this unassuming little white box for the tail can change the way you use your smart home
hello I'm Wanderer001 and this is my review of The switchbot Hub mini I will start this
review off by prefacing that switchbot did send me the mini Hub here for the purposes of doing
an unbiased review and that's what you're going to get I will admit that switchbot has sent me a
few other products in the past and the switchbot Hub mini here the one that I thought that I would
actually like the least so let's talk about what we get here we have as I mentioned an unassuming
little white brick this brick is 2.5 inches wide with a height of 2.5 and a depth of 0.5
on the back we have a single little hole that we can mount this with so put a screw and
slips into place or we can lay this flat and there's little fees here there is an included
micro USB to USB plug that is five feet in length which is greatly appreciated it does not come
with a wall board so you will have to have your own brick or a USB port to plug this into and
realistically aside from a quick how-to guide the only other thing is some 3M mounting tape
in the Box however as we see here there is an LED that is flashing on the front of this
device which can be turned off via the application and on the top might be a little hard to see but
there is a little button there for uh pairing and Bluetooth so I say pairing and Bluetooth
and we're looking at a hub what does this Hub do well as you might imagine if you have any
other switchbot devices this Hub can act as a gateway to the internet for those devices what
do I mean by that well if you have a switchbot bot review over there in the corner you'll know
that it operates only using Bluetooth however with the switchbot Hub mini here you will open
up that device to the internet meaning you can now control it remotely when you're not on site
within Bluetooth range via the application this will work for any switchbot that operates only
with Bluetooth but not only that it opens it up to your voice assistance your Alex A's and your
Google home and Siri through some trickery but it opens it up to that and if this was the only
thing that the Hub mini did I would say probably not the best thing in the world however this is
not the only thing the Hub mini does it is also a universal IR Blaster meaning I can program this to
mimic any IR remote that I have in my house but first let's talk about the ridiculously simple
setup for the Hub mini here this will be setup of the switchbot Hub mini so again we have our
switchbot app open right here we're going to select the plus sign in the upper right hand
corner but we are going to search for this device so here we go Hub Mini so we have to plug in the
device using the included cable I'm just going to quickly plug that in over here so we don't
have anything to actually press and it already has started blinking so we are going to select
next even though the Hub Mini starts blinking there actually is a button on the top of it
so that image is actually it tilted slightly forward so it'll be a fast blink then you select
next and there it just wants us to pop it on our Wi-Fi so we're going to do that again so
I have proceeded to give it a name location and Wi-Fi credentials however the credentials are in
plain text I don't particularly care for that but uh aside from that really quick it's done
so that setup of the switchbot Hub mini as you saw just like with any other switchbot device
super simple setup now the Hub mini does connect to everything using Bluetooth LE which are the
things around it but it connects to your network via Wi-Fi 2.4 gigahertz meaning longer range but
not faster speeds with something like this you don't need to actually have fast speeds you need
to have those longer ranges because you want to be able to engulf your home with one of these
if you centrally locate it but as I mentioned it has that IR Blaster and for me there are two main
areas in my home where I'm like yes I could use an IR blaster to one kind of consolidate
my remote which is my living room to turn off my TV my soundbar Etc but also one particular
air conditioner over there in the corner that I could never get to access Wi-Fi even though
it's supposed to be able to well if I've got an IR blaster I don't have to worry about that so
let me show you what that process this was like for those items this will be adding a IR remote
we start by selecting our switchbot Hub and then add a remote and they've got lots of different
ones that you can pick from but we are going to do this for an air conditioner so we're going to come
up here and then it gives you information as to what you should be doing so we're going to take
our remote for our air conditioner placing it near the Hub mini but also making sure that it is close
enough that it will operate the air conditioner in the back there so we're going to select start
learning so we start by what brand it is so for our particular case when I went to go try and
find an air conditioner and it is not listed so for me what we're going to do is we're going to
come back and we're going to select other because realistically I just need the air conditioner to
be turned on and off I don't care about the temperature because I'll already have the
temperature set all right so it's letting me know doing this I cannot control them via Amazon Echo
devices so it's just saying make sure that it's actually for ir and not Bluetooth this particular
is so we're going to call this Frederick air conditioner so I gave it a really horrible name
there Frederick air conditioner and all devices we're going to hit save all right so this will
start the learning process so we're going to hit the edit button and then we're going to add
all right so that learned so we're going to hit save wants me to test it first
all right so we're gonna hit save button name and there we've got our AC on and
off so what we're going to do is I'm going to tap that so we've got test test edit rearrange
so I can test so I see the light came on on the air conditioner all right
so that does appear to be working so we're going to hit save and then back
so right there we have a control for our air conditioner so if I select that
and tap it we can see that it targets the air conditioner now the one thing
with this particular air conditioner is I have to tap it twice to turn it on and off however
the off command is automatically picking up the IR double tap so I'd have to redo this to set up
the on command but just like that I can now turn on and off my air conditioner which I could never
get to work correctly via the app that came with this because it couldn't connect to Wi-Fi but now
I have the Hub mini here from switchbot and I can control this it's great this will be trying to add
the LG TV that we're looking at in the background right here there we go going to select the Hub
mini we're going to add a remote or control we're going to select TV and then start Smart Learning
I'm going to search for our TV brand which I'm going to do right here all right and I
said I don't know the model so I get to kind of swipe through
different models here so I can test the remote so it's about 178 of these so let's
let's see come up here the remote all right so I felt my uh phone vibrate and I can see
that that is changing to mute muting is working turn it off power on and off the TV whoa
there we go try and power the TV back on looks like it'll take a second but there we go
