What's up guys.
It's Chris Majestic here with Majestechs and this is going to be Part 2 of the Home Automation Series
So I did mention a few hubs in Part 1 but I want to go into a little more detail about
those hubs now.
So as I said in the first video, I normally recommend SmartThings to most people and that's
for a number of reasons.
The very first reason is because right now it's the most compatible with other devices
and hubs.
And because right now it's really one of the most capable and customizable hubs out there
while still kind of remaining easy to use.
And the other hub that I mentioned was the Wink Hub.
Now the Wink Hub does have some issues but as far as simplicity goes it's going to be
really hard to do better than the Wink Hub when it comes to being simple.
With the main issue just being that it's not as reliable.
Now Wink did recently release the Wink 2 Hub.
From what I've seen they have fixed the issues that it had with reliability but it's still
fairly limited when you're comparing it to something like SmartThings so I still would
recommend SmartThings over Wink.
Some other hubs are Google Home and the Amazon Echo.
Now the Google Home and Amazon Echo hubs do not have direct support for any other protocols
other than Wifi and Bluetooth so you can't buy a Z-Wave switch and use it with Amazon
Echo by itself or Google Home by itself.
You have to have another hub to do that with.
However, you can take the Google Home or the Amazon Echo and link that to your SmartThings
Hub.
That way you can actually control your devices with voice.
And other hub you might see out there, usually not in the stores too much but online you'll
see the MI Casa Verde hubs.
Now this actually was kind of one of the hubs that started this whole thing.
Before you had things like SmartThings v2 and all of these other hubs that are out there
now, you had this hub and this is actually not a cloud-based hub.
This is all local so it's really fast.
The only downside is that it's Z-Wave only and it's not really as simple to use as some
of the more modern hubs that are out there now that you find in retail.
I already mentioned in the last video that these hubs support different protocols.
Now you do need to have a general understanding of how these protocols work so for example
I'll use Z-Wave and some of the other ones work the same way.
So let's say you buy a SmartThings.
You wire that into your basement up to your router and let's say you bought a wall outlet
or something like that.
You plug the wall outlet all the way up in your bedroom and plug that in.
You have a lamp there.
Now you may have a slight delay.
It may take 1 or 2 seconds for the lamp to cut off when you hit the button.
Not really a big deal.
However, you can actually improve the connection between your devices and the hub by simply
adding more devices.
So when you have multiple Z-Wave devices around your house it actually creates a Mesh Network.
So the more devices you have, the more stable and fast your actual connection is.
Alright so I want to give you an example of how to actually add a Z-Wave device and what
I have here is an Aeon Labs wall switch.
This is just a regular wall switch.
It looks just a little bit different than some of the other ones here.
And the process to add a Z-wave device to SmartThings is called "Include."
So a device has to be in Include mode in order for SmartThings to see it.
And in order to remove a device it has to be in Exclude mode.
So the very first thing we're going to do is fire up SmartThings.
We're going to go to "Home" and then you're going to go all the way to the bottom.
You see all of your devices here then you see "Add a Thing."
So you hit Add a Thing.
It says it's looking for devices.
Now all devices are different but they all have a button on them software that you can
hit to put the device in Include mode.
So that's what I just did there.
I hit the button to put the device in include mode and BOOM there you see.
"Z-Wave Metering Switch" So that's this device.
So it automatically adds it and this you can actually tap on it if you want to rename it.
I'll call this "Christmas Lights."
Boom.
So it's Christmas Lights.
You hit "Save."
Confirm it's saying it's adding one device.
Great.
That's it.
There's Christmas Lights.
So I'm just going to plug this in.
There you go.
So the Echo Dot is getting power.
Now if I go in here and hit the button, it turns it off.
An important thing to keep in mind when you're dealing with Z-Wave Devices is that it's important
to Exclude it if you're going to take it off of your network.
So let's say you want to give this to a friend or you want to sell it or something like that.
You have to make sure that you Exclude it from your hub or else the next person is actually
going to have trouble pairing this to their hub because it thinks that it's still Included
into your network or on your hub.
So in order to Exclude a device we're going to go into settings right now.
You're going to go to "Remove."
It's going to say "Do you want to remove it.
Are you sure".
Yes.
I'm going to hit remove.
Now it's waiting for this to go in Exclude mode so if I hit the button on that, boom
there you go "The device has been successfully removed from SmartThings.
And that's it.
Now Part 3 of the video is actually going to be more in-depth in the SmartThings App
and how to get these things to work and how to get the other Smart hubs to work together
so stay tuned for that.
Now when you're going to deal with lighting with these devices there's really 3 different
options that you have.
And I did mention this in the first video.
The first way is going to be a switch, whether you want to buy a Z-Wave or Zigbee wall switch.
