Extreme smart home makeover

27:57and if you, you know, dimmable lighting in the kitchen is great because you want it really nice and bright when you're cooking, but then maybe, you know, when you're sitting at the counter for eat dinner, you may want to dim, be a bit more relaxed and casual. So I find smart lighting in the kitchen very important, but you kind of want to work with what you have. So maybe we should go on to lighting because that is something you said you want to do. Let's do lighting and I I think I marked lighting to do in the living room. So let's move to the living room because this is actually the way the living room is set up.

28:31It's this sort of long, skinny room. And there's a fireplace on one side and there's a wall on the other side. And there's like it's not quite track lighting, but it's like ceiling lighting. And there are basically like six sort of inset bulbs in the ceiling. Oh, but they are bulbs. They are bulbs. Great. And so I can do, there's actually kind of a lot of available space to do whatever I want with those bulbs. But I also feel like this is the room we're going to spend time in. This is where A, if I'm going to invest in smart lighting, this is the first place to do it. And B, it's going to be the thing that sort of hubs everything else.

29:07So let's talk about lighting from here. I'm in the living room. What do I do? So do you have neutral wires? Yes. So do you want color changing lighting? sure i mean the answer is i don't care okay like i i i think the the thing that i do like is uh having warm to cool lighting okay um and so when we've had the the white lights being able to do warm versus cool lighting being able to like make the room red to match the movie we're watching is like a neat idea that i have never once experienced in reality okay so the thing here So to get the circadian, the natural adaptive lighting feature, you do need smart bulbs.

29:50Because if all you want to do is dim, then smart switches are fine. But for making the lights slowly change from warm to cool, you need smart bulbs. I don't need it to happen automatically. I just want to be able to do it myself. Automatically would be nice, but I'm even fine with like it's a setting I can change. Yeah. Would be fine. So, you've already got Hue, and I do think this is a place where you could use Hue bulbs in your track lighting. I'm assuming we don't want to rip out the track lighting and put something new in. No, that goes beyond the rules of who is coming to my house. So, yes.

30:27And the nice thing, we talked about this on the last episode, but Hue now has a much less expensive line of thread matter bulbs. But you do already have a bridge, and Hue does support its old bridges, so they will still work with the bridge. Although I would give a bit of a plug for potentially upgrading to the new Hue Bridge Pro, because that adds the new motion sense feature that would turn your lights into motion sensors, where you would be able to, so you wouldn't necessarily need to use little motion sensors around the house. I do like that, especially right there because the living room, you kind of you hit the living room sort of as soon as you get in the front door.

31:08So it would be a useful place to have a motion detecting light for a bunch of reasons. So I'm into that. So I think and I think you would want you would want to do a smart switch because the problem with smart bulbs and switches in an analog house is that when someone flips the switch, your smart bulbs are no longer going to work. What kind of switches do you have? They just toggle. They're just simple, beautiful. You flip them up and they turn the damn light on. I've been assuming that I'm going to buy a bunch of Lutron Caseta stuff and kind of put it all over the house. Is that the right answer here?

31:44So not if you want to use smart bulbs. Oh, God. Okay. So, yes, you have two options. All right. You can either go with Lutro and Cassetta, and then you will be able to dim and turn on and off your lights using smart home controls, voice control, motion sensors, no problem. But you will not be able to use smart bulbs because smart switches generally don't work with smart bulbs, except for in a few cases. And so I'm going to suggest if you do want the warm and the cool to get Philips Hue smart bulbs and buy Inovelli smart switches. They're about the same cost as Lutron, but they have something called smart bulb mode where they will pair directly with the bulbs.

32:32And you can, when you turn the switch off, they will turn the lights off, but it will not cut the connectivity. So you'd still be able to use voice control and motion sensing then. I was going to say, because the single, the most important thing here is that when you flip the switch, the lights change. And it turns out that is not a guarantee with a lot of these systems. And, and this is like, I actually, we literally had this experience where I rigged up a bunch of stuff in our living room. I had smart lights and all this stuff. And then we got, you know, that the sort of, I had used a voice assistant to turn it on, but then flipped it off with a switch.

33:06And so then when you flipped on the switch, it's like, it just, the things got backwards. And Anna was just like, take that thing out. I'm done. Like it doesn't, the light doesn't turn on when I flip the switch. What are we doing? And I have to say, I agree with that. But this, this as a failsafe makes a lot of sense. It does. And the Innovelli switches do look like regular switches. They're not unusual looking. And I love Caseta. I think they're great, especially they have two great advantages. If you don't have neutral wires, they still work. So that's why I have them all over my house, because I don't have neutral wires.

33:38And they are rock solid. But you need your own bridge and they are not matter compatible. And we have talked about this on the last episode that really I fully recommend choosing Matter devices at this stage when you can or local control. Lutron Crusader is local, so they do have that benefit. But in your case, I think you will find that Inovele switches are going to add that extra. You're going to be able to have that cool and warm while still maintaining voice control and smart home control on your lights. and they're going to cost you about the same as the Lutron ones will. Do you want to sell me on anything else in the living room before we keep moving?

