Hello everyone. Thanks for tuning in again. I'm going to start a brand new
series here on Automate Your Life and it's intention is to solve real-world
problems with smart home or home automation technology. Now what we're
going to do today is I'm going to start a three-part series called the $325
smart home security system and this is going to give you the opportunity to
create your own home security system using smart home technology, and of
course you're not going to have to pay any of those home monitoring fees that
you see on TV, and in the commercials. So today's video is what I'm going to tell
you you're going to want to buy for this $325
home security system. This is just the components, part two I'll show you how to
actually get those all installed in your home, and then part three is an optional
piece that I'm going to show you to save a little money. It's a little harder to
set up but ultimately I think it's worth it because it will save you a lot of
money, so let's get going. Alright so now for me when we talk about a home
security system, I'm thinking about three different components. The first being
obviously we don't want anyone who's not supposed to be in our home to be in our
home, so kind of the the actual security side. You want to know if someone's here
and you want to be able to phone the police. Now second to that is leak or
flood detection. Water damage does a lot of damage to a lot of homes now, and I
think if you've been paying attention to your insurance policies, they're not
always fully covering you in all of those situations. The other thing is of
course fire detection, fire or smoke detection, and that's actually probably
the hardest piece in the smart home sector to find, kind of a cost reasonable
solution actually. So those are the three things that I'm going to be solving for
you here today. Now the first component is the hub and
the hub is really important because most of the sensors that you're going to use
in this are ZigBee protocol, and ZigBee is kind of the protocol that has won out
here at this point in terms of sensor technology. We've seen z-wave as well,
that's a great protocol as well, this hub, and I have one in my home it does
incredible things when it comes to home automation. One of the other things that
it does so well is it actually monitors both leaks and the security system in
your home. It becomes an in-home security system and that's base features here
from the Samsung Smartthings System. So that's a $90 USD hub for you this is
probably the simplest thing to install in your home. So that device is a Samsung
Smartthings Water Sensor or water leak sensor. Now the water leak
sensor is a $25 piece from Samsung, if you were to need multiple usually from
Samsung what you can do, you can either wait for a sale or you can go
ahead and you can buy in multiples of 3 or 5. They sell them for cheaper at that
point, but for most people if you're in your furnace room or your room with your
hot water tank, that's where you're going to need this sensor. What I've seen over
the last six months in my home, I've had one of these and it has been nothing
short of perfect. I have had one minor leak while that was here, and it did
alert me to that. The other thing is I've tested it multiple times and I haven't
had to change a battery in it, and you would think with so much monitoring
going on, that you you would have to do that. So the next thing I'm buying in
this system is to cover what's normally the two main doors in everybody's
household. So you're usually going to have a front door and a back door and
those are obviously easy entry points for people to come in,
and so what I'm going to buy is the Samsung Smartthings multi-purpose sensor,
and I'm gonna buy two of these, and you can see, hopefully you can see, the two
sensor or the two pieces of this sensor. They essentially work together in terms
of an electromagnetic signal, basically if they're close together, then
Samsung knows that the door is closed, and if they're split apart then Samsung
knows that the door is open. Now funny little piece here, these actually work on
your garage door if you'd like, and lots of people have been using them for those
as well. Now in general people have a few more places that are considered entry
points for people into their homes, and I kind of think about lower level
screened windows, where somebody could break the screen out and then maybe take
the window itself out. So what I'm going to recommend there is two more of a
Samsung Smartthings device. It's a motion sensor and these are $25 USD apiece, and
they work anywhere from about the zero to the fifteen foot range in terms of
distance, so you actually point these motion sensors towards the entry points
in your home, a couple of the windows kind of off to the side, you don't want
them looking out the actual window, cause they'll pick up motion and changes in
light outside, but they are very good inside the home at picking up motion
when people are that 0 to 15 feet range away. So overall when you look at it, this
gives you four points within your home that you're able to monitor, that you
know are easy entry points for people into your home. So now with all of those
devices purchased from Samsung, you're gonna go out and you're just gonna buy
those just from, Samsung and as I said earlier, with most of those detectors if
you needed another one, you would be buying a 3-pack and the price per device
goes down with Samsung. So that's a deal I've seen almost
always there with Samsung. Now after we purchased all of those things what we
have left is $120 and that leaves us enough to
purchase a Nest smoke and CO protect smart home monitoring sensor. So this is
going to protect you from fire, and of course carbon monoxide, which is a big
killer now in the United States and Canad,a and around the world. So it's a
really important component to your smart home and it gives you the opportunity to
sense those things when you are either at home or away, and you're going to get
notifications both on your phone or a tablet and also of course the audible
alarm in your home, which is very important if you're in the home and
we're talking about smoke or carbon monoxide. One little option here that
I'm going to give you, and this is something we're going to explore in the
last part of this series, and what this option is, it's called WyzeCam 2. Now
the WyzeCam 2 is a small camera device. I'm going to give you one little option
here that allows you to remove some of the cost and complexity from the system
it's not a perfect solution, but for a lot of people this will save them a lot
of money, and so people are gonna take that right now. What this is is the WyzeCam 2
and this is the device here. This is all you get when you buy one of these.
It's a$20 USD camera that you can purchase, and it's a smart
home camera. It has the capability of doing three very important things. It's
capable of motion detection and sound detection when you're away from your
home. Now on top of that it can also listen for different types of alarms, so
it can listen, and specifically in the settings for this little camera, is a
carbon monoxide sound or alarm detection function in a smoke alarm detection
function. So it uses those standard sounds that you're going to get from
your regular home monitors, and it will send you those
notifications. Now what I'll tell you is that this device then can replace a
number of the components that we've been talking about today, so it could replace
potentially the Samsung Smartthings motion sensors, which is $50 worth of
equipment here and it could potentially replace the Nest Protect CO and smoke
alarm that we just talked about. Now that would give you a savings of $170
for a $20 camera. I'd say you're probably going to need a
couple of those just to make sure that you're covered throughout your home, but
ultimately this could replace it. What I'm going to tell you about this little
device is it is imperfect, and you will have to do a little bit of extra setup,
and a little bit of extra work. So come part three in this series, you're going
to have to decide whether or not you want to head down that path. All right
there you go guys, those are all the different components, you can go ahead
and look them all up. There's links all down below to all of the devices that I
recommended today. You can go ahead, research all those items and stay tuned
for the next couple of parts in the series. So part two I'm going to show you
how to set up the most complicated components of the system, so that's going
to be the Samsung Smartthings, that's a large security system, and I'm
going to show you how to, right from the box, set those up get them working in
your home, and get you set up with both a home security system and a leak system.
So that's part 2 of this series, the third part is going to be what I just
talked to you about in terms of the WyzeCam 2, so I'm going to show you that
option and how it can go ahead and replace all those different components
to that security system, and become a very key and critical piece just for
that $20. So there you go guys. We'll see you next time in part 2. Thanks
for watching.