so i'm going to turn this ordinary room into a fully automated smart home cinema i have been
sent these gadgets from acara and i'm going to use them with a few other bits of tech to transform
this home cinema into a smart home cinema so with all these gadgets i should be able to automate a
bunch of stuff so that when i want to watch a movie in this room i can do so as hassle free
as possible okay so what do i have well i've been sent five smart gadgets a wireless mini switch a
motion sensor with a built-in light sensor a door slash window opening sensor a smart blind driver
and a hub that connects them all together plus i already have a bunch of smart gadgets that i
can pair with these sort of make the most out of them i've got amazon echo devices smart lights
uh fire tv stick but at the moment it's like having all these jigsaw pieces with no picture i
need to use all of these gadgets to make a really cool cinema room but i don't have the picture in
my mind just yet i need to plan it so essentially there are two types of smart home gadgets there
are sensors and there are controllers something like this mini switch is a sensor it takes
something to trigger it and then that then can send an action to something else so then you can
have something like this smart blind motor which is a controller and when you press the sensor it
opens the blind now this won't sense anything or react to anything you can set it up so that it
responds when someone presses this so essentially what i have to do is plan out all of the
things i want to happen in my smart home cinema and then plan all of the triggers that's going to
cause those things to happen so the triggers i have are a switch a door sensor a motion
sensor that has a light sensor built in any voice assistance that i have like alexa and even just my
phone and other triggers can just be simple things like the time the weather getting a text message
then the next issue is things like protocols some devices work over wi-fi some use zigbee i've got
others that are sort of in their own app ecosystem and don't play well with others so this is going
to be hard but what we can do with all of this stuff is try and work with as simple an interface
as possible to be able to put it all in one place and we do have a few options firstly there's home
kits now home kit is great because it has a lot of ways of automating things with home kit gadgets
and things like siri shortcuts and all of our acara gadgets work with homekits so that is great
now homekit is also super quick look how quickly the app updates when i open this door sensor
now akara working with home kit and alexa and google was great so homekit isn't necessarily
great because most smart gadgets don't work with home kits so if we use home kit i can't connect
my lights and i can't connect the tv in fact most of the stuff i've got in my house isn't
homekit compatible so we're going to have to look at something else so instead we could use alexa
or google now i already have a bunch of amazon devices around my house like a fire tv stick or
the echo devices so i probably think that alexa is going to be the way to go for them and the
amazon ecosystem also has a bunch of other gadgets things like ring doorbells and stuff like that so
alexa's probably gonna be my assistant of choice today so essentially the first thing i need
to happen is that when i press this switch it turns the cinema on so the blinds close
the tv turns on and the lights go down so let's start with the blind so essentially how this works
is that our smart home will decide when to open and close the blinds and then this motor will spin
and pull a beaded chain through it that obviously then in turn opens the blind
you can do it with the buttons here but it's designed to do it in a smart way you could do
it on a time scale or you could set it up with a button now this is also wireless so it can go
anywhere and it's got a usbc port on the bottom so you can charge it up when it runs out of battery
then once you charge it you just slip it back onto its base plate simple so in theory what happens
is is that we turn the cinema on the blinds shut the tv powers on the lights come off and
an ambient light behind the tv will turn on but not only that i want to set up with home kits so
it switches my phone to do not disturb while i'm watching a movie but that's not going to be enough
for my home cinema so there's nothing more annoying when you're sat down watching tv
and someone barges in opens the door and then the light comes in and shines in the room and ruins
the cinema vibe so i want to stop that like ruining the cinema so i'm going to create a
routine that if someone opens up the door and lets the light in the light in the hallway actually
switches off so i don't have to worry about it and lastly my wife keeps telling me that i need to
start being a responsible parent so i wanted that if i'm up watching an 18 rated movie and one of
the kids wakes up and they come out of their room that they're not going to hear it so when they put
motion sensor up on the landing that if someone comes out of their bedroom at night it's going
to pause the tv and then turn the light on so i know the kids are up so let's set this all up um
okay so i've ran into an issue i essentially wanted this mini switch to do two things
firstly it's gonna connect to home kit and set up the do not disturb on my phone and then i want it
to connect to alexa to be able to do things like the blinds and the lights and all that stuff
