- I absolutely love the extra space in my new house,
not to mention the exquisite decor.
But the problem is that it was built back in the 90's,
when smart meant a mechanical sprinkler timer
and hardwired intercom.
Marco.
- [Jake] Polo.
- That aint gonna cut it for me.
But, when I looked into expanding beyond this
with smart lighting and smart sensors,
honestly speaking, there are so many different technologies
and ecosystems and brands that contribute to some
or more of them that frankly it was pretty overwhelming,
even for a tech savvy person,
to the point where I pretty much had to dedicate
one of my staff members to figuring this stuff out.
So together we're going to be showing you guys
how we plan to use off the shelf commodity Z-wave devices
to achieve my wildest smart home dreams.
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(upbeat music)
Before you begin your smart home journey,
you've gotta figure out what exactly you want to automate
or smartify.
From there, you'll need to do research into the available
products that can achieve your goals.
For instance, if you want to install smart light switches
so that you can have your lights turn off
when you leave your house,
there are going to be a lot of options,
with a key differentiating factor being
there communication standard
or what they use to talk to each other
and to the internet.
Now currently the entire smart home market
is in a bit of a confusing state
due to a standard called Matter.
It's a project that's backed by some of
the biggest companies in the world,
with the intention of standardizing
the communication between smart devices.
The problem is that Matter isn't out yet,
and we still don't know what it's gonna look like,
or what it's going to mean
for existing communication standards.
So for now we're gonna say it doesn't matter.
That leaves us with the big players,
wi-fi, Zigbee and Z-wave.
Now wi-fi is the one you're probably most familiar with.
It's super fast,
but it requires connected devices
to maintain an active connection with a wi-fi access point.
That uses a ton of power,
so it's not suitable
for battery powered devices like this one.
Not that we'll using anything like this,
because screw replacing batteries, if you know what I mean.
Wi-fi is also what's known as a star network,
which means that all of the devices
have to be in range of a central access point
rather than being able to mesh off of one another.
It's also worth nothing that depending on
how baller your wi-fi access point is,
adding 20 or 30 smart devices
can start to seriously hurt your wi-fi performance.
Which brings us to Zigbee and Z-wave.
These are both mesh style networks,
which means that devices within the network
can mesh between each other through low energy radio waves
rather than requiring all of the devices
to connect to that central hub.
This means they have better range,
excellent battery life,
and they're more resilient than wi-fi based networks.
The downside is that they are way slower.
Not that that really matters in a residential application.
Even if we were taking multiple hots,
all the way from the basement
to the upper floor of this house,
we're still talking milliseconds of latency,
which isn't to say that they're both the same though.
There are a few main differences
between Zigbee and Z-wave products.
For starters, the Z-wave alliance requires
that any Z-wave product goes through
a very stringent certification process
that requires the manufacturer
to stick to standardized commands
and security protocols.
This basically means that Z-wave devices
from various manufacturers are way more likely
to just work with one another and do so securely.
It also means though that Z-wave compatible products
tend to be more expensive.
Zigbee on the other hand is fully open,
and doesn't require any certification.
That means that most Zigbee stuff is a fair bit cheaper,
it just might not all work together.
They also operate on different frequencies.
Z-wave is around 900 megahertz,
while Zigbee operates in the 2.4 gigahertz range.
Theoretically, this gives Zigbee the upper hand
in terms of bandwidth,
but since most devices are barely sending any data,
just on or off,
it usually doesn't make a ton of difference.
Now there's anecdotal evidence that says
that Zigbee will not mess with your 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi,
but since it's already such a congest band,
I didn't wanna take that risk,
and since all the devices that I wanted to use
are Z-wave ready it was the better choice for me.
There's still one issue though,
the hub or hubs.
The thing is, a device like your smart phone
can't natively communicate with Z-wave or Zigbee devices,
so you need something to bridge the gap.
And this right here is the AYOTECH Z Stick seven,
which is the latest generation Z-wave technology,
which means that our power efficiency,
as well as better range,
not to mention convenient backwards compatibility.
Now, nothing would prevent you
from using a Z-wave and a Zigbee hub,
and marrying those devices on the same
smart home overall network using something like this
raspberry pie running home assistant.
And in fact there are hubs like the smart things hub
that natively support both,
but it can add an extra communication step,
so we haven't felt the need
to dabble with any of that,
we're sticking with Z-wave.
This concludes the scripted portion of this video.
Goodbye teleprompter.
All right, Jake, let's YOLO this thing, shall we?
- [Computer Voice] Okay.
- [Linus] Hey, that was the breaker.
- So I heard you're supposed to lick both your fingers-
- Uh-huh.
- And then-
- And then put them up my butt hole?
- Well, okay, after that you lick them again.
- Oh, so we're on different subreddits.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- There is a neutral, it's in there boys.
Very nice.
Okay, was this on or off when I?
It doesn't matter.
- It does matter actually.
- Oh, shoot balls.
