Lutron Aurora

“hey Welcome to our 2024 smart home [Music] tour now we've been in this house for just over a year now and uh since our last smart home tour we actually have a lot of additions and a lot of stuff I'm excited to show you in this tour so let's get going turning off we have yui cams all around the house and on up here we have a Philips Hue White and color 1100 Lumen light bulb powering our front porch light and that just comes on at night usually um automatically when the sun sets just to a nice warm light so we have some security we also have some Philips Hue smart bulbs up here in our driveway lights just lighting the driveway weimo video doorbell um I think this is the same doorbell we had last time since then I have gone back to the Logitech Circle view video doorbell and uh just kind of found that I really like the point of view that I get from this better we get a lot of packages and it shows the whole porch so and last but not least we have the aara u00 Smart Lock so it's got physical key you got a thumb print reader you got your code you got Apple home key as well so I can just tap my watch or my phone to lock and unlock it now I just locked this out so let me open up the door and we'll head on in all right so we are here in the foyer and the first thing I want to point out is the a car door and window sensor right here um that is pretty much just keeping track of whether this door is open or closed and I have a lot of automations tied to that um other than that we have these lights in here which are automated by a Smart Switch and a couple sensors and I'll get to that in just a minute but I did want to pause and talk about this area this is something that my wife and I built this year um we built this there there was nothing here it just felt kind of empty so we built this landing area now we're looking forward to running some power here and maybe get some smart home integration put in here um and so keep an eye out for that in the future but I do want to pause and talk about this Robot vacuum here now we have the switchbot K10 plus absolutely love this thing it's got the self-emptying base and the biggest feature to me is it's small and so it can fit all the little areas that we need to go I also love uh a familyfriendly feature that this has where it's got child locks so the buttons won't work if that's on and you do that in the app so we have two small kids and uh we love that I can have this out here where it can clean every single night and it's not going to turn on if they hit the button so love this little robot couldn't recommend it enough I also have a motion sensor right here and this is how we're automating these lights now when someone walks into the foer it'll turn these lights on which is done with this smart plug or Smart Switch so I have three smart switches right here and they I have two meis smart switches they are both three-way smart switches because of the lights they're controlling are three-way switches and then the one in the middle is the aara Smart Switch now what came with the house are