(upbeat music)
- This video is sponsored by Best Buy.
Hey, what's up?
MKBHD here, coming at you from the new basement home studio.
So I remember a couple years ago, I think it was,
I was approached or I was asked to take a look at
these like $30 million New York City skyscraper apartments,
just like maybe it could be a cool video.
I thought, "Yeah, maybe I'll check it out,
that maybe there's some cool tech in these spaces."
Like there's gotta be something cool for 30 million, right?
And it turns out, nope, not really.
There was, I think one of 'em had like
an iPad mini bolted to the wall with like light switches
or smart shades or something like that,
but it wasn't that much.
Basically what I'm saying is the smart homes of the future
that we were hoping maybe we'd have by now
mostly don't really exist yet.
I did a whole retro tech episode about that,
but there is some smart home tech around here
that I do actually use now.
So welcome to my current basement studio in-progress.
I'm gonna be working on this as it gets better over time,
but this is the smart home tech
that I currently use right now.
And honestly, I'm hoping this list also improves over time.
This is just the stuff
that I've gotten to work in this home,
and I'm gonna walk through it all.
Now, there is some stuff
that is actually more baked into the home itself.
Like I shared recently on Twitter
about getting my first $0 electricity bill
now that I have solar on my roof,
which is pretty incredible.
Maybe believe a thumbs up for that
if you're interested in a separate video on that.
But for now, this one's about like the gadgets,
like the tangible physical stuff
you could pick up today in a smart home.
Now, I realize some of you might be expecting
that I have some sort of like crazy super-high-virtualized,
crazy smart home thing with like robot vacuums everywhere
and smart home stuff all over the place.
And I kind of don't, like I kept it pretty simple.
I do have mostly regular light bulbs everywhere.
I have one set of smart lights, which I'm gonna show you.
But really the choice at the beginning for me was,
what ecosystem do I want to jump in?
'Cause you sort of have to set up everything in one place.
And so the choices would be Google's, it would be Apple's,
or it would be Amazon's with Alexa, and I chose Google's.
Just no regrets so far.
My main phone is typically an Android phone.
I like and use Google Assistant all the time.
And so that's just where I started by making sure
everything would be compatible with Google Home.
So many of you may remember Google bought Nest.
The downside of Google buying Nest is,
the Nest app was amazing, but now all these new things
pretty much require the Google Home app,
which is missing a couple of those features.
So it's slowly gotten better over time,
and I'm still hoping they can add things,
like the ability to pair some older Nest products
and temperature sensors, et cetera,
and the ability to see
and adjust the Nest thermostat's temperature schedule.
I'm hoping this will come in future versions
so I can make the most of this Nest hardware
all on a single app.
But for now, yeah, Google ecosystem means Google Home app.
So most of the tech lives actually down here
in this little basement studio,
and that's where I have the hub over here,
which is the Google Nest Hub Max.
So just like the Home app on my phone,
this is where I control, you know,
all the lights, ask assistant for things,
view the doorbell camera when somebody rings it, et cetera.
I've had this guy for a few years, and it's been rock solid.
Then, the first big thing that this talks to
that I have is Nest thermostats.
These are already like the most popular things ever.
You've probably most likely already heard of them.
They learn your habits.
They let you set schedules so it saves energy
by not running things as much when you're away
and then cooling down or heating up the house
for you as you get home.
I have this working hand in hand
with my solar and battery setup.
It is super handy, but also,
Nest isn't just a good looking smart home thermostat.
It also has Nest Renew,
which looks at the cleanliness of the power
coming into your home.
It helps optimize for pulling the cleanest power
anytime you actually do pull from the grid,
which for me with solar is a little more rare.
But then next up, I also have a smart doorbell.
This one's more new to me.
So this is a Google Nest doorbell battery.
It's super handy.
It's got good camera quality,
a wide enough angle that you can see the ground.
So anytime there's packages, it gives me an alert for those,
and it talks to the app and the Nest Hub Max, no problem.
So if a delivery person's at the door, and I'm not home,
I can just tell them through the microphone
to leave the package.
I've done that a few times.
And then it lets you specifically set your zones
for where it should look to send you notifications
so you don't get tons of unnecessary ones
from cars driving by or things like that.
All the classic features you'd want from a smart doorbell.
Now as a heads up for me,
so there is battery charging required with this one,
and I've been getting only maybe three weeks or so
on a charge, even after playing around with the settings
to get less notifications.
Now, on their site, they're saying,
even if you're busy, it should last at least a month.
Luckily, it's easy to pop off the door
and plug into USB-C, charge it for a few hours,
and then you're back in business.
Of course, you could always just get a hardwired version
to avoid this altogether.
But I cover all the other points of entry here
with Google cameras.