34:20I think the biggest thing about the living room is going to be control. Like you just mentioned, not wanting to have to run into the other room to talk to a voice assistant. You've got the remote, but I think you may also want a button. A button for controlling everything in the room when you don't want to use voice commands because in the living room especially, I think, is a place where you find you don't always want to be shouting. You don't necessarily want to pull your phone out either because if you want to get ready for movie time, you don't want to be distracted by your phone. So a smart button is a great addition to your smart home.

34:59There are a lot of good options here, mainly because matter has brought this. So you don't used to really always have to use an ecosystem button that worked with your ecosystem. But we're starting to see more options. And actually, just last week, IKEA announced a whole new line of Matter over Thread smart home devices, including the neatest buttons I've ever seen. So excited about these buttons. and it is it has a little dial so you can dim and brighten and then two buttons to control things like turn on turn off the thing that's really neat about this button is because it's matter over thread you compare it to any smart home platform that supports buttons in matter currently that is not amazon alexa they don't support buttons but i think we're going to talk a little bit later about potentially adding Home Assistant into your sphere here.

36:01Oh, are we? And that would give you the ability to add this device to your home. And I think having a physical controller really helps make the smart home a bit more democratic. You don't have to know what voice commands to use. You don't have to have a phone. So, you know, your kids can turn the lights on and off when they're sitting on the couch rather than having to get up and go and flip the switch. Big, big fan of buttons. Big fan of buttons. For that exact reason. And these buttons, do you want to take a guess at how much they cost? This is a matter of a switch. $45. More like four. What?

36:41Oh, I'm going to buy a hundred of these. They come in like a three-pack for a bit more than that. They didn't give exact pricing yet. They gave UK pricing. But the remote control buttons start at three pounds, which is about four dollars. I mean, isn't that crazy? We're putting these everywhere in every room of my house. This is great. So I don't know exactly how it's going to work in your smart home. We're going to have to work that out once they come out. But you don't have to have the Dirigir Hub, which is IKEA's hub. Because it's matter over thread, it will pair with any matter controller.

37:14So these are fun. And I think, yeah, you could use these in every room in the house. And I think that's their buttons just make the smart home sing. 100%. I totally agree. Shades. Do you want shades? No. Okay. I'm okay pulling shades up and down. Every experience I've had with smart shades leaves them halfway down and broken and too expensive. And it's just, I don't know, on the list of things that I don't need in my life. Do you have a lot of windows? That's one place I'm happy to save money in this process. We do have a lot of windows. Well, if you change your mind, I'm just going to say, check out SmartWings.

37:51That's probably, they're really not that expensive compared to what smart blinds used to be, which they've always been. And I think, and they're also matter over thread. So you would have, you know, more thread, more matter, stronger your mesh network will be. Although they're battery powered. But yeah, smart blinds are the type of thing you don't realize you're going to love until you actually have them. But no, I'm not talking you into it. Here is, David, you're going to have to charge your shades and you've lost me. Yeah, that is the downside. Unless you can get them hardwired. Sure. That'll go over super well.

38:29Okay. Let's run a bunch of cables to the shades. We had a whole conversation about getting a new front door. And there was a moment where it was like, are we going to get a smart front door? And then as soon as she found that we were going to have to plug it in, that immediately went away. You looked into a smart front door? We did. Which one? Very briefly. Honestly, I don't even remember because we didn't get far. As soon as she was like, we have to charge our door, she was out. And I think she was right. Do you want to do smart lock or doorbell? Video doorbell? No. Okay. I'm going to say no.

39:06I don't. Let's come back to that at the very end because I think we'll fold that into backyard because I would like to be talked into it. but I don't think I'm going to. Okay. But first, we need to take a break. Okay. And then we're going to come back. We're going to go upstairs. Sounds good. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from The Home Depot. This holiday season, take advantage of savings on the wide selection of top smart home security products at The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to make your home smarter with the latest technology and products that let you control and automate your home.

39:44and with brands you trust like Ring, Blink, Google, and more. Available in-store and online. Often available with same-day or next-day shipping. So you can protect your peace of mind, whether you're away or at home this season. The Home Depot. Smart homes start here.

40:04Alright, we're back. We're going to do bedrooms. And we have our bedroom and we have the kids' bedroom. And we talked about smart lights. So I think that that's a that's a pretty easy solve here. I would like to hear your ceiling fan pitch. And then the other one I want to know is basically I need something on my bedside table to wake me up slash put me to sleep slash charge my things, whatever. Curious if you have any recommendations there. But start with a ceiling fan because I get the sense you want to pitch me on a ceiling fan. Well, this might be a bit overkill for a bedroom, though. This would be more for the living room.

40:40But so the big ass fans are awesome, especially if you don't if you want to save money and you don't be running your air conditioning all the time. These fans, they're very they are expensive, but they do work with matter and they have a light built in and they are like the Rolls Royce of fans. and they do, I have one in my living room and even in the height of summer, I can have it running and not need my AC most of the time. I mean, I do live in South Carolina. I was going to say, that's the highest bar I can imagine. But if I'm there on my own and it has a motion sensor, so it will turn on once you sit down underneath it rather than running when there's no one there because ceiling fans do not call rooms they call people.

