Guys our long-awaited smart home video is finally here. Well hey y'all it's Ashley
Renne and welcome back to my sustainable travel, vegan lifestyle and smart tech
channel where I show you how to live an adventurously green life. Now I
regularly post videos about my smart home, my Tesla and other topics related
to sustainability and green living so if you're into that kind of stuff hit the
subscribe button and turn the notifications bell on so you never miss
a new video. Now today's video is all about our smart home, so what is a smart
home anyway? Basically it just means that you use Internet connected devices to
remotely monitor and manage various systems and appliances in your residence
so here all the ways that we turned our house into a smart home. 1 smart blinds
What if you could open your blinds every morning without even leaving your bed?
Well you can. Motorized smart blinds save you time and help you secure your home
when you're away. It's also a sustainable way to boost energy efficiency and save
you money in the process. We set our smart blinds to align with the movement
of the Sun to maximize natural light usage. 2. Smart fans. Another way to save
energy is by utilizing smart fans to regulate the temperature of your home we
use our bond app to help reduce our a/c and heating usage and can easily change
the direction of our fans to either cool our rooms in the summer or redistribute
warm air during the winter. 3 Smart laundry. Smart washer and dryers are so
useful! We use the Samsung Smartthings app to control our FlexWash and Flex
Dry smart washer/dryer set. With the apps we can remotely activate our washer so
it starts at an optimum time. It can also determine the best cycle and temperature
setting for your load which helps sustain the quality of your clothes so
you can ultimately reduce your wardrobe waste. 4. Smart vacuum. While we're on
the subject of cleaning let's talk robot vacuums. My husky Kayden
sheds a lot. Our Samsung power bot turbo vacuum keeps our floors fur free. It
mapped out all of our rooms and finds the best path to clean each one. We set
it to automatically come on regularly and when it's done doing its thing it
returns back to its docking station to recharge. 5. Smart lighting. I chose to
light my home up with Philips Hue lightbulbs as well as these smart
wireless dimmer switches. Now these are not just ordinary light bulbs they
change colors you guys. They can also sync with music they can sync with your
video games and your movies and you can also schedule them to come on whenever
you want that's pretty cool and all with the touch of a button or even with voice
commands. Watch my Philips hue video to peep our
entire set up. 6. Smart alarm. Now I chose the Nest brand because it has its
own system of interconnectivity for all of its different products that it sells
and it adds so much value to your every day life. This is the nest guard which
acts as the alarm keypad and motion sensor you can armed your house in
several ways one of which is by entering a code into the nest guard keypad or you
can use the nest tag to arm and disarm your house. All you do is tap it against
the nest guard when you're leaving or entering your home but our favorite way
is to just arm a disarm it from the nest app. The other part to the nest
secure system is nest detect which is the sensor for your doors windows and
rooms. If you're not at home and the house is armed when the sensor detects
motion you'll get an alert to your phone and the alarm will go off alerting your
security monitoring service.
Security Alert! 7. Smart security cameras. In addition to Nest Secure we
have nest cams placed all throughout the inside and outside of our house. Now this
is really cool because we can monitor everything that goes on in and outside
of our home right from our phones. So if I want to spy on my dog I can do that
right from my phone I can watch the footage live or I can go back and
re-watch older footage. The app is gonna conveniently send you notifications
whatever it sees activity. 8. Smart doorbell. Part of our security system is
having the nest doorbell. The benefit of having a nest doorbell is it acts as
both a doorbell and a security camera but you can also talk through it. Watch
my nest security video to see our entire nest security setup. 9. Smart
thermostat. A part of our nest ecosystem is our nest thermostat it's a
smart device that learns your habits and creates a personalized schedule for you
and you can control the thermostat right from your phone which is really great
for saving money and energy especially when you're not at your house. 10. Smart
Locks. Now no smart home is complete without smart locks now. We have the nest
and Yale smart lock system as well as August locks that we have installed
throughout our house and the cool thing about the Nest and Yale is it's totally
compatible with the rest of our nest system that we have throughout our house
so we can access the nest smart lock through our nest app along with all of
the other nest devices that we have and it comes in especially handy if say
you're not home and you want to unlock the door for somebody to let them inside
you can just do it from your phone. 11. Smart Fridge. I gotta say smart fridge
didn't really crossed my mind when I was thinking about what smart tech to fill my home
with. This is something I didn't even know I needed in my life but here we are.
The Samsung Family Hub puts a modern twist on old traditional uses and in an
attempt to keep refrigerators relevant for this day and age. It helps you manage
not only your food but also your life and it does this via the ability to connect
a smart devices as well as its very own massive touchscreen and has apps and
voices systems built in. It's kind of like a giant tablet in the sense that
you can use it to control your smart home just as you would with a phone or
your tablet. I did an entire video on our Samsung fridge so be sure to check it
out and see more of the features. 12. Smart Speakers. When we had our house
built we had speakers built into the ceiling all throughout our home and we
were able to connect our speakers to our Sonos system so we can play music, we can
play videos throughout the speakers throughout our entire house and we can
control it right from our Sonos app and our phone. 13. Mesh Wi-Fi router. With
traditional Wi-Fi routers the reach of their signals is limited especially in
larger spaces. Mesh routers on the other hand help eliminate dead zones we have
three Netgear Orbi mesh Wi-Fi routers one for each level of our home. With the
Orbi app we can remotely control our Wi-Fi system from anywhere. We conduct
speed tests, set up secure and separate Wi-Fi networks for guest, ,monitor
internet usage, manage devices connected to our network, update firmware and more.