The second way is going to be just an outlet, whether you want to replace an outlet in your
house to plug a lamp or something into it.
And the third way is the simplest way, which is just to use bulbs.
So now I do want to go into a little bit more detail about wall switches since they are
a little bit more advanced and more difficult to understand.
Alright so both of these you see here are actually Z-Wave dimmer switches.
So these actually wire into the wall like a regular light switch so you do have to know
a little bit about electricity and be comfortable with wiring in order to do this.
So I would normally recommend a Z-Wave dimmer to somebody that has a lot of different lights.
So this is controlling my basement lights and I have about 15 bulbs all on one circuit.
So it really wouldn't make sense for me to buy a whole bunch of Connected Bulbs because
it can get really pricey.
So instead you rather spend $30 or $40 on just a dimmer and that controls all of the
lights.
But the one thing to keep in mind that's important if you want to go this route is to make sure
that you have a neutral wire in the box.
The neutral wire is usually just a wire in the back of the box that's coiled up and taped
off because it's not really used for just regular light switches but you do need it
for a Z-Wave switch and the reason why is because the Z-Wave switch is always on.
It's always powered on because it needs to have a constant connection to your hub.
So that's going to provide it with the power it needs to stay connected.
So if you're working with lights in the ceiling the only other alternative is to actually
just buy Connected Bulbs.
And the other thing I want to mention about Z-Wave light switches is about 3-way or 4-way
situations.
So if you don't know, a 3-way lighting situation is when you have two switches controlling
one light.
So what you're going to need to do is buy an actual Z-Wave switch and you need to buy
what's called a Z-Wave accessory switch.
Now the Z-Wave accessory switches usually look just like regular Z-Wave switches but
they don't actually control the load or they don't actually have a direct connection to
the light.
So in a 3-way lighting situation only one of the switches is actually connected to the
light.
So you need to make sure you're putting the Z-Wave switch on the side where the actual
light is connected and wire that into the "load" wire or the wire that's going to the
light.
And the other end is where the accessory switch is going to go.
All it's doing is getting power and using itself as a completely independent switch.
So when you're dealing with these accessory Z-Wave switches you have two options on making
it work.
You can actually buy what's called a Z-Wave Remote and what that's going to do is pair
your accessory switch with your regular switch so that any time you hit the accessory switch
it switches this off or visa versa for on/off.
The alternative is to simply just wire up the accessory switch for power and whenever
you hit that switch you can tell SmartThings what to do when you hit that switch.
So in my case at the top of my steps I have an accessory switch there because the load
is not at the top of the steps.
When I hit that light to turn it on or off I have SmartThings say hey when I turn this
switch off, turn this switch off.
Or when I turn that switch on, turn this switch on.
So you can have SmartThings do all of the things for you but the cool part about it
is you can actually have SmartThings do more than just that.
It doesn't have to necessarily control a light.
It can control whatever you want.
It's just an accessory switch that happens to look like a light switch.
And the last thing I want to talk about because I get this question a lot, especially with
the Amazon Echo videos and the very first Home Automation Video, is how to control TVs.
That's just going to be the Logitech Harmony Hub.
Now Logitech has made it super complicated because they recently changed all the names
of their remotes and hubs.
Now they do have an option where you can just buy the hub by itself and they have another
one where you can buy the hub with a smart remote.
As long as you're getting a hub with it, you can use that hub to link with Amazon Echo
and with SmartThings.
The way the Logitech Harmony Hub or the Harmony Remotes for that matter work is that they
actually have Activities.
What happens is the SmartThings App can actually tie into the Logitech Harmony servers and
see those activities you have there and it will turn each of those activities into a
switch in SmartThings.
So it's that simple.
Whevever that activity is not activated, that switch is off.
Whenever the activity is activated, that switch is on.
So you can just go in SmartThings and hit the switch to turn it on and that's going
to turn your activity on and start your TV.
Same with the Amazon Echo.
The Alexa app is going to log into Logitech servers and do the same exact thing but the
cool part is with Alexa you can just say hey turn the TV on and it's going to switch on
the activity.
So you can use your voice.
Alright so let's recap real quick.
If you want to be able to control a Z-Wave or Zigbee device with voice you would need
either the Amazon Echo or the Google Home AND you would need the SmartThings Hub AND
you would need to buy that Z-Wave device because again, the Echo and the Google Home do not
work directly with Z-Wave or Zigbee devices.
They only work with Wifi-based devices.
Alright guys, well that's it for this video.
Hopefully you found it hepful.
Go ahead and mash that Like button for me if you did and I do want to hear your comments
and your questions.
I'll go ahead and respond to those so you can post those in the comments section and
I'll see you guys in the next video.