Welcome back everyone, I'm ThioJoe, and this video is going to be about a cool piece of
tech I got recently, called "Nanoleaf Aurora", which are basically smart lighting panels.
If you've watched my videos before you probably picked up that I'm a huge fan of "smart lighting"
in general, and as you can see I have some colored phiips hue bulbs in the background
here that I use in every video to make things look more interesting. I also use other smart
lighting throughout the rest of my apartment, so I can do things like wirelessly control
lamps on outlets that are not controlled by a switch. But these light panels seem to be
totally unique, I haven't seen anything else like them. So of course I had to go buy them
and show you guys.
By the way you may have seen me post these on my instagram already, so I'm just going
to shoutout my isntagram account right now, be sure to check that out, I'm always posting
cool stuff over there. Links in the description.
So first of all let's go over the basics of these things. Each panel is capable of pretty
much any color, just like philips hue bulbs, and can be controlled in a few ways. There's
a little control panel that provides power to the whole unit, and you can toggle them
on and off that way, and there's also a little button to cycle through some basic color scenes.
Or, the main way to control them is to use the app, which gives you a surprising amount
of customization for how you want these to look. We'll talk about that in a second, because
I need to point out one of the best features which is you can arrange these panels any
way you want. The starter pack comes with 9 triangular panels, with slots on each side
where you use the included connectors to attach them together. Then it comes with some adhiesive
strips to stick them to the wall. And here's something else that's awesome. When you load
it up into the app, it automatically detects the arrangement of the panels, so you don't
have to manually tell it where each panel is.
These do support Apple Homekit, but you can use them on Android as well. Though I found
it a b lot easier to set up the Android app than the iOS app, because Homekit for some
reason couldn't find it, and I think I had to connect it in the app before Homekit...
I'm not even really sure what I did but eventually it worked. Once it was all set up though,
I didn't have any problems.
After everything is connected, this is where it gets pretty interesting. It comes with
some preset static color designs and animations, but the point is really to come up with your
own. The app isn't super intuitive, but it does give you a quick walkthrough tutorial
on how to do everything, so it wasn't hard to figure it out. There are two types of designs
you can make, either static, which doesn't change, and dynamic, which are animated. There
are also "rhythm" designs, but those require an additional accessory, and those let you
create animations based on music playing in the room. Static designs are pretty straight
forward, it just shows you the arrangement it auto detected, again which is really convenient,
and then you can choose or create a palet of colors you want to use. Then you just click
on each panel with whatever colors and it sets them that way. Dynamic scenes on the
other hand can do quite a bit more. There are different types of animations, such as
fade which just fades between all the colors at once, or flow which fades between colors
starting from one side and ending on the other. And you can further set how you want the animation
to be, such as which direction you want it to go, the type of transitions, how fast,
and how bright to be.
Me personally, I really like the flow animation because it works pretty well with the shape
of my arrangement, and highlight is cool too, where most panels keep a base color but then
randomly switch to another temporarily. If you had a more circular arrangement, I think
the wheel would look really awesome, because then I think it would look like it's rotating,
but it doesn't seem that obvious with what I have set up. The last one is burst which
is kind of like flow, except the transition starts in the middle, then changes colors
by flowing outwards, and that one is pretty neat too. And if you're really lazy and don't
want to make your own animations, they do have a "discover" section where you can download
premade ones, most of those are pretty cool.
So that's the app, let me talk a bit more about what you'd need to do to buy and set
these up. First of all, they aren't cheap, the starter pack with 9 panels is around $200,
and you can buy it on Amazon or even in stores like the Apple Store believe it or not. I'll
put a link in the description of course if you want to check em out. An expansion pack
costs $60 and comes with 3 extra panels, again not cheap. Though when you compare it to other
smart lighting products like Philips Hue, it's not outrageous. For example, a single
extra Philips hue color bulb costs $50, so even though these aren't cheap, it's not surprising.
Each power unit can support up to 30 panels which is actually a lot, you'd have to spend
over $600 before you'd max out an arrangement, and even then you could just buy another starter
pack to make a new arrangement and group them together in the app. With the 9 panels it
comes with you can make a pretty good amount of neat designs, but I think if you want it
to look really cool you'd need to get at least one expansion pack. I got a bit carried away
and got 3 expansion packs, so this design has a total of 18 panels, but I have no regrets.
