well that's interesting
hello i'm Wanderer001 and this is my review of the switchbot bot smart switch button pusher
just like you saw has a little arm that came out the front there what this is is actually a smart
home device that is geared towards those that one don't necessarily want to deal with a smart plug
or a smart outlet or a smart switch two might be in a situation where they cannot alter or
change their surroundings maybe your renting or living in a dorm the switchbot is also good for
specific appliances that don't necessarily take well to being turned on and off at the power
source but rather require a button push of some sort to activate little unassuming box could be
your gateway device into the smart home it is remarkably small which the close-up that i have
does not demonstrate it is very small a little chunky though but all in all easily placed at
1.6 inches by 1.4 inches by just shy of one inch because this is a smart home device that does mean
that there is a bit of setup that has to happen in order to use this and i will admit the setup
for this was remarkably quick and easy to do let me show you this will be the setup process for
the switchbot bot little redundant name but that's what it is first things first you're going to open
up your user manual and you're going to download the switchbot app from either the apple or google
play store once you do that for the first time it's going to ask it's going to show you a couple
of screens getting you acquainted with the app then you're brought to allow switchbot to access
your location you're going to have to allow in order to actually utilize the switchbot so what
i'm going to do is say while using the app only and then it can show you bots that are nearby
now notice i did not actually set up a switchbot account so i'm gonna see if it'll let me actually
attach this switchbot to this without actually having to create an account first so we're gonna
come up to the plus sign and it's gonna make us do an account okay now that we have successfully
created our account very quickly off camera we can come up to the plus sign and then it's going
to show us what do we want to add down here we can see there is the switchbot bot so we're going to
select that so it says to tap the bot to turn it on and off but we still have this pull tab for the
battery so we're going to yank this out first and select next there we go had to cycle back
after pulling the tab out so that is what we want we tap on that tapped on this icon to see
and you see it moving there and we can just select next i'm going to leave it at bot d a as the name
but we can also have location information which i will leave at default room i could change that
later i'm sure and then okay so that was actually a relatively quick and easy setup process for the
switchbot nice and simple the switchbot itself operates on bluetooth which is great because it
can talk directly to your phone other things that come with the little switchbot here are
a secondary 3m plate for the back of it also two hook and loop attachments for
use with a specific type of light switch as displayed here now if you're like me and you
have a house that has the classic style light switches something like this might not work
out for you however if you have other things in your home like a washing machine or an air
conditioner as seen over there in the corner that refuses to connect to wi-fi
and you want to be able to turn it on and off with the push of a button
on your smartphone something like this would come in handy cue switchbot button pushing montage
there we go
now just because you saw there that it pushed things on and off does not mean that is the only
thing this can do well technically yes it is the only thing that it can do however there is much
more with scheduling and so forth that you can do with the switchbot here and that all is accessible
through the application so let's take a look at the application for the switchbot bot this will
be the app for the switchbot bot keep in mind you can see my switchbot bot right there but this is
the overall switchbot app but what we're going to be talking about in particular is for the bot
the mini bot here you can see all of my devices listed it is connected via bluetooth because it's
right over there off camera if we were setting something up we can come here to bots nearby
it's not detecting anything yet because well i've already attached my bot if you were on that page
and wanted to attach a bot you can simply press the plus sign in the upper right hand corner to
start the adding of a bot process and over here you have your bell icon for notifications for
system device and scenes so if anything happened to have happened it will let you know you can also
delete any of the notifications that you see here or selecting the book icon simply select and then
mark all notifications as read yes or no we're going to come back to our main page because well
we want to concentrate on the bot here three dots right here selecting this will allow you to sort
your devices and manage locations so if you have multiple locations and multiple devices you can
arrange all of that right here you can see i am home because well i only have one location
and one bot simply selecting the bot you'll see there's a circle that went around that is how you
actuate your bot if you select in the white space there that will bring you into the settings for
this particular bot so right now i left it as its default name of bot d a selecting this icon here
will allow you to edit the name edits its location and then edit the room so if you have lots of
these bots around you can kind of create groups and areas that make it easier to distinguish them
from each other three dots in the upper right hand corner will show you the mac address for your
particular bot we're not going to touch that right now password mode here is considered an advanced
option that's if you wanted to make it so that the switchbot itself required a password to actually
utilize it instead of just using the app i would not recommend doing that if you're creating an iot
network that's nice that it's there but kind of asking for trouble in my opinion here we have a
schedule which will allow you to create a schedule notice i have nothing right here
i have it syncing to my clock so there we go i synced the clock if i come down to the lower
right hand corner i can select a specific time and here you can see it's got your military time on
the inside and then am outside so we're going to set that for 6 15 am and then you're going to say
take off days that you don't want it to do right there and then what is the action so it's going to
press because well this is only one thing it's a press so we can set that for 6 15 am it will press
and then we can select save and then every day at 6 15 a.m on those dates tuesday thursday saturday
it will press you could set up lots of different schedules this way you can also turn off your
schedule and we're gonna save that and then for whatever reason if you wanted to delete