41:29There's no point just running your ceiling fan if you're not in there because it's not doing any good. There are a lot of smart fans out there. It's become more of a popular thing, but none of them have been... My experience with them has not been great, but my experience with the big ass fans is they are fairly flawless. I highly recommend if you have a room that you want a fan in, I would go for big ass. I think it's a good note. I think just thinking about my own life, we don't spend that much time in our bedrooms. We're very much like we are a living room family. And so I think like this is making me realize like I'm inclined to almost do as little as possible in the bedroom in our bedroom.

42:14just for that reason. It's like we're there to sleep, and I would like to make sleep comfortable, but the idea of really kitting out our room to work beautifully feels like overkill for my own purposes. So two main recommendations for the bedroom then. I have an indoor air purifier. You would definitely want an air purifier that will help with sleeping. And it would be good also to have an indoor air quality monitor so that you can kind of, if you aren't sleeping well, you can adjust and get alerts like the air quality's gone down. You should open a window. So Amazon actually has a really neat little indoor air quality monitor that you can set up and pair with an indoor air purifier.

42:59Sorry, just an air purifier. You don't normally use those outdoors. This is the type of thing you really want to be interoperable. And there are some devices you don't necessarily, but this will, if you can connect it to an air quality monitor or to a temperature sensor or to a fan, you know. Yeah, this is something I don't ever want to think about. I want to install it and then never touch it or think about it again. Automatically for you. So yes, air quality, big in the bedrooms. You might want to do the same thing in the kids' rooms as well. But for your bedside table, I'm going to suggest something incredibly expensive that I highly recommend you buy weird that hasn't happened at all yet okay this is the hue twilight lamp it is awesome um it's expensive it's three hundred and ten dollars what's crazy is based on this conversation so far you say that and i'm like oh that's not so bad this is the thing about the smart home um so it's oh it is nice looking it is it is this is the it's got a little bit of like the pixar lamp kind of vibe to it in a way that i find very charming And this is the problem with sleep wake lamps.

44:06There are a lot of them out there. They're all quite expensive and they're generally fairly ugly. Some of them, the ones that there's like the, I think it's a hatch one that just kind of looks like the sun. I don't like that. No, this is more practical because you can also use it as a bedside table lamp. And I feel that bedside table space is a premium. I don't like a lot of clutter on my bedside table. I actually use one of these and I do not need an alarm. And I cannot recommend not waking up to an alarm better. It is a great experience not to be woken up to blah, blah, blah. Instead, it gradually brightens enough that it actually, like, as long as I'm facing the right way, which I do because I always sleep on one side, it is bright enough to just wake me up naturally over a period of about 20 minutes if you need longer you need to make sure you're going to be up you can start it a bit sooner you said all of this in the hue app but you can also just do it on the device itself if you don't want to have to use the hue app um you do need the bridge for many features but it can work without the bridge as well but you already have a bridge so that's fine and you can do his and hers one on each side They come in black and white and they really look nice and you can move the head so you can use it for task lighting, like if you like to read in bed.

45:31And then it doesn't have any blue light in the nighttime scenes so it can slowly help you wind down. And then in the morning scenes are much brighter and they'll help you wake up. And honestly, I was able to get rid of my alarm clock once I started using this. But if you do need to get up on time, for sure, I would recommend, I've got two options for you for a smart alarm. One would be to get the Belkin Boost Charge Pro, which I think is the cutest little smart charging device that Belkin sells for your iPhone. It also charges your Apple Watch. It's nice and small and compact and comes in different colors so it doesn't look too techie.

46:14And then use your iPhone in standby mode. I think it's a great solution for an alarm clock. I do like standby mode. I've done a fair amount of that. If you don't mind having your phone in your bedroom, I know some people do the phone outside the bedroom, but putting it in standby mode takes away a lot of the distraction elements, I think. For sure. No, I'm all in on this Twilight. You don't need to sell me on anything else. I'm like, this is the first thing that I am just immediately like, I'm going to buy this thing today. It's great looking. It is exactly the thing that I need it to be. uh it looks like you can you can like put it anywhere you can buy it multiple colors i'm gonna i'm gonna use the hell out of this it is it's it's it's a real bummer that it is$300 it's very expensive they all that i know all of hugh's prices went up quite recently in the u.s for obvious reasons um unfortunately but it is it's a great device and you know we've talked about having hugh's pretty much throughout the house so you will have everything working if you want in one app.

47:13But obviously, he works with all the other systems too, with Matter and with Alexa. So you can use your voice to control it. Yeah, it's a good solution. But don't put this in your kids' room. No. Goodness, no. Although speaking of, the kids' room, I think, it'll get some of the same stuff, right? I think we'll do the smart lighting that kind of carries everywhere. But For older kids especially, our kids are going to kind of grow up into this room. So we're out of the what kind of newborn baby year stuff do we need? And there's a lot of smart stuff there. And all that is messy and complicated. But in terms of I want stuff that we're going to use for the next 10 years of my kids' lives.

47:58Are there things you would put in a kid's room that you wouldn't put in our bedroom? Oh, yeah. There's lots of great stuff with kids' rooms. I've used a lot of smart devices in my kids' rooms. One would be a robot vacuum. Oh, interesting. A little robot vacuum. SwitchBot has a tiny little robot vacuum, and it's great for getting under the bed. It's the SwitchBot K11. And kids love robot vacuums, so it's like a toy while it's cleaning. Our oldest cannot decide if he loves our vacuum or is terrified. Terrified of it? Okay. It just depends on the day. The dog hates it. That we know for sure. Okay, that's always a challenge.