If you want to get really fance there are some other mounting accessories you can get,
for example, theres a screw mount kit you can use instead of the adhiesive strips, which
would be good if you want to put them on the ceiling or something where you don't want
to risk them falling off. They also have these "flex linkers" which are super awesome and
let you connect the panels around corners. The only problem is these stupid things have
been out of stock on their website forever, which is really annoying. All I needed was
one flex linker for what I wanted to do, so I ended up having to buy the screw mount kit
for $25, literally just for the included flex linkers in that.
So yea even though I do like these things, there are a few improvements I would love
to see. First, like I just said, I really think they could include at least one or two
flexible connectors in the starter pack, that's just a no brainer. The other thing I notice
is unlike with the panels, the connector on the power unit is permanently attached. So
my concern is if you accidentally snap it off or drop it or something, you're screwed.
The connectors don't feel SUPER flimsy, but seem like basic PCB board and not really durable
either. Maybe there's more it under the hood, but I don't see why they wouldn't let you
just use a replaceable connector there too.
The other thing I need to talk about is how it integrates with other smart home devices.
Like I said before, this works with Apple Homekit, so you can control it natively through
your iOS devices and Siri. And it also works with Google Assistant and Amazon Echo. So
you can create scenes with the Nanoleaf as well as Philips hue, and have your smart assistant
change everything at once. And it does do schedules as well, so you can have it turn
on and turn off, or change colors at certain times, which is pretty useful if you want
to use this maybe as a regular light source. Which you could do, because they do get pretty
bright actually.
Now the Aurora isn't the only thing this company makes, they've actually got some other lights
that are unique as well. There are these "Smart Ivy" bulbs which are definitely kinda weird
looking but also look kinda cool I think. Then they also have some other regular non-smart
bulbs with similar funky designs as that other one.
One thing I wish they had for the Aurora panels are other shapes besides just triangles. I'm
sure they've thought of this too and might be working on it, but it would definitely
be awesome to be able to throw in a square or something, or maybe even bigger triangles.
Another benefit of having a square is you could change the angle of your arrangement.
So what I mean is, with mine I wanted it to go around this corner, which meant I had to
make sure the sides of the triangles were vertical there. But that means for the entire
rest of the arrangement, it would be impossible to make a design where there was a flat edge
parallel to the floor. However, if you had a square attached on there, it would change
the angle of anything attached to it by 30 degrees, so you could for example go from
vertical sides to horizontal sides, in the same arrangement. Not a big deal but hey,
Nanoleaf, if you're watching, we need those squares. You can call them something fancy
like "corner converters" or something like that. Oh and with squares you could also connect
three in a corner intersecting two walls and a ceiling without any gaps. I mean the possibilities
are endless, get on that! But obviously they are still pretty awesome as is.
Now if you think the Aurora is cool, and you just now became aware of smart lighting, I
can give you a couple other products that would go along with it well. The main one
is obviously philips hue which I mentioned before, they have a whole bunch of lights,
like regular bulbs, light strips, some lamp shaped ones that just sit on a table or whatever,
and more.
But another awesome product I literally just found out about while making this video, is
by a company called Lifx. They make similar bulbs to Philips hue, and I haven't used them,
but they are apparently brighter than hue, just a bit more expensive. Anyway, they are
apparently making a new product that looks a lot like the Nanoleaf panels, called Lifx
"Tiles", which actually look pretty awesome. And it looks like each tile would be able
to do multiple colors at once. So this is also something you might want to follow up
on once it comes out, and I think I might pick some up myself.
So I think that's about it, hopefully you guys thought these things were pretty cool,
and also got some other ideas for similar stuff out there. So you can now finally turn
your house into a nightclub. Also seriously, if you know about any other similar lighting
products like these, let us know in the comments, because I haven't been able to find much besides
the new Lifx things. If you want to keep watching, I'll put some other videos right here, you
can just click on those, and if you want to subscribe, I make new videos a few times a
week. Also consider enabling notifications by clicking the bell, or you probably won't
see the new videos anyway. Again I'm looking forward to hearing from you, so thanks for
watching I'll see you next time, have a good one.