in today's video we're going to be doing something a little bit different we're going
to be having a look at how you might go about starting a smart home using a cara check it out
what's going on guys i hope you're all doing well some of you that have been subscribers
for a little while now will know that just before christmas i moved to my new house and since then
i've been slowly but surely building up my new smart home with various different products and the
brains of the operation what binds everything and controls everything is home assistant and that's
where acara comes into the fold so i'm going to be creating a mini series probably consistent of
about three different parts and each part is going to focus on a key area or aspect of the design
of actually creating my smart home using acara's products and although this video is sponsored by
acara they're just providing me with the products they're not actually giving me any direction or
telling me what to do and they also don't watch and review these videos before they go live
i'm also going to try and stagger these videos so when i put a part out if you guys have got any
suggestions or ideas for how to actually improve my designs using the cara products then you'll
be able to do so and i'll be able to make those changes and implementations for the next video
for this first video we're going to primarily focus on the actual planning process
so i'm going to be sharing with you my actual ideas and plans for where i'm actually going
to play psychiatrist devices and how i'm actually going to go about setting them up we'll also look
at the different methods for using the car as devices so whether you want to keep it in the
acara ecosystem and use their hubs to link up all the devices or you want to integrate those devices
into existing smart homes like home assistant which is exactly what i'm going to be doing
and of course if you've got any good tips or unique use cases where you've used acara devices
in your own homes then do let me know what they are in the comments below let's get into it then
before you start purchasing any products for a whole house setup you should at least first test
a few of them out just so you get a feel for how they work and to actually decide if you like them
or not and this goes for any product range not just the cara's the other thing you should think
about is how you're actually going to connect them up and what methods you're going to be using
what's great about acara's product range is the fact that they're all zigbee 3.0 certified
acara also recently announced that they're going to be supporting both thread and mata
in some of their new products and this is also going to come to some of their older products
so if you do own some old products you're not going to be left in the dust
and this is just nice to see that they're going to be doing that by far the simplest method for
setting up and connecting your acara devices is by making use of one of akara's herbs the hubs come
in a few different variants and each variant has its own set of unique features and differences but
ultimately the hubs all offer the same thing which is a simple and convenient method for connecting
and setting up your devices all centrally from one location the setup process of linking a device to
the hub is very quick and simple and you can do it within a few seconds once you have done that
you can make use of the acara app and you can start writing your own automations and scenes
and this is where the power will start to come in if you're only using the acara ecosystem that's
pretty much all you need to do is just grab a hub grab a few devices that you want to make use of
and then you're good to go if however like me you already have an existing smart home system
you might not have a need for the acara hub as you may already have a zigbee coordinator
to actually connect all your devices to so that already is a big saving for you as you don't need
to buy the acara herb and have another hub in your collection or if you don't have an existing
coordinator or maybe you're moving from an akara only smart home over to home assistant then the
acara hub is still a great choice with the acara hub you can link this directly to home assistant
and any of the child devices that are connected to that hub can be passed through to home assistant
and you can use those devices then in your own scripts scenes and automations just like you would
with any other device and that's a great option for anyone to use especially if you are moving
over to home assistant but one important thing to note here is that if you are making use of the
acara hub as your main coordinator you won't be able to pair other zigbee devices so things like
your philips hue bulbs or other zigbee products you'll only be able to link your akara devices
in addition to being able to pair the devices to the acara hub and using the acara app will pair
in the devices to home assistant and using home assistant you can also pair the devices to the
acara hub and use the devices through home care however the process of setting up and using the
devices with homekit isn't something that i'm really going to be touching on in this little
series in the next video when i actually get onto the installation i'll be covering all
of those different methods so that way if you are using one of those set methods you'll be
able to just follow along having used a lot of acara's products in my old house i roughly knew
what kind of devices and sensors that i wanted to make use of and just to help me a little bit
further i decided to create a rough floor plan of my current house just so i could decide where
things were going to be placed and this isn't something that you have to do but i personally
found that this really helped me especially with deciding on what automations i wanted to happen
in various spaces but also what informations i wanted to get from various areas and various rooms
sparing no expense i made use of microsoft paint and just added some little splodges
to my floor plan for where i wanted these various different sensors and devices to go
i could then just tally them up and decide on what i actually wanted and what i didn't really
need by making use of my floor plan i was able to decide on some of the devices and sensors that i
wanted to make use of so in this mini series i'm going to be making use of some motion sensors
some windows and door sensors some other car s t box sensors some temperature sensors some
wireless buttons some roller drivers some leak sensors and also some of the cars light switches
there may also be a few other devices and sensors but we'll get to those as we start doing the
installation out of all of the acara products one that i hadn't really played around with before
with the light switches so i got a couple of these just to try them out just to make sure that
i did like them the light switches again come in a couple of different variants you've got the single
or double gang switches and then you've also got the neutral or no neutral versions of these
the key differences between the neutral and the no neutral version is the fact that the neutral
version offers power monitoring and also overload protection whereas the neutral version doesn't
but with the neutral version you obviously don't need that neutral wire having played with the
switches i was happy with them and one cool thing that i didn't know you could actually do with them
you can actually decouple the switch in the relay so this allows you to independently control them
so you might not necessarily want the switch press to actually turn that relay on and off
so if that's something you were interested in doing you can do it with the acara switches
once you've decided on the kit that you actually want you can go ahead and order it
and when you order it there's a ton of different retailers and locations you can actually pick the
akara stuff up from you can now even pick them up directly from within apple stores
again checking out and testing some of these devices before you go ahead and make a big order
is definitely something that you should be doing just in case you don't get on or agree with the
devices if you start off small you can't always expand and as it's so modular and it uses zigbee
it's very easy to just add more in the future and there we are i've got a rough plan an idea of what
i want to do and what i want to achieve with your car attack and in the next video we should
so as i was saying we've now got this big box of tech and in the next video i will be showing
you the setup and installation of some of this stuff as well as giving you a bit of
product information so we actually know what it is we've got and how we go about using it
this has been a bit of a different video but if you have enjoyed it or maybe you want to
find out what i actually do with this stuff in the future then don't forget to drop me a like
and if you're not already hit that subscribe button and ding dong the notification bell
you'll then be alerted to when that future video is and as always a massive thank you
to these awesome dudes these are awesome dudes my patreons if you're interested in helping support
my channel which in turn allows me to create content like this then you'll find a link to
my patreon in the description below thank you for watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers
you