I don't have the little poky jabby.
- You don't need a poky jabby.
- I do need a poky jabby.
- Why do you need a poky jabby?
- So I can get the thing out.
Hold on, hold on, don't,
push it in a bit before you pull.
Yeah, there we go.
- Holy mentos.
- [Linus] What's up, Andy?
- [Andy] Hi.
- How you doing?
Now because this is a smart switch,
we can't just wire our two black wires
up to the two black screws and call it a day,
it actually requires the neutral wire,
which is gonna be this silver puppy right here.
So we're gonna wire that up to these white wires.
Now, we've also got a fourth connection for traveling.
- That's for a three way.
- Ah, it's for a three way switch, perfect.
Oh good, so this is three way compatible.
- Yeah.
I think you need their specific ad on switches,
but yeah, you could do a three way.
- Again, ladies and gentleman,
this is not what we would recommend,
but we're just doing this to kind of test it out today.
So we're just gonna jam both of the wires under the screw
so they'll make contact that way.
Hold on, I think I can loosen it a bit more.
- [Jake] How much do you trust your handy work?
- Enough to test it right now
and then immediately put the other switch back on properly,
and then have a qualified professional do this again later.
Haza.
Okay, so we've got our line and our load,
and then we've got,
normally we would our morrette
and a wire chunk to go to our neutral here,
but we didn't.
We just put them both there.
Just ignore that.
We're not even gonna screw that back in.
So nice.
Actually we should screw it back in
so no one gets burned.
And boom.
- [Jake] Yeah.
- All right, cool.
- [Jake] It's so cute.
- Yeah, it's, stop it.
Stop it.
Another cool way we could have checked if power was running,
shout out to Fluke,
is with the volt alert setting on their multimeter.
So check this out.
(multimeter beeping)
Cool, huh?
- What do you want a tutorial or something?
- No, I just, I wanna see
how does it pop up in Home Assistant.
If you're not familiar with it,
Home Assistant is a piece of software that allows you
to connect basically any smart home ecosystem
to another smart home ecosystem
and then set up automations based on the data
that you receive from each one.
It's super cool.
And theoretically our switch is gonna show up
pretty much like that.
- Actually, before we do that,
we kind of need to set up the hub.
Now technically I kind of did this in the background,
but if you need to do this yourself,
all you gotta do is install the Z-wave JS ad-on
into Home Assistant.
If you have Home Assistant running in a docker container
you're not gonna have ad-on support
so you're gonna have to do this in a separate container,
but if you have it on a Ras pie like we do,
it's really easy to install.
You basically go to the ad-on store,
type in Z-wave JS and install.
There's two versions technically,
one that's built right into Home Assistant
and has less configuration,
and then there's the fully featured,
full fledged web gooey one,
which is what we're gonna use
because it is way nicer.
Look at this, you can see everything.
- [Linus] That is super cool.
I don't see our switch yet though.
- Because we haven't hooked it up yet.
So by default nothing's gonna be configured.
You're gonna have to pick your USB device,
we have it there.
You're gonna wanna set your network key,
and then you should be able to see your controller.
Ours is the 700 series based controller,
it's the Z sticks, gen seven whatever.
It's in there.
We can see it's alive, we can see it's happy.
Then you wanna add your devices.
So you wanna add the switch?
- Yeah.
- To add a Z-wave device,
it's called an inclusion.
So we're gonna go in the controller
and tell it I wanna do an inclusion.
Now go click both the buttons on there
at the same time.
- [Linus] All right, I'm going, I'm going, I'm running.
- I think that's the way you do it.
Oh, it worked.
- [Linus] It worked?
- Turn it back on.
Haza.
Okay, device found.
Sweet.
So now that it's found the device
it shows up unknown AF,
oh wow that was quick.
Nevermind.
Okay.
So it interviewed the device,
found out what the device can do,
what it's called.
And we can see in here basic switch,
binary switch, (indistinct).
- [Linus] Oh, nice and snappy.
- Target status on.
It's a little slow 'cause-
- These are fluorescent lights.
That was (snapping fingers) basically instantaneous.
- [Jake] Oh, were you trying to host right now?
- Yeah, I'm trying to host a video.
- Oh, sorry, here you go.
- Geez, geez.
- Should we play with some other devices?
- Absolutely, I already got this one out of the bag.
- Oh, this one I already set up too,
but I mean the process is the same.
Basically Z-wave devices
usually have an action button it's called.
So in this case if you got this brand new,
you plug it in,
start your inclusion.
- And you get you some action.
- You click the action button
and it just does it.
- You're a smart home enthusiast
so that's the only action you're getting.
- Jesus.
- Don't include that in the video.
- [Computer Voice] Okay.
- Go plug it in.
- So I can action myself here with the button.
- [Jake] But I'm gonna action you for you.
- Jake's gonna action me.
So look mom, no hands.
Do you always ride your bicycle on Toby's (indistinct).
