if you've been curious about turning your home into a smart home but have
felt overwhelmed with the amount of solutions out there or don't even know
where to begin this is the video for you I'm Josh Teder for 6 Months Later and
in this video I'm going to take you through how to kick off and expand your
smart home in 2019 let's dive in when looking to turn your home into a smart
home you're just inundated with choice maybe
too much choice but in general there are actually basically two routes you can go
when trying to go about creating a smart home the first one being that you can
buy a bunch of devices from different manufacturers and connect them all to a
common platform like the Google Assistant Alexa or Siri/HomeKit
or there are other companies out there that make home automation platforms and
have regional installers that will come out and install an integrated solution
for you so which one do you go with well that largely depends on one how much
automation you're planning to do in your home second how much you're willing to
spend on that automation and then finally how comfortable are you at
setting up your smart home by yourself now companies like Control4, Savant
and Crestron will come and install everything in your home or use an
integrator to do it their solutions can often vary widely in how their user
interfaces are designed and the third party platforms they can work with now
thankfully things have been getting better with them recently but there's
still a lot of competition coming at these companies from the larger tech
companies like Google and Amazon if you look at Google's newly rebranded Google
Nest page it's obvious that Google Nest is making a play to customers who want
the type of whole home solution that the traditional smart home automation
companies provide and today it's not just the luxury home automation
companies offering in-home consultation and installation services for smart home
devices more mainstream companies are getting into this space like Best Buy
Best Buy we'll actually come out to your home and
do a consultation for free and then they also offer paid installation services as
well for the rest of this video I'm mainly going to focus on the consumer
tech oriented companies and their smart home products because I think these are
the products that most people are going to choose for their smart homes in 2019
and beyond the first part is setting up one of these systems in 2019 is choosing
which core platform to go with that all of your smart devices will talk to and
this platform will be the central point of control for all of your smart devices
the major mainstream platforms you can choose from out there are Amazon's Alexa
devices Google's Google assistant devices or Apple's homekit enabled
devices my advice right now would be to either go with Amazon or Google more
devices work with their platforms though apple's Homekit is slowly starting to
catch up with more devices supporting homekit now that the company has dropped
a hardware chip requirement for devices to be eligible on the homekit platform
now personally I use the Google Assistant as well as Alexa for my own
smart home though I typically use the Google assistant as my predominant
platform just because I use Google services more than I do
Amazon once you decide on which core platform is right for you to run your
smart home now it's time to talk about the devices that actually make your home
a smart home typically you can put these types of devices into several main
categories including music media lighting climate security and appliances
/ accessories first let's look at music with whole home audio this functionality
allows you to play different music in different parts of your home now
typically through a voice assistant you have various options here Amazon, Google
and Apple all make their own speakers that natively play music from various
streaming services however do note that currently Apple's home pod can
only stream music from Apple Music or your iTunes library there are also
third-party speakers and systems you can buy from companies like Sonos and bose
that can work with all three companies platforms some bows and Sona speakers
will even allow you to have Alexa and the Google Assistant directly on their
speakers we've done quite a few reviews on smart speakers including the Google
Home Google Home Mini, Google Home Max, Google
Nest Hub and Amazon Echo. Now the Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show have the added
benefit of having a screen on them which makes controlling your media as well as
other smart home devices even easier if you're interested in learning more about
any of these devices I'll make sure to throw the links to their reviews below
in the video description next let's take a look at controlling your media rooms
with your smart home typically this involves controlling your TV and
associated speakers as well as the lighting in your media rooms we'll get
to lighting in just a second right now the best integration with your TV from
consumer companies would either come from Amazon or Google they both sell
devices that can control your TV turn it on and off with an assistant as well as
deliver content from all the major streaming services you'd expect and
they're relatively affordable only costing between 30 to 70 US dollars
Google's Chromecast in particular is pretty powerful thanks to its casting
feature you can cast media from your Android iPhone or any Chrome browser
over Wi-Fi to your chromecast enabled devices which makes it easy to cast
media from your phone to your TV pause and then cast that media to your bedroom
TV Google's newer version of the chromecast devices can also turn on and
off your TV and receiver and other devices connected to your receiver
through a technology called hdmi cec amazon also has this feature as well
both companies allow you to use your voice to control your media hardware as
well as tell Alexa or the Google Assistant
what media you want to play on which screen in your home now the Apple TV
unfortunately can't be used to turn on and off your TV using Siri although it
does use hdmi cec so when you turn it on it will turn on the other devices
connected to it it has a dedicated remote which the Google Chromecast does
not have and it has something similar to Casting called
Airplay which you can use to stream media from pretty much any Apple device
with a screen over to your TV now our next category is lighting the main
players in smart lighting right now are Philips Hue, GE, Lifx,
IKEA, and Eufy i these smart light makers make LED bulbs that are typically in
three categories plain white bulbs that go from daylight to warm white hues or
multi colored bulbs smart bulbs typically connect either through
bluetooth or through Wi-Fi now smart lights save you a lot of time and steps