48:38Yes. But the kids' room is compelling. But I think he'll grow up into liking robot costumes. So I like this idea. But so we had mentioned earlier to me, not on the show, that you wanted a communication system. Yes. So I would highly recommend an Echo Dot in their room. And the great thing about the Echo Dots is they have the kid versions. They're very tightly locked down. They also have a lot of great educational content. And they have dinosaurs and owls and cute dragons. So this is the sort of thing that you would trust to put unsupervised into a pretty young kid's room? Because that's a pretty high bar for me.

49:27Yeah, so the kids setting on the Alexa devices, Echo devices, is really locked down. It's very guard-railed, and you can't control smart home devices with it. You can't. Yeah, I think they've done a really good job. Amazon's done a really good job with the kids' stuff. They also have it with the tablets as well, the Kindle Fire tablets, the kids' mode. And there's a lot of really good content for kids on the Echo Dot. I would do the Dot, not a screened version. I have a solution for the wake-up, too. This is what you want, right? You want to keep the child in bed. So people swear by the thing where they're like, everybody's like, oh, well, we tell them they can only come out when the blue light turns on.

50:11And I'm like, my kid just wakes up and starts banging on the door. Like, I don't I'm unconvinced that this will work. Talk me into it. I'm so willing to try. So, yeah, I this came out right when my daughter was like seven or eight. So it was she was a little old for it, but it did sort of work. So the Echo Glow. There is a product called the Echo Glow. It's not projector, which also had the same name. That was just Amazon's glow. This is the Echo Glow. It looks just like a dot. Man, every time I think I know all of the Echo products, by the way, like I pay attention to this stuff for a living and you've named like four Echo products I've never heard of.

50:51No, this one, this is a light. It's a little globe light. It looks just like an Echo dot, but it's just a light. It doesn't have a speaker or a microphone. So the nice thing is if you have an Echo Dot in the room, you can control it. But you can set it to turn. There's routines that you can set in the Alexa app that will turn it on, you know, green for go. So it will turn on red right around the time they maybe start to wake up. And then when it's time that they can get out of bed and come and see you, it will turn to green. So, yeah, this is the idea. Green for go, red means stay in bed. But it sounds like perhaps you've tried this and it's not been successful.

51:34No, we haven't tried it. I just don't have a lot of faith that it's going to work. But I'm willing to try. I'm willing to give it a go. I mean, I think they'll probably find it really fun at first as well. And they can change the colors themselves. They could talk to the Alexa and say, you know, change my light to pink. And it's a fun interactive toy as well as being a guide for them. Okay, when this turns green, you can get out of bed and come and see Mommy and Daddy. But when it's red, stay in bed. When it's red, stay in bed. That's good. I could even remember that. Okay, this is good. That's good stuff.

52:14Let's take one more break because we're about to get to, I think, more complicated rooms. And also the only one that I, frankly, actually care about. we're going to come right back and we're going to do basement and we're going to do backyard. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from the Home Depot. This holiday season, you can take advantage of holiday savings on a wide selection of top smart home security products from the brands you can trust. And you can do it at the Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to make your home smarter with the latest technology and products that let you control and automate your home.

52:49so you can protect your peace of mind whether you're away or at home this season. The Home Depot. Smart homes start here.

53:01All right, we're back. We have two more rooms to go, Jen. I have spent, I can't even, untold thousands of dollars, but I'm having a great time. Let's do, let's stay inside. Let's do one more room in the house. And this is the basement. And let me just describe this basement to you. It has one source of light, which is one teeny tiny, like one foot by two feet window. Otherwise, it is a cave. And that is where I will be spending all of my time. And this room is going to serve two purposes. This is actually, I think, why this room is tricky. It is going to be both my office. So it's going to be like a desk and all of my recording setup.

53:45And this is where I will do all of this from now until the day I die. And then it's also going to be like a downstairs basement TV. And we have a big sectional couch that my parents are giving us. We're going to put a TV there. It's going to be like a sort of like in a case of emergency guest room, but mostly just like a place to hang out and watch movies. uh so all of that said i don't know that i have any like specific desires for the thing i'm having trouble even figuring out what is like possible in a space like this lighting seems very important uh but we've talked a bunch about lighting do you have any other good ideas for me so well lighting i think you can have specific use case in this space for lighting that we don't that doesn't really, I would potentially suggest a different system down here, just because it does sound dreary.

54:46Oh, it's so dreary. It's like, it's very helpful in a sense of like, I do a lot of things where I'm like sitting in front of a camera and we can control the lighting now, but then otherwise I'm just going to be sitting in a dark cave all day. Yeah. So I actually right behind me, I have the Nanoleaf blocks. And I think something like this on the wall, I don't know, maybe they have these kind of LED wall panels sort of definitely have a kind of YouTuber gamer vibe, but you can style them, tailor them to be a little bit more interior design focused. and something like a larger sort of panel of these could really, you could turn to like warm, bright light and would sort of cast a nice sort of, almost feel like you could almost make like a little window of them.