So indoor camera and outdoor camera with floodlights.
Nothing too special about these
other than they are, of course,
working in the Google Home app.
They're basically versions of the Nest doorbell
without the doorbell (laughs).
So they're high-quality cameras,
smart alerts, will recognize a set of faces,
and, again, they let you draw smart zones
for where to notify you of certain movements.
And then the last thing on the outside,
you can get a smart lock installed
on pretty much any door you want.
So I chose this Yale smart lock,
which is as simple as it looks.
It's an internet-connected passcode lock,
and it's awesome that you're able to know
that the door is locked from wherever you are,
and you can lock it if it's not locked,
if you're ever not sure.
So that's a peace-of-mind win for me.
Now, smart lights, as far as those,
I have two in the basement here,
and these are Philips Hue's lamps.
These are on the pricey side, but I got them because,
so there's only one light in the middle of this room.
So when I'm at the computer and the webcam's pointing at me,
I'm basically backlit by this one light.
So I have one pointed at the wall over here
just to brighten up on my face, which is nice.
And then the other one's over here pointing at the the wall
to brighten up the rest of the room.
So instead of getting more lights installed,
I just got them pointed at the wall.
I kind of like pointing lights at the wall.
Now the Philips Hue app
also has these intricate scenes and effects.
For example, there's a candle effect
or a fireplace effect, which does actually work.
It changes the mood of the whole room.
But I typically don't use these very much.
Again, it's nice knowing that they're internet connected
so I can change things from afar remotely with the app.
I think my next upgrade will be adding a smart light switch
in this room so I don't have to open the app
every time I walk in the room and wanna turn the lights on.
I just walk in and hit the light switch
like any other normal light.
But anyway, tying it all together, you gotta have internet
around the place for it to be smart home.
So I was previously using Google Assistant.
So they have these little pods
that double actually as assistant.
They have a microphone in them,
and you can just ask them anything anywhere.
I was using that before,
but with the walls of this house and the way it's laid out,
I was not getting the speeds I wanted.
So I did some research and read a lot of reviews,
and eventually that's how I found these monstrosities here.
These things are NETGEAR's wifi mesh system.
The link is below.
Now these are a lot bigger and a lot less friendly looking.
So hopefully have somewhere to hide them.
But the average speeds I have now
across my house have literally tripled.
So I see why the reviews are so good,
and I'm definitely keeping them.
And then here's the last
somewhat interesting piece of hardware.
It's a smart plug.
So I had to look this up 'cause I'd had this for so long,
but this is the Kasa Smart wifi plug.
Pretty simple plug.
Basically you set it up once.
It's got its own app,
and then it shows up in the Google Home app,
and then it's a smart wifi plug.
So if you wanna turn a normal lamp into a smart lamp,
like I've done, easy.
Or if you want to turn the Christmas tree on and off
automatically for the month of December,
it's perfect for that, and it's cheap.
So yeah, once that's all set up,
the fun part is like really setting up everything
to work for you.
That's kind of what I've done.
In Google land,
the version of a bunch of things working
under one command is called Routines.
So in the app,
you can string together a bunch of tasks into one command.
So when I say, "Hey, G, how is my day?"
in the morning, that's how I start the day,
it reads off the weather.
It shows me what's on my calendar for the day.
It tells me how my phone's battery percentage
in case I forgot to charge.
It fires up the news for the day,
tells me the traffic on the way to the studio,
and opens up all the smart shades upstairs.
It's not much, but it's pretty convenient to me.
I have this thing where I like to not touch my phone
first thing in the morning.
I actually highly recommend trying this.
I get up, feet touch the ground,
walk away from my bed without touching my phone.
So it's kind of nice to just ask Google
what's going on with my day
as I'm going through the morning routine
and not sit there scrolling on my phone.
That's how I start my day.
Oh, a side note, I also didn't, I forgot to mention.
Sonos Beam and Sonos's subwoofer,
best sounding speakers I've ever heard,
at least in my own house,
and they also do work with Google Assistant,
which is a nice bonus.
But anyway, that's my current smart home stuff
coming at you live
from the half-empty being-built-currently basement studio.
Maybe some of this is inspirational for you
if you're setting up some of the smart home stuff
for the first time.
But also this is the type of video
where I know I'm going to get better suggestions.
I'm gonna get some ideas
from the comments you guys leave on this video
for stuff that I can do in the future down here.
And we'll keep this updated.
We'll keep this posted,
and I'll actually be doing more videos from here
once I've finished getting it set up.
So, yeah, that's pretty much it.
Shout out again to Best Buy for sponsoring this video.
Everything that I mentioned in the video
can be purchased on Best Buy.
So all the links are below, like I mentioned,
and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.
Peace.
(upbeat music)