and I can select Source ah this one this one's wait yeah this one has Source grade out but I
should be able to do source so I'd have to look through all the different models to
find the one that has the source or I can cheat and actually look up the model number all right
so this is this is an older TV it's closest to say this model here and then it's going to say
tap on the remote so that it can try and get the recommended but it does not seem to want to work
yeah so we're gonna either do Smart Learning again or I can hit next and then you get to
swipe through the remote so this this is a little aggravating because while I can use
the volume controls through this and I could change the channel cannot change the input so I
would have to swipe through all of these to save and we're just gonna do save so sadly well I do
have access to the remote control it's not the one for my model because well my TV is a little
too old but now we have two devices there both linked to the IR Hub just hanging out as you saw
I added those particular items via the application granted the majority of what the Hub mini does is
mimic IR remotes or connect your other switchbot devices to the cloud making them accessible but
that's not the only thing that you can do with the application there is so much more so let's take a
look at the application for the switchbot Hub mini this is the app portion for the switchbot mini IR
Hub this is going to be a little different than I have done for the other switchbot thing it things
in that the application itself for the Hub it's really not what you're thinking the Hub itself
acts as a means of connecting your Bluetooth switchbot devices to the internet allowing them
to access Alex a or Google or whatever you choose however you can also use the Hub as an IR blaster
in which you can combine IR remotes and use this as its main means of communicating with those
devices so up here I actually set up a IR remote for my air conditioner which I just set up so
that if I tap this button it will turn on my air conditioner and then I set up another one right
here for my TV set where if I select this I get a TV remote which will allow me to do things like
change the channels change the volumes and type in numbers if I was actually on cable and then had a
directional pad here and then the color labels that you all get with the LG TV remote however
The switchbot Hub mini here if I select this realistically all it does is say hey do you want
to add a remote and if I select this it'll have me choose a remote and then setting up one of those
remotes and then I can come back to here and I can select that and it brings me right to my remotes
that I had shortcuts for on the main page or I could set up scheduling so if I set up
a schedule I can say here and we'll leave that at that we'll save this day and this day action
and I select an action and I can choose do I want it for this AC on or off and then I can actually
set up a schedule for the IR Blaster to talk to that device now the one thing is the IR Blaster
does need to be in the location of the device that you are actually trying to control right now this
air conditioner is on my second floor the TV is on my first floor I cannot control the two at the
same time because they're in two different areas for the IR Blaster so if you've got a grouping
of technology in your living room you can control all those at once using a single Hub that's really
what you can do with the actual functionality portion of the application for the Hub mini
but if we come up here to our settings this will allow us to get into the settings for the Hub mini
so right here we've got name so we can say change the name change its location and change the room
coming back I have my Wi-Fi settings which will allow me to jump onto Network here we have the
indicator light so right now I have the indicator light is turned on but I can toggle that off and
what will happen is the white light that's on the front of the Hub mini will turn itself off so you
don't have to have it on all the time notice when I turn off that light it turned off automatically
the keep turned on in standby mode so if I select that I can hypothetically have the indicator light
on so when I push something it will turn the light on but when it's not doing anything the light will
remain off so that's that's kind of a nice option to have right there you have NFC which will allow
you to create either NFC tags or remotes but these are extra products that you would have
to pick up with switchbot in order to do so if I do that I would create a tag and I would have that
particular action happen coming down we've got our logs this will be all of the logs for the app
control that we're using so right there you saw me when I was playing with my air conditioner we have
our FAQ so this will open up a page for your Hub mini to find out what you need firmware version
select a nap show your firmware and let you know if you have any firmware that needs updating and
then right down here device info this will let you know all the information about your Hub mini
so Mac address serial number all that fun stuff and then you can delete your Hub mini right there
and really that's that's everything that you can do for the Hub mini with the app realistically
you are setting it up to be a bridge for your other devices and an IR controller so there's
not a lot of options for you to play with the Hub itself but once you start adding in those
IR controllers that's where the Hub mini really gets into the net and gritty of what it can do
but other than that it just hangs out there a surprising amount of things that you could do
for this unassuming little white box as I stated before when I first got this from switchbot I was
not really sold on a hub I myself do not like hubs I want all of my things to connect to the internet
because I don't want to have to rely on a another peripheral to make all of my things communicate
better however the more things that I've gotten in a smart home the more that I realize a hub has its
place in that one if I have a lot of things that are connecting to my Wi-Fi and maybe I
don't have the best Wi-Fi whether that's for my ISP or my router I might need something like a
hub to act as a single point of contact so in that case this is great turn those Bluetooth
devices into something that's accessible for your Google assistant or from application which
is great the fact that this has an IR blaster that allows me to program a bunch of remotes
so long as they're within range of this so that air conditioner that I did was on my second floor
my media center is on my first floor so obviously I cannot use this in both places I would need
two different hubs but the fact that I'm able to even program IR things using a hub like this Game
Changer that that was the thing that did it for me if the price point for this was just be just for
it being a hub I would say pass However the fact that it's a hub the fact that it's a programmable
IR Blaster and you can program so many things you saw I couldn't do the air conditioner so
I manually did that you can do that with other devices that you have just the fact that they
let you do that in my opinion makes this a solid buy especially if you have other switchbot devices
with that being said I have been Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please leave
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