55:38So, you know, so you've kind of got an artificial window. Like the ones they put on the inside of cruise ships where it's like a fake window to the outside. Yeah, and in fact, there are such things as fake skylights. That's true, yeah. Actually, at my other door here, if you're watching the video, you can see really bright light. That's because I have the Nanoleaf skylights in my hallway. And that was a cave-like room because there's no windows. And that type of thing on a ceiling could really create, without looking like a fake window, because I really don't think you want it to look like a fake window because it's going to look like a fake window.

56:16You can't make a skylight look like a skylight if it's not. but lighting that can mimic the daylight and Nanoleaf has the same adaptable adaptive lighting feature where it will automatically it can change the lights throughout the day you also have lots of scenes so you can have different colors if you like it is you know led color changing lighting we talked about it earlier it wasn't something you necessarily found a need for but I think in this space especially as you mentioned it also could be could be used for children as a children's room could be fun you have dance parties like it feels like this space could be one that you could bring that type of lighting into did you say you're gonna have a tv down here yes so the other thing you could do um and this is something you could do in the living room with phillips hue or you could do down here with nano leaf is one of the um tv syncing light systems so you have your lights in the room sync with what you're watching on TV.

57:17And that can, that's one of the best uses for color changing lighting that I've found is having that immersive sort of ambient TV lighting is really fun. Is it, okay. Is it actually though? Is it? I grant that it's a very cool demo and it's a cool thing to like see a picture of, you know what I mean? Like it works on the Amazon listings, but like you've installed all these things in your house? Like, is it actually a cool enough thing to be worth setting up in your house? I think in a room like this, yes. I don't find, I don't love doing it in my main living room because it does, yeah, I don't use it that much.

57:59But in a den, in a kid's playroom, or in a space you're going to be using for more kind of fun stuff, I think it's a great addition. It's definitely not a necessity. But if you're going to have like nano leaf lights in that space, you could also tie in this sort of TV lighting. And then you could have a real fun experience in that space. I think that could be a fun use of it. Also, because you get the two uses. You get the one where it feels dark and dreary in here. you know, it's December at 4 p.m. and you can just set the skylights or the wall panels to warm, bright light and that could kind of just help you feel better.

58:44It really does make a difference. We talked about buttons. So if you did end up with multiple Nanoleaf panels in your office, you could use a device like this on your desk to easily change everything when you're, say, recording versus watching TV or when, you know, you want more, you want light that's going to energize you versus calm down in the evening. So something to have that interoperability that you can control from your desk with a button because we love buttons. I think these things are great. This is not too expensive. I want to say that blocks start about$200, which for lighting in a lighting fixture, not just a light bulb.

59:34I mean, you've probably, are you buying new light fixtures for your home or are they all sold with it? Because they're expensive. A mix. Yeah. We've done a bunch of like chandelier shopping because the chandelier in our house is very 1980s in a way that I do not mean as a compliment. This hasn't come back yet. No, it sure hasn't. And so anything else for me in the basement before we get to the last space? So does it have any existing lighting in it? There is, I believe, no current lighting in the basement at all. It's going to be like lamps. Okay, so there's no track lighting or can lighting? There is one track of very straightforward lights that I intend to not use very much.

1:00:20Okay, so you could stick some smart bulbs into those then. I would also consider, and both Nanoleaf and Hue has this, some like floor lamp. Thank you. The floor lamps, like you can put them in a corner, just sort of not directional lighting, not task lighting, but just ambient lighting. I think a couple of those would help sort of make the room feel warmer and more inviting. Is that, so here's a question. Do you buy, in that case, it's just like any lamp plus a smart bulb? Or is there like a whole? No, there's a whole line of like Nanoleaf and Philips Hue and like Govee and all of the lighting brands, smart home lighting brands now have.

1:01:00What's the advantage to buying the lamp as opposed to just sticking the bulb in some other lamp? So these will be like LED lights. So it wouldn't just be a bulb on the top of a lamp. It would be like a strip that casts indirect light onto the wall. So you put it in the corner of the room and it would sort of light out the corner to give that indirect lighting. That's how you get the gamer lights that you see in every Twitch stream. Yes. I see. But you don't have to go with RGB. I'm cool with gamer lights. Don't get me wrong. I'm going to make everything purple and it's going to be sick. I can't wait.

1:01:35Oh, I meant, I did, sorry. I meant to ask, do you have a door? I mean, we do have a door. We have doors in our house, Jen. Yes. Do you want to keep the kids out when you're recording? Oh, interesting. That was going to be my other suggestion. And then you could also have like a little echo glow lamp on the door outside and you could have it turn red when you're recording so that they know not to come in. Yeah, that wouldn't. No. Okay. He's two. That's not going to go anywhere for me. Okay, but here, I hadn't even thought about this. So here's our actual dilemma is the door is at the top of the stairs and the door is right next to the kitchen and just opens onto stairs.

1:02:10And that is nerve wracking with small children, obviously, for lots of reasons. But there's no like if you lock the door from the basement, you cause a bunch of potential problems. Right. And if you lock the door from the kitchen side, you run the risk of locking somebody in the basement. So I'm thinking that actually this is maybe the perfect use case for a smart lock. Yeah. where I can lock the door, but be able to unlock that door from anywhere. Yes. That's definitely a smart lock. I mean, you can have internal, like you don't have to have like a big old hulking external smart lock. There are.

1:02:48Well, if I'm just sticking it on the other side of the basement door, like who cares? Nobody's going to see that anyway. That's a really good idea. Yeah. So then you can unlock it easily without having to, you know, yes. I think a smart lock would be a very good option. There are, so the, there are lever locks. So you can't use a traditional deadbolt smart lock on an indoor, an interior door. So I assume it's just a regular door, right? It's not an exterior door. So you would need to. It has one of those locks that like you can pop by sticking a toothpick in the little circle thing. You know what I'm talking about?

1:03:18Yeah. Or it's either a lever or a knob. It's a knob. But the same concept. It just has a little. Yeah. Yeah. So you need a lever lock for that. And so I think both Yale and Acara. So I've tested the Acara one. It has a fingerprint reader, which is kind of nice so that you can just unlock it. If it is locked, you can unlock it with your fingerprint. It also uses Homekey so you can unlock it with your phone or your Apple Watch. And then it also has a keypad. So I think a smart lever lock for an office slash basement is a good upgrade for sure. So I'm realizing that I think we're going to have to do, like, I'm going to go do a bunch of this.

1:04:01And then we're going to have to, like, in six months, we're going to have to report back. And I'm going to tell you all the stuff that I like and all the stuff that I hate and all the new stuff I thought of. And we're going to, we're just going to, you're going to spend me into the poor house just episode by episode. All right. So let's, let's go outside. I'm in the basement. I walk through a door because there's a door. In case, I don't, this is apparently important to you where there's doors. So there's a door. And I walk outside and we have this like patch of green space and then behind it a row of mulch.

1:04:29And in that mulch, there's a bunch of like hydrangeas and a couple of like pretty big trees. And then off to the right, we have a little paved patio that's like big enough for a sort of dining room table sized patio table. That's our outdoor space. And it's kind of a U-shape around the edges where all the plants and stuff are. I am desperately afraid I'm going to immediately kill all of these plants. That's like, truthfully, like my big existential crisis about this house is these are like many decade old plants that I am going to just viciously murder by not caring for them. And I also, I think I'd like to have some like nice little lighting Edison light set up around the table outside.

1:05:11but like mostly I want you to help me not kill the plants. You've come to the wrong place. I am the plant killer. But I did do a teeny bit of research before. Once you mentioned that you like to kill plants. I love killing plants. And so someone sort of carefully nurtured this garden over the years, have they? The people who sold us this house lived there for 45 years. And they talk about these plants as if they are members of the family. Like, I cannot overstate the responsibility that I feel to not screw this up. One, you said you were happy to have two smart home systems. So I think we've talked about using Alexa, which is a great base.

1:05:53But I think you're going to want to do more than Alexa can let you do. And I think we're going to want to move you to have also to have Home Assistant to help bring everything together. I figured I would end up here at some point. We'd get to Home Assistant eventually. I think we'll start out with Alexa, but I think you could definitely graduate relatively quickly once you start having a lot of fun with this stuff and wanting to do more. And one area that I found some really good solutions for plants is plant moisture sensors that work with Home Assistant. Because this is not a category you really find for HomeKit or Alexa or Google because it's fairly niche.

1:06:32and most of the standalone solutions are going to require their own app and then you're going to have to monitor the app and you're going to have to check it and make sure, you know, and that's almost as much work as just monitoring the plant yourself. But if you could tie an automation system into looking after these plants, so you get alerts or you get, I mean, there are, the biggest thing about plants from what I understand is don't overwater them. So this is what you need is you need moisture sensors that will keep track of how the soil is doing. And there is one called PLT1, Apollo Automation Product.

1:07:17But it's a multi-sensor that measures soil moisture, air temperature, humidity and UV to make sure that the plant is getting the right nutrients from the air and the light and such like. And it has a little buzzer and LED on it that will alert you when it's in trouble. That's exactly right. That's what you need. I need a thing that is like, go outside and water this now. That's it. That's the only piece of information I require. But this is an indoor sensor, but I don't know. Often these things will work fine outside. So we'll just see how it goes. They're not very expensive. I'll do some research on that one.

1:07:55And you can connect this into Home Assistant. It's based on like an ESP home system, which is like an open source system that lets you turn microcontrollers into smart home devices. And so it's sort of like a hobby project that someone created. But it seems like a good solution for you here. I haven't really seen other good solutions. The most obvious solutions for smart gardens are smart sprinklers, which you don't really need if you just have a small space. Yeah, it's one of those things that like if we had one, I'd be psyched about it. But I think it's probably more money and hassle than it's worth when like I could stand there with the hose and turn and hit the whole yard.

1:08:36Okay, so this is what you need then. You need the Eve Aqua. This is a smart hose timer. Ooh, okay. Now we're talking. Yes, and this, I think, I don't know if you might also be able to set up a little irrigation system from the Eve Aqua into the plants as well. Probably. This could get quite fancy and quite complicated. And I would love you to sort of tinker with this and see if you could find a way to make it all work together. But yeah, if you could pair the moisture sensors with the Eve Aqua so that it would trigger the Aqua to run and water the plants, that would be quite advanced. And then lights.