but i can't get amazon to recognize it as a switch so i can do the home kit stuff and set up do not
disturb and i can put the blind via home kit as well because that's a cara but it's not gonna
do all the stuff i want for a home cinema through alexa this isn't going to work now whilst the
main part of my home cinema was falling apart i moved on to the other parts so the first problem
with the light coming in and ruining the cinema so i've set it up now that if i open this door
the light in the hallway is going to turn off which is going to stop the light coming in and
ruining the vibes then when i shut the door the light can be on outside so the people who've
shut the door can now see where they need to go the problem i have is is that it doesn't matter
whether i'm watching a film or not now the lights gonna turn off every single time we open this door
or leave it open so what i need to do is set it up so that that only happens if i'm watching a movie
okay and this last one didn't have too many issues so with the sensor i've set it up just up here
so if the kids now come out of their bedroom and walk onto the landing it's going to pick them up
and it's very easy to set it up on a fire stick so that when something gets triggered it then gets
the fire tv to pause but the issue is still the same i only want that happening when the cinema is
on so i don't want it if someone's upstairs during the day it's just gonna randomly keep pausing the
tv so i need to fix that too so it's all kind of working i've got to fix some issues but we're
almost there okay so after playing around with the alexa app for a little bit i think i might have
come up with a little solution now i can enable and disable these little routines i'm making
so using the alexa app i can make it that when i turn on the home cinema that will then enable
these routines and when i turn off the home cinema that disables these routines so i can make it now
that when i turn on the cinema it enables the routine that sorts out the light in the hallway
and it then also does the motion sensors upstairs with the kids and then if i turn the cinema
off it will then disable those routines so let me break down exactly how this works essentially
i have two routines for the cinema mode one routine cinema on closes the blinds turns off
the light turns off the tv and the ambient light the second does the opposite tv off lights on etc
now the cinema on routine also switches the other two routines with the door and motion sensor and
the cinema off routine now disables them so we're almost there but there is one other issue the mini
switch i still didn't have a way of turning the cinema on or off so the whole thing was useless
until i could get this switch working so i can use an echo dot and just use my voice but that sort of
ruins the magic i want to use the mini switch so the echo dot works but i failed i'd failed to use
all of the gear as much as this switch was really useful it just wasn't connecting properly to the
amazon ecosystem but then i did it so i'm sort of just sat moping because i wanted it so that when i
pressed this the cinema would turn on and if this then that if this than that and then it hit me if
this and that is a third party smart home tool and it connects different smart home ecosystems
together now akara is compatible with if this and that and so is alexa kind of so we can set up if
this and that to recognize when i'm pressing the button but if this nut only works with
alexa for triggers not actions so i can set my echo dot to recognize me asking something
but i couldn't set it up to make the echo dot do something so i had to use a third-party skill on
alexa to turn the if this than that routine into a doorbell yeah i know it's getting a bit mental
so the mini switch now connects to if this than that that then links to that third-party alexa
skill which then rings this doorbell then the doorbell ringing then triggers the alexa routine
to turn the cinema it's ridiculous but it works so essentially i've got a switch that triggers
a routine that triggers a skill that triggers a routine that triggers two more routines simple i
can duplicate that same idea so when i double tap the switch it does the same thing but the opposite
fun okay so it all should be working now okay so it is the evening we should be ready
to test this okay so tv is off light is on the lines are open it's a time to see how this will go
got my switch in my hand what i need to do is press the button and everything should start going
lights off lights on blinds are shutting tv's coming on it's happening
kids get to pop corner let me tell you the story of the space striker the trailers are playing
what's that
someone must be on the landing
and i also have it working so that when i leave the room and open the door the light switches
off and then i can go outside without bothering anyone shut the door behind me and i can now see
i also then went in and added in this lamp from govi so i can sort of add my own cinematic
effects when people are coming into the cinema and then it switches off when the movie starts
and then when the film's finished the light will come back on and we can clear up our popcorn and
drinks everything and move on with our lives so guys that is my smart home cinema i want
to thank carl for sponsoring the video and for sending me the products i couldn't have done it
without them if you want to see more from me click this video here and i'll see you in the next one