What's up guys it's Chris Majestic. So I've been asked several times to do a
Smart Home Tour and I think I've put it off long enough so today we're gonna be
doing the majestic smart home tour so stay tuned
Now there's a lot of smart home gadgets that I want to cover
but I'm gonna try to make this video as short as I can
Now I know two of the most popular smart home gadgets out
there right now is the Amazon echo and the Google home so if you have one you
might want to go ahead and mute it so I don't trigger it a hundred times in this video.
Now what's funny is that I actually have both the Amazon echo and
the Google home sitting right next to each other in several rooms in my house
and I actually use both of them to control just about everything in my
house with my voice this includes lights, TVs, music, thermostats, and even my house alarm
now I do have to say that I prefer the Google home a little bit better than
the echo since it's better at answering certain questions but sometimes yelling
out Alexa just feels better
Alexa turn on CBS
Alexa: Okay
Alexa, tell harmony to increase the volume by three
Alexa: Okay
Hey Google turn on the house alarm
Google: No problem. The house is secure
Hey Google. Set the downstairs to 73 degrees
You got it. Setting the downstairs to 73 degrees
now one really cool thing that I use the Google home for is whole home music and
the best way to do this if you have other speakers around your house is to
buy a chromecast Audio and connect it to your sound bar or your speakers then you
can just tell Google home to play music everywhere and it'll actually play the
music in sync around your whole house it's pretty awesome and it's a nice
cheap alternative to Sonos
(Music Playing)
I also use the Google home to play videos with my voice on the chromecast
or you can do the same thing with the Amazon echo and the fire stick and
speaking of TV control the hub that I use to control my TVs is the Logitech
Harmony hub so this thing lets you control your TV's, sound bar, home theater
or just about anything that uses a regular remote so you just tell it what
devices you have and then just sit it somewhere in the room and it uses
infrared to control those devices so this means you do have to have one in
each room but it does allow you to control everything with your phone or
your voice using the echo or the Google home
Hey Google. Let's watch a movie
Google: Aw yeah you already know I gotcha bro Let's do this
So I have it linked with my smartthings hub
so that it turns off the lights in the basement when I start a movie
a movie and turns the lights back on after the movies over
So as you see it can even control the smart LED strips
that I have around my screen and my seats in my home theater.
And these LEDs actually work with Google home and Alexa as well
so you can control the color and brightness with your voice or you can
just use the magic home app to control them with your phone if you want
So not only am i big fan of smart home products but I'm also a really big fan of actual
home automation in other words I want things that happen automatically instead
of pulling out my phone or using my voice to do things and to do this I use
one of our favorite smart home devices which is the Samsung smartthings hub so
smartthings is a home automation hub that links with a bunch of smart home
devices like philips hue, thermostats, door locks, smart sensors, the Amazon echo
and the Google home it also works with generic smart switches and light bulbs
that you can find for pretty cheap on Amazon so nearly every light switch in
my house is a smart light switch so some of them are actual smart dimmer switches
and the rest of them use a micro switch which is basically a small box that you
install behind your original light switch that turns it into a smart switch
now my opinion smart light switches are more cost effective than buying a bunch
of smart light bulbs especially for places that have a lot of bulbs
So I also have several door sensors connected to my smartthings hub which I use to
automate several different things like turning on certain lights when I open up
the door at night and you can even use the hub as a house alarm and get alerts
if something opens when you're not home so for example I can monitor and control
my garage doors from smart things so if I leave the house and forget to close
the garage door it'll notify me on my phone and
automatically close the door for me and even tell me if the door closed
successfully which is freaking awesome
Another cool thing that I use smartthings for is water alerts
So I have three water sensors placed around my
house and I have smart things configured to call and text both me and my wife
whenever any of them detects water which has already saved me twice and another
cool thing I have set up is that when both me and my wife leave the house the
smartthings hub will automatically turn off all the lights and TVs, check to see
if we left open any doors, and turn on the house alarm for us another smart
home device that I use is the Nest Learning Thermostat
it looks nice it's easy to set up and use and it tries to learn your schedule
and save you some money on your heating and cooling bill. Now after I set the
schedule a couple years ago the only time I really interact with it is when I
tell Alexa or Google home that it's too hot or too cold but otherwise it works really well.
So one thing that ties all the smart home devices in my house
together is the Android tablet in my kitchen so this is a super cheap 10-inch
Android tablet that I got on Amazon for around 60 or 70 bucks and I have it
secured to the wall in my kitchen using the same locking strips that you use for
an EZ-pass in your car and I do have a charger running to it so I can easily
charge it if the battery runs low so this thing has all the smart home apps
that I use installed on it and I also use it to monitor my cameras including
my ring doorbell Pro so if you're not familiar with the ring doorbell it's a
smart doorbell that's connected to the cloud so whenever it senses motion on
the button is pressed it'll automatically send the video out to the
cloud and notify you on your phone for you to see who's there.
So the doorbell works really well as long as it has a strong Wi-Fi connection and I have the
tablet configured to automatically open the Ring App whenever it senses motion or
if somebody presses the doorbell that way I can see who's at the door just by
looking at the tablet on the wall and speaking of cameras I do have 6 Amcrest
PoE cameras mounted outside of my house that are all wired to an Amcrest NVR
that records several months worth of video and these cameras are full HD
and they have a really really sharp image they are a bit of a pain to
install since they have to be wired so I do recommend professional installation
but they do work really well now amcrest does have their own
smartphone app but I do like to use the Android TinyCam app since it does a
great job of pulling up multiple cameras quickly so I can see what's going on
I also have a few random Wi-Fi cameras around
house that are linked to tiny cam as well
Alright guys is going to do it for the tour
if you have any questions about home automation or any of the devices
that I mentioned go ahead and check the video description since I've done
several reviews and videos on most of this stuff I've also put Amazon links to
a bunch of the devices that I use in a video description so you can check those
out as well thanks for watching go ahead and leave your questions and comments in
the comments section I'll respond to your questions go ahead and subscribe to
the channel if you haven't already and I'll see you guys in the next video