Wow, that did work really well.
Now this is a Yeelight,
it's a smart light.
We could be cheating right now,
but we're not.
- [Jake] We're not cheating.
- This is through Home Assistant.
- [Jake] Proof.
- Next I'll show you guys something that would have been
super handy to have when the contractors
accidentally plugged the drain for the air conditioning unit
that's up in the attic.
This right here is a moisture sensor,
and what we can do is we can say
"Hey, if you detect any moisture,
"turn off
"some device."
Say for example the air conditioning unit.
Cool, right?
At $50 it's a lot cheaper than these drywall repairs.
Another really cool thing that I wanna use extensively
is motion sensing.
Now, you can get switches that have motion sensors in them
that will just turn on for a certain amount of time
and then turn off.
But with home assistant we can make it so much smarter.
These GE switches that we're using
have both the light switch on and off,
and the motion sensing component
independently addressable through Home Assistant.
So we can create all kinds of fun little integrations.
For example here in the theater room
we could tell this switch hey, if you don't see anyone move
for let's say two hours,
turn off all the lights,
and while you're at it
make sure the air conditioning's off
and turn off the TV to save power.
Dads love that kind of shit.
Of course not everyone wants to buy all new smart switches,
so for those folks, check this out.
We actually turned off the motion sensor
that was built into the switch,
and instead we're using one of these simple little javis.
This is an AYOTECH,
I believe it's a six in one sensor.
It's powered by USB or battery.
So it absolutely sips power.
It'll tell you temperature, humidity, motion,
I can't remember but there's six of them.
Oh, it's UV vibration,
which will be useful for tampering,
and then also light,
so it can tell not just if there's any light,
but it can tell how much light there is.
So you can tell it, for example,
hey, look, if it's a bright sunny day outside,
there's already a lot of light in the room,
don't turn on the lights.
And conveniently this GE one that I'm planning to deploy
also has that functionality,
so I probably won't need many, if any of these.
Oh, and one thing that's nice
is they have a wider field of view
than some of the ones that are built into the switches.
Here's something cool,
a lot of these AYOTECH devices,
and for that matter, a lot of smart devices,
have extra sensors that you can pull
to get extra data.
So, for example, you can see the multisensor six
that we're about to show you
a demo with in the mechanical room
is measuring 23.3 degrees celsius,
while that water sensor that we had in the upstairs hallway
is at 31.7.
I feel bad for the contractors here.
I was like, I told them,
I was like "I'll pay for internet in the house,
"you got internet, I'll run the HVAC for you guys
"while you're working,"
but then they broke it.
I tried.
For our last trick, AYOTECH also makes a whole house
energy monitoring solution.
And we're just gonna open this up real quick
and see sort of how scary it looks.
And if it's too scary,
then we're gonna have
♪ Brian the electrician ♪
- Hook it up.
Oh, it's actually not that scary.
Everything is, everything is (indistinct).
- [Jake] Here, why don't you take the whole thing off?
- I'm trying.
- [Jake] It's hitting the breaker.
- Yeah, this is really clean, they did a great job.
I mean I don't, it's not that I like hanging out in here,
this is not my,
this is not my happy place.
- How are you supposed to do this AYOTECH?
- Yeah, way to go AYOTECH.
You were doing real well up until this point in the video.
- [Jake] Okay, that looks probably like it'll work I guess.
- I mean what the heck could this thing even do?
So this'll monitor your power
and then what?
If your power goes over a certain amount
you could get like an email?
- [Jake] Oh, it's working.
- Oh, is it working?
- [Jake] Yeah.
- Oh cool.
- [Jake] So guess how much power your whole house is using.
- Let's go look.
I mean right now, hold on,
okay, let me think, let me think.
'Cause the HVAC's not running,
range isn't running.
Okay, I'm gonna say-
- [Jake] The whole house.
- The whole house-
- [Jake] There's not very many lights on either.
- It's gonna be like four amps.
- [Jake] Yeah, actually, almost spot on.
- Really?
- 640 watts.
- Oh, that's freaking awesome.
(Jake laughing)
you know what, here we could turn on this microwave.
Okay, ready?
- [Jake] Yeah.
Is it bad to run an empty microwave?
- I have no idea.
- [Jake] Refresh.
- What do we got?
- 750.
Hold on.
- What are we at?
- Oh, 2000 watts, holy crap.
- Now I can't leave this here
because as part of the home renovation
we're pulling out this 125 amp service,
and we're gonna replace it
with a 200 amp service,
or maybe even more
because we actually wanna put
a couple electric car chargers in the garage.
But, that's a project for another day.
Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it,
'cause there's gonna be lots more videos
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If you guys enjoyed this video,
go check out our HVAC video
where we got a proof of concept running
for how we're gonna use Home Assistant to control
multi zone air conditioning with just a dumb AC unit.
Mind you I think we're,
oops.
Thanks Floatplane, you guys are the best.
(indistinct)