1:09:15You are so in luck when it comes to patio lights because everyone and their uncle has released really nice, smart outdoor patio lights recently. Oh, good. Okay. So Hugh just came out with some. So these were launched at IFA this last September. And you talked about wanting nice Edison lights. And these are really, I really like these because they have that kind of Edison bulb look. Nanoleaf also has a really nice line of patio lights. And so does LIFX, which is a brand we haven't talked about. But they also have some really good lighting solutions. This is one of the great things about Matter and about what we're doing in your home is that you can mix and match this stuff.

1:09:52I mean, we've focused on Philips Hue because that's where you started, but you're not limited to Hue. You can mix and match bulbs. Just keep in mind that whether it works with either Alexa or Home Assistant or it's going to work with your app. So if you're going to use, whichever app you start, you decide you're going to use to control your home. But yeah, you've got options and that's where the smart home has got a lot more interesting now. you don't feel like ecosystem lock-in is really as much of an issue as it used to be. So that's good for you. It is. It is. And I think you have successfully convinced me that the only thing you need to go all in on right now is matter.

1:10:36And that as long as you do that, it kind of solves itself. I look forward to coming back to you in 12 months when matter has made no progress. And I'm going to be very upset with you. But until then, it feels like the right answer. So my big question is, we've now been through kind of all the main spaces I'm thinking about. Is there any like connective tissue stuff we haven't talked about? Kind of things that make the whole thing work that we haven't yet touched on? Yeah. So, well, there's connective tissue and also more basic. Because we talked briefly about security at the start. And it sounds like you're not quite sure whether you want a security system or not.

1:11:12But I do think motion sensors, contact sensors, leak sensors, like all the sensors are important. And this is actually where Home Assistant would come in because sensors and Alexa do not work that well together. There are options because Alexa has ZigBee and Thread. But traditionally, I've not found that platform great for motion sensors. My lights just turned off on me and that was an Alexa motion sensor. whereas Home Assistant excels at this. And because, so what we would want to do is get you set up with a Home Assistant green, which is the kind of basic package, unless you happen to have a Raspberry Pi lying around and you can build your own.

1:11:57Honestly, I'm sure that I do. But yeah, this is the kind of like smart home in a box that they sell from Home Assistant. And this would get you set, you know, the basics to set up once. So what you would want to do is set everything up first and then add Home Assistant. And then Home Assistant will pull it all in. It does a really good job of that. And then you could add a Thread Zigbee dongle or a Z-Wave dongle. Both of these protocols, so either Thread or Zigbee or Z-Wave, are really the best solution for sensors. Motion sensors, contact sensors, leak detectors. We're going to want to put leak detectors all around your house.

1:12:39That's like the most, well, obviously where there is potentially water, not just everywhere in your house, but the laundry room, the kitchen. This is the type of thing the smart home does really well. Invisible small devices that you stick somewhere and never have to worry about again until they come to your rescue. So I'm very excited about like sticking a sensor to, you know, underneath every sink in the house. Yeah. And then having that all connected via home assistant. Like that's a project I'm very excited about. Yes. And there are lots of good solutions here. Third Reality and Zoos have a lot of good small sensors.

1:13:19IKEA just came out with a whole load of new sensors here. So they now have a new. IKEA really timed this correctly. They really did. Although I should warn you, I don't think most of their new stuff's coming out until January. But that's like two months away. Yeah, I got plenty to do here. I will not be done with this project by January. So yeah, they just came out with a new leak sensor and then the contact sensors and the motion sensors. Motion sensors, great for lights. Contact sensors also is a good solution for lights, especially in things like closets. So this is one of my favorite uses for smart lighting is to have a contact sensor and say, like, if you have a pantry or a closet that you don't leave the door open all the time.

1:14:00Whenever you open the door, light turns on with the contact sensor. And then when you close the door, the light turns off. It's a great, easy solution. As you're building your smart home, you will probably come across scenarios where you're like, actually, I have this thing and I want it to be connected. I don't want to buy a new device. And that's something I meant to sort of say up front is that you should, there are definitely things you want to bring in right away, like lighting. but a lot of a smart home is building based on need like when you hit the sort of a wall or a solution that you need for something like your kids wake up like um but i would definitely start with sensors leak sensors definitely important um and then in terms of smart plugs whenever you get a smart plug just go with an energy monitoring one they're getting so much less expensive than they used to be.

1:14:51And then that way you're building that foundation that we talked about at the beginning to eventually be able to tap into energy management. Eve Energy is a great solution there. And then also IKEA's new smart plug that they've just come out with, which is Matter Over Thread, has energy monitoring. So yes, smart plugs worth investing in. And just to bring it back to that connective tissue and the energy monitoring, this is something that Home Assistant will be really useful for because it actually has a built-in energy management like dashboard and this is something you'll learn dashboards is something you'll learn about as you as you dive into home assistant the idea that it's dashboards plural just fills me with dread i know i did debate home assistant here for you because i feel like you're a little bit more like me in this respect than perhaps neilai and his tamagotchi under the stairs yeah there's like for whatever reason, this is just not a thing I derive joy from playing with.

