasn’t had any trouble with thick carpets and has cleaned the whole house without issue so far. Before the Saros 20, I was using the Roborock S8 Pro Ultra, and honestly, Roborock’s reliability has been outstanding. I don’t think there’s been a single time I wasn’t satisfied with one of their units.
Closing
I really hope you enjoyed this one, and that it’s got you feeling ready to start your own smart home journey, or at least gave you some ideas on where to start or what to spend your money on. Stay tuned for the network setup video, because that one’s going to be a sick one, especially if you’re a creator — 10 GB speed through the entire house plus the studio is wild. Don’t forget to like the video if you enjoyed it, and subscribe if you want to catch the next one. This has been Peter from Sweden, saying goodbye.