14. Smart Plugs. A Wi-Fi controlled smart plug is one of the best hacks for
turning your regular tech into smart tech. Just plug one into an electrical
outlet then plug something into it and now you have a smart outlet. We have Teckin
smart plugs and we use them for TVs, small kitchen appliances, computers and
other electronics that don't come with the ability to be controlled by our
phones but pairing them with smart plugs we can now easily turn these devices on
and off to help save energy and money. Ever heard of vampire power? It refers to
appliances that leach energy even when they aren't in use. Smart plugs prevent
that. We use the smart life app to schedule our electronics to turn off and
on at specific times and we can check the stats on each connected device to
see how much power is being used. 15. Google Nest Hub. Google assistant is the
heart of my smart home ecosystem. There are different google assistant devices
you can put throughout your home but the one that has the most functionality is
Google Nest hub because it has a display so not only does it respond to voice
commands but it can also display what you want to see on its screen. For
example I can see exactly who's at my door when someone rings the nest hello
video doorbell I can pull up the live video stream at any time and get visitor
announcements. Now there's nest cams. Just like with the
doorbell I can also view live stream footage from the nest outdoor cameras
and indoor cameras I have throughout my home. All I have to do is ask it to show
me the cameras at each designated location and it'll pull up the video
stream. Google and Phillips Hue also have beautiful interconnectivity. I can tell
it to turn on the family room lights, the lights will come on and different
options will appear on the display for you to configure the lights to however
you want. Go check out my Google Nest hub video for a more in-depth review.
16. Lenovo smart display. It's pretty much the same thing as the Google Nest hub
except it has a much larger screen, a better sounding speaker and a camera
which you can use for video calling. Because of its size it works well as a
display in our kitchen. 17 Google Minis. Now this ring device
doesn't actually come with it but you can buy this separately so that it kind
of keeps your google home mini device all nice and neat and then basically you
just plug it into your wall and then once you have it all set up in your app
then you can begin talking to it. 18 smart irrigation now to water our grass
we can do that straight from our phones as well with the Rain Bird app. This is
the Rain Bird irrigation system. Now by itself you have to manually set the
setting so that you can turn the water on but what makes it a smart device is
when you install the Wi-Fi module right here so once you get that set up now you
can start controlling it from your phone. 19 Smart Garage Openers. Now one thing
that really comes in handy is the Genie Aladdin Connect device which you can
install into an outlet and some basic wiring and then when you download the
Aladdin Connect app you can open and close your garage wherever you are. Now
let me go ahead and do it right now There goes one garage then here goes the other.
And voila easy peasy. 20. Robot Lawnmower. Never mow the lawn again! An auto mower
does all the work for you. Our Husqvarna Auto mower 430ex is quiet,
weatherproof, consumes less energy and has zero emissions
unlike gas-powered lawn mowers which emit tons of toxic fumes into the
environment. We control our auto motor schedule with our phone and it can run
every day rain or shine keeping our lawn pristine. Once it's done mowing it
returns back to the charging station and don't worry
it has anti-theft technology - my husband loves it because he never has to
mow the lawn anymore and I love it because it's the most eco-friendly
option for cutting our grass. 21 Solar Panels! The latest, greatest and biggest
addition to our smart home is solar panel installation. Solar energy creates
clean renewable power from the Sun. It's an alternative to fossil fuels that
reduces your carbon footprint at home and lowers greenhouse gas around the
world rooftop solar has the potential to provide a huge percentage of our energy
needs that means you pull less from the grid or the utility company and pulling
less from the grid means lower power bills harness the free energy of the Sun
to power your home. On average solar panels increase the value of a home by
four point one percent they are also sold twenty percent faster that payoff
might not entirely offset the purchase and installation cost of your solar
panels but it does cover a big chunk of the cost of buying and installing them
We have learned how to tailor our energy usage based on our solar panel system. Ee
have a smart home with an electric car and we can control when things turn off
and on so we schedule the charging of our Tesla and the appliances that use
the most power to operate during the day when solar energy is being generated but
soon we'll be getting a Tesla Powerwall which will store the solar energy
so that we can use it at nighttime. Check out my solar panel video to learn more
about solar, what our installation process was like, and how its adding so
much value to our lives. Alright so that's it I hope you enjoyed the many
different ways that we turned our house into a smart home. If you liked this
video make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more smart tech videos
just like this and if you want to buy any of the stuff that I featured in
this video just look at the description because I put links to everything down
below. Alright other than that until next time make
sure you keep on living and adventurously green light and I'll catch
you in the next video!