1:15:50Like when I make fun of the light switches, like I'm serious, like it, nothing makes me crazier than flipping a switch and the light not turning on. Like it's, that is just not the kind of thing that like interests me as a problem to solve. It's just a thing I don't want to devote brain cycles to. Yeah. But I'm willing to do the work of making home assistant work because I do think there is a version of the home assistant experience that is actually very set and forget. It's just a little more technical work up front. And I'm happy to do that work up front. I just don't want to have to spend 20 minutes doing Linux things on my home assistant every day in order for my house to work.

1:16:27Oh, no, don't make that face at me. Really? That's not what I was hoping for. It's getting better. And I think for you, I think you're right that having the goal rather than just, oh, I'm going to make everything smart, but I want to water my plants or I want to make sure my leak detectors will alert me when something happens or I want my lights to turn on when I walk into a room. Like when you have these situations you want to find solutions for, you will find that Home Assistant offers them in a much more reliable, not as easy to use, but once you get it set up, more reliable system than say using something like Alexa.

1:17:07I think what we want to do, the ultimate goal here is going to be to have your home automated, not based on controlling it yourself. Right. You want it to just react to what you're doing rather than you having to pull out the app or even have to use voice. I mean, you want to use voice for exceptions, like when it's doing, you know, when you've changed your mind and you want something different. Like I need the lights on, even though I said I wanted them off at night at nine o 'clock every night. Right. So, you know, that's what voice is great for. But ultimately, you want the home to just run smoothly.

1:17:40And I think Home Assistant is your better option there because it's all local. That's the big difference from using something like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, which does have local elements. But Home Assistant can be entirely local. And that's much faster and more reliable. So, yes. And as we've seen, you are forever one AWS outage from your whole house falling apart. And that's a real thing I'm thinking about. I'm excited for you to dive into Home Assistant here. But I think let's start. We don't necessarily have to start there. You can graduate after a couple of months. Let's get the lighting and everything set up, the air quality monitoring, get you a fridge.

1:18:21And I'm excited for you to bring this all together. Me too. You've given me more project than I even expected. But I think this is going to be fun. And I have to figure out kind of in what order to do this. And I was thinking I would do it sort of room by room. But now I'm thinking like maybe the move is like I'm just going to try and do lights first. Yeah, I think that's an important one. Like the Echo Show is going to go in the kitchen. The lights are going to go everywhere. And then I'm going to sort of build from there. Feels like the right sort of sequence of events. Yeah. All right. This has been fabulously helpful.

1:18:59Thank you for all of the stuff that you did. Thank you for the just unbelievable amount of money of mine that you have spent here. I'm going to go take out a second mortgage on my house in order to pay for the smart home stuff in my house. But this has been great. I hope anyone else gets anything out of this, but I have gotten a tremendous amount out of this. So thank you for doing this. You're welcome. Such fun to do it. I would love to do this every week. We just bring on a different Verge stuffer every week. I'm telling you, there's a Gentooly HGTV show just waiting to happen here. and one of these days we're going to make it happen.

1:19:32But until then, thank you, Jen. Appreciate it. You're welcome. All right. That's it for the show. Thank you again to Jen for doing that with me. And thank you as always for watching and listening. If you want the full list of all of the products Jen recommended, go to TheVerge.com and find the post about this episode. I'm going to do my best to take out every product she mentions and put them in that post. We're going to put a bunch of stuff in the show notes. We'll have links to a lot of Jen's coverage of this stuff too. But if you just want like the hundreds of thousands of dollars of shopping list that Jen provided.

1:20:00I'm going to do my best to put all of that on the verge.com. So go and check there. If you have thoughts or additions or things you think I should put in my smart house or other ways to please, please, please help me from killing all of these plants. We want to hear from you. You can call the hotline 866-VERGE-11. You can send us an email at vergecastattheverge.com. We're not doing another one of these smart home episodes, or at least we're not planning to, but like all anybody has is smart home questions, it seems. So keep them coming. We're going to keep talking to Jen about smart home stuff because it's going to be CES soon where there's a ton of smart home stuff.

1:20:34So we've got a lot of this left to do. Keep all your questions coming. In the meantime, we're going to get out of here. This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer and Travis Larchuk. The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Fox Media Podcast Network. I'll be back with Neel Eye on Friday to talk about all of the news because somehow it's November and there's still tech news. We've got some big AI stuff going on. We've got some interesting policy stuff going on. We've got a lot to talk about. We'll be back. We will see you then. Rock and roll. Support for this show comes from The Home Depot.

1:21:05This holiday season, take advantage of savings on the wide selection of top smart home security products at The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to make your home smarter with the latest technology and products that let you control and automate your home. and with brands you trust like Ring, Blink, Google, and more, available in-store and online, often available with same-day or next-day shipping, so you can protect your peace of mind whether you're away or at home this season. The Home Depot. Smart homes start here.

1:21:39Support for this show comes from The Home Depot. This holiday season, take advantage of savings on the wide selection of top smart home security products at The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to make your home smarter with the latest technology and products that let you control and automate your home and with brands you trust like Ring, Blink, Google and more available in-store and online often available with same-day or next-day shipping so you can protect your peace of mind whether you're away or at home this season. The Home Depot. Smart homes start here.