(upbeat music)
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- Even though there's a bunch
of different water sensors available for HomeKit,
to the best of my knowledge
there is no water shut-off valves available for HomeKit.
And it's something I've wanted for a very long time.
So today I'm gonna show you how I set that up
with the help of HOOBS and SmartThings.
Let's go ahead and jump into the video.
Friends, if this is your first time here, my name is Eric.
If you're into smart homes, home automation
and especially HomeKit,
you're definitely in the right place.
Today's video is a part of my HOOBS series,
where I'm bringing non-native HomeKit products
into my HomeKit Home.
If you've never heard of HOOBS before,
it is simply a bridge that allows you
to bring over some of your favorite accessories
into your favorite ecosystem.
Before disclosure HOOBS did send this to me
and I purchased the SmartThings hub
and also the water shut-off valve with my own money.
Actually I'm one of the original backers
of SmartThings back, I don't know, 2014,
2015, way before Samsung was even in the picture.
I was actually able to meet the original owner
and the entire team and it was a great product back then.
It's an okay product today
even though Samsung does own SmartThings.
But my personal preference is HomeKit.
I do think it is the best ecosystem
and best controller out there.
Now you might be asking me why did I pick
the EcoNet Bulldog over something
that is a little bit cheaper and more well-known.
Well actually I did try the more well-known brand
which is Dome and even though it's cheaper
it's about a hundred dollars cheaper it didn't work for me.
It just was not strong enough
to pull the body lever all the way shut.
And it's actually one of the biggest complaints on Amazon
about the Dome Shut-off valve is that
it doesn't have enough torque.
So if you do have a ball valve
that might be a little bit older
or a little bit bigger,
that Dome version won't work for you either.
Another big difference between the Bulldog
and the Dome shut-off valves,
is that the Bulldog connects directly
or mounts onto the ball valve
where the Dome actually connects or mounts
above the ball valve onto the piping.
Even though there was no reviews of this happening,
I do see how the Dome shut-off valve can put pressure
onto the joint between the ball valve
and the pipe where the Bulldog is actually mounted
to the ball valve where it doesn't put any pressure
onto that joint.
And since it did take so much torque
to turn off my ball valve,
I did feel more comfortable with it mounted
to the ball valve rather to the pipe.
Even though the Bulldog has a lot of torque
it is not the fastest thing.
Actually it took about 15 to 20 seconds to fully shut off
the valve where the Dome was definitely
a little bit faster but didn't have enough torque
to fully shut off the valve.
So in my opinion, I traded torque for time
as well worthy in my opinion.
Now when it came to installation it's actually quite easy.
It is a retrofit.
You don't need a plumber, you're not gonna be breaking
any pipes or anything like this
it just sits right over your ball valve.
Also comes with two different mounts,
one for small ball valves and one for larger ball valves.
Actually customer support reached out to me
before they shipped it out and asked me to send a photo
of my valve to them.
I actually knew what size it was
but it was really nice to deal with them.
They asked a couple of questions about my ball valve
just to make sure they sent the right mounts.
Dealing with their customer service was a pleasure.
Also comes with the control module and 12 volt AC adapter
and one single wired leak sensor
that you can plug into the control module.
Like I mentioned I will be using SmartThings.
This does use a Z-Wave to communicate with SmartThings.
It's not WiFi, it's not Zigbee,
it's only Z-Wave.
HOOBS does not have Z-Wave
and your Apple HomeKit Hub also does not have Z-Wave.
So we will be bridging this through HOOBS,
into SmartThings and then to the shut-off valve.
Ideally that's not the best situation
where you have multiple bridges,
but I can tell you this does work quite well.
It actually took me about 25 to 30 minutes to set this up
through SmartThings and through HOOBS.
Even that is quite easy.
There are instructions on the HOOBS website
that is step by step.
I'm not gonna go into details here
simply because the instructions are quite detailed
but there are a lot of different steps
that you do have to go through.
You just need to follow the steps
and you'll have no problem whatsoever.
Once SmartThings is set with HOOBS,
you wanna go back into SmartThings and go ahead
and set up your shut-off valve with SmartThings.
Just go ahead and add the accessory.
It'll walk you through all the details
it actually took me maybe two minutes.
You just wanna triple tap on the module
on the shut-off valve
and it'll automatically connect to SmartThings.
Once you do that then you wanna go back into SmartThings,
go into your SmartApps,
go into Homebridge and expose this to your Homebridge.
Once you check that off and expose this to Homebridge,
this will automatically come over to HomeKit through HOOBS.
And then the only thing left to do
is to automate in HomeKit.
If any of your HomeKit water sensors get triggered,
you wanna shut off that water valve.
You can also come up with a shortcut
that will flash some red lights around the house
or possibly even set off a siren on your home pod.
(alarm beeping)
You can use any HomeKit wire sensor
that you want to in this automation.
And if you have other water sensors
that maybe work with SmartThings,
you can also use that to turn off this shut-off valve.
There are cheap water sensors like the Aqara
that costs less than $20
which I got a bunch of these around the house.
There are some more expensive ones
like the Eve Water guard which are very cool.
Not only does it plug directly into the wall
so you don't have to worry about batteries,
but it also has a built-in light and siren
and a really cool three foot sensing wire
that can detect water anywhere along that wire.
I've actually wanted this accessory for a very long time,
I've been watching Dome for the longest time
hoping that it would eventually support HomeKit
but I just knew it'd never will.
So after learning about HOOBS last week
and using SmartThings for a while now
I knew this would work and I'm quite happy
I picked this up.
You might be asking me about pricing
where if you add this all up,
you're looking at what, 170 for HOOBS,
you're looking at 65 to 70 for SmartThings
and another 90, 100 dollars to 200 dollars
for a water shut-off valve.
And that's a lot of money to spend on something
that one, not gonna use that often
and two, it doesn't have a wow factor.
It's not like you're gonna invite Bob over and be like,
"Hey Bob check out my new smart home toy."
"What does it do?"
"It just shuts off the water."
But just like car insurance and home insurance,
you hate paying that bill every single month
but if you ever have to use it
and you are glad that you have it
and it will save you thousands of dollars in the long run.
So I hope you can see how easy
and useful this is for your HomeKit home,
and see how it can save you money if you ever have a leak.
If you did find this video useful
make sure you smash that like button down below.
Let me know that you like stuff like this.
Also if you're brand new here and you're into HomeKit
and you want to see non-native HomeKit products
come into HomeKit,
make sure you hit that subscribe button down below
so you get updates when I put out new videos.
If you guys wanna see next video in my HOOBS series,
check that out right there and I will see you on next one.
Thanks for watching I'm outs.
♪ No nothing can break me ♪