throughout your house you can turn on all of your lights at night with just
using your voice you can make sure you've turned them off while you're away
from home using a smart phone app or a smart assistant through your phone
typically you can create routines with them so you can wake up with your lights
dimming up with sunset colors and you can even set geofencing with your smart
lights so they automatically turn on when you arrive home and turn off when
you leave now some smart lights do need a hub that connects to your router like
with the Philips Hue bulbs friends that do this typically offer starter packs
that come with the hub and then a couple of smart light bulbs so if you're just
starting off with smart lights in your residence I highly recommend picking up
one of these starter packs other brands like GE smart bulbs directly connect to
Wi-Fi and do not need a hub so you can start off by just buying a single bulb
that will connect to your smart home platform there are also other
accessories you can get with your smart lights like wireless dimmer switches
that you can assign to control a variety of lights in your residence or switches
powered by kinetic energy like the one from Philips Hue, Philips Hue probably
has the most accessories and just variety of smart lightbulbs out there
compared to any other brand and their the brand I actually use in my own
residence we did do a six months later review of the philips u lighting system
so if you're interested in philips you i'll make sure to leave a link to that
review in the video description below or you can just pause this video now and
click the card in the video to go watch it next up let's talk climate control
and mainly we're talking about smart thermostats here there are thermostats
that are Wi-Fi connected that can be controlled with your smart assistants
some popular ones include the Nest Learning Thermostat which is now made by
Google the Ecobee 4, which Amazon has a pretty large stake in and then various
smart thermostats made by Honeywell which is at least here in the US if not
worldwide the largest maker of thermostats by far some you can program
like the more traditional thermostats with a weekly schedule while others like
the Nest Learning Thermostat learn your pattern and use AI to predict what the
temperatures should be set to based on the history of your patterns and a
variety of environmental factors now most also allow you to stick sensors in
different rooms around your house to aggregate the temperature data in your
home to give you a true home residence temperature most smart thermostats will
work with each of the big three smart platforms and their installation usually
is pretty straightforward next let's talk smart home security systems now
home security has been around for years with companies like ADT Brinks and CPI
Security but there are more recent companies now out on the market with
solutions that offer customers a different experience this experience is
basically customers can mix and match the type of equipment they need for
their home based on their own needs and then the customers can actually do the
installation themselves and buy all of these products either on a shelf or
online the three new main players in this space are Nest
Ring and of course Simply Safe each of these companies products do come with a
monitoring service they're optional nests monitoring
service is through Brinks home security we're simply safe and ring have their
own in-house monitoring services and those are typically cheaper than what
you find with the Brinks service which is a bit more pricey with nest products
with all three services the types of devices offered are somewhat similar
there's usually a home base sensors for your doors and windows motion sensors
cameras smart locks smart doorbells and a key fob and usually a keypad that
helps you disarm the system and one of the best parts is none of these services
ask you to sign a long-term contract besides the monitoring services and the
consumer tech focus the other main benefit of these systems are that they
allow for integrations with the main platform assistance so you can ask Alexa
to arm your alarm or ask Google to see the downstairs living room camera etc
some of these services also offer smoke detectors carbon monoxide detectors and
smart water leak detection devices so they're not just keeping your home safe
from burglars but also other issues that can affect homeowners and their safety
the last and final category of smart home devices is a catch-all category
that I call appliances and accessories there are so many devices that fit into
this category and the list just keeps growing every year the basic concept is
that these are devices like your typical home appliances such as your stove
refrigerator washing machine but also home accessories that can connect to
your smart home platform like smart blinds robotic vacuum cleaners smart
scales smart switches etc my go-to smart home accessory over the past few years
has been smart switches they turn any appliance into one that can simply be
turned on or off by any of the major smart home assistant platforms they're
especially handy when it comes to holiday decorating for example during
the holiday season I use five to eight smart switches from various companies to
help link all of my holiday lights to the Google Assistant.
I group them all into a room called Christmas lights and then I can ask
Google to turn on or off all of my Christmas lights at once once you've
chosen your smart home platform and have started buying devices for your smart
home you're going to be amazed at how easy it is to automate some of the most
mundane parts of your life like turning off lights in every room of your house
with just your voice or doing things you could have only dreamed of years ago
like a thermostat that you never need to adjust because it's learned how you like
your temperature given a variety of factors or moving through your house and
playing music that is synced in every room smart home devices really have the
power to change people's lives for the better and they're an important part of
what we do here at the six months later reviews channel so if you're interested
in a particular smart home device or product definitely make sure that you
subscribe to our channel to see reviews and videos like this one that you're
watching now and make sure to hit that bell icon so you get notified any time
we upload a brand new video well that wraps up our video on how to start a
smart home in 2019 if you liked this video and found it useful make sure to
hit that thumbs up button below and if you have any questions at all about
smart homes or smart home devices make sure to leave us a comment well thanks
so much for watching for 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder.