#Smart Light

 

I wanted to talk about my smart home setup from the ground up. I have many articles describing my setup in pieces but not everyone gets an entire overview of everything I have setup here. I don’t have a mansion or anything fancy like built in sprinkler/irrigation, so this will be more catered to your average city home.

 

The Assistant: r Google Home and/or Mini manage my random routines that aren’t part of a automation rule. Going to the basement to do laundry, or going to sleep at random times. I can just send a command and google home will handle it. Link your SmartThings account and Google Home together for best results. Give all your devices aliases to make it easier to command via Google. I want one located in every central room of the house, Kitchen, Living room, Master Bedroom.

Control Center:

What controls my entire setup and why I chose this hub vs others. My only hub is a Samsung SmartThings hub. This manages just about everything in my home minus the security cameras. I did heavy research on many hubs including Wink, IOT (hub-less), and Phillips hue. Why SmartThings?

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For Christmas my mother got a full smart home kit. Samsung SmartThings, sengled bulbs, google home. After pluging everything in the hub was having issues. Finding all bulbs in dome covers. I removed the glass from the dome cover and tried again with no luck. Afterwards I removed the bulb from the socket and put it in a lamp. Detected and added to smartthings fine in the lamp. Readded it to the dome cover and it works now! [Read More]

How to get a cheap smart home that actually works. Vision Micro switches lets you use the old fashion switch and also continue to use your old bulbs. Instead of paying $10-30 per smart bulb, you pay around $25 for a single or $30 for a 2 relay switch. 2 relay switches help you save a ton more money, you can use one for 2 gang boxes saving you 2x more money ($15/switch). If you think about it, most ceiling lights have 2-3 bulbs, Why buy so many bulbs when you can buy a single switch.

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I have found a neat little alternative to full price switches online. I gave myself a budget of $20 per wall switch for the house and until I found something around that I was not gonna buy any. I just think that $50 for a wall switch is a little ridiculous in my opinion. These switches are still over my max budget but at least I found a reason for one of the partners here to buy it instead [bana0615]. He has a double switch in his house and they do not sell double smart switches anywhere. This micro controller solves his problem. The double switch relays will put me under budget for some locations in the house though with the ability to work for two switches at once.

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I’m not really sure why it started working all of a sudden. I’m glad I did not buy a Hue hub. I had a test bulb plugged in as a normal bulb when it randomly showed up to my SmartThings hub. This happened after adding Sengled classic bulbs to my system and a SmartThings hub update. I think maybe it had to do with Zigbee adding cross compatibility between ZLL and ZHA protocols. [Read More]