simply select and then there is a trash can right there you can select your trash can and
now you don't have any schedules set up we're going to save because we did make it a change
we're going to come down to the next which is our cloud services right here you will notice
that i have no cloud services turned on because in order to use any of these cloud services most
most of these voice commands or ifttt you actually need the switchbot hub so if you just bought the
switch bot you can't use any of this so keep that in mind can't use google assistant can't
use amazon assistant without a hub so this area is actually going to be pretty useful
for you if you just bought the switch bot itself pair with a remote well we can click in here if
you have a switchbot remote you can pair it to your switchbot right here since i just have the
bot can't really do that but you can operate the switchbot via a switchbot remote and then pair it
in this location kinda nice you have your logs so this will tell you exactly what has happened
you know successfully executed what in this case a press because that's all it can do and
then where it came from so if you were using your google assistant or your amazon echo assistant or
the remote you would notice this instead of saying app control would say something different you can
swipe to see more and it will load more things and apparently i did it too fast and that was our logs
area nfc will allow you to set up a switchbot tag that has nfc and pair it to a device using
your phone so that if you take your phone and swipe it over this nfc tag that it will perform
a function in the case of the switchbot it will actuate the push so this is another extra that you
can get with your switchbot but it's kind of nice that you can utilize nfc tags instead of having to
have a remote but it is again an extra peripheral that you will need to purchase for the switchbot
so it's almost like you're buying into the ecosystem right away firmware and battery simply
selecting this will show you one the firmware for the device that you are currently attached to
and the battery levels here you can see battery levels is perfectly fine and i
have my firmware version right there and then you can select delete which will delete the switchbot
from your switchbot app we're going to come back to the main page because that was really
everything that you could do for the switchbot bot itself because it really only actuates on
and off we were currently on the homepage but you have other areas on here just like you have with
a lot of these other applications you have scenes which again not so much for the switchbot but if
we select create a scene what will happen so you can say if all conditions are met when none when
any of these conditions are met and then you can tell what to do so manual execution i can
delete that same thing down here notification and we're gonna come back because we really don't have
any scenes that we need to set up with this uh with the switchbot in particular i would suggest
mostly using the scheduler this is a little more advanced but you can select what days times all
that fun stuff right here and whether it sends you a notification you have your shopping area
which again is going to be all the other things from switchbot that you can actually get uh they
are competitively priced to a lot of the other lower end price hardware manufacturers will say
and then last but not least is your profile you can give your switchbot profile a name you can
see any notifications that have come through in a singular area you've got your preferences here so
language units i never bother changing changing that but we're going to come down and turn
that to fahrenheit you have notifications again this is another area where you can
get to your notifications so what do you want do you want location warning do you want bluetooth
sas reminder scenes etc or you have do not disturb all of that can be changed in the notifications
area and then here is our app version coming back we have faq so these are faqs that
are from switchbot itself as you can see it brings you right to their web page so not integrated
directly into the application but rather pushing them out to their website which still isn't bad
i'm glad that that's in there you've got your legal information and then firmware recovery so
if for whatever reason the firmware bricks or device which it shouldn't but if that happens
you can revert to a previous firmware version which is a nice touch that that's there and then
we're going to come back to home because that was everything that you can do for the switchbot bot
in the switchbot app so as you saw it's actually a fairly robust app for something that just seems so
unassuming what i will state is i'm a little disappointed that the switchbot here requires
an additional hub in order to be used with alex a and google home but you get what you pay for
and with that being said what the price is for this is reasonably inexpensive for a smart home
device depending on if you get this on sale or not you can pick this up anywhere from 30 to 25
now i have seen plenty of people on the amazon reviews where they have several switchbots on
different portions of their washing machine to one turn it on then start it or coffee machine where
it's start with turn on coffee machine select this option and timer you can do a lot with
this type of unique robot for me i was originally planning on getting it for a attic fan that i have
setting a thermostat upstairs using if this then that to then when it gets too
hot turn the switchbot to turn on my attic fan and ventilate the heat only problem is
if this then that requires the hub and i have the classic old style atticfan switch i will have
to upgrade it to the new flick style as you saw in my basement there which isn't terrible to do
but it is an additional step that i didn't think i would have to take with this but that doesn't
mean this is a bad device it's actually a gateway device in my opinion if you're looking to get into
smart home automation in any way shape or form this could be a good first step for you to see
if it's actually something that you want to delve into because over there in the corner i've done a
lot of home automation stuff and while i picked this up a little later on in my experiences
this could be the first one for you and again at that price point and the fact that it operates
over bluetooth and you can make things smart that require a push button to turn on instead of a
power activation to turn on something like this is actually pretty ingenious so if any of those
things sound interesting to you i would recommend checking out the switchbot bot i know it's a
redundant name but switchbot the company bot is this little thing that pushes things on and off
and that arm there is surprisingly sturdy for some of the tests that i was running with it with that
being said i have been Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave
them in the area below and as always thanks for watching if you found this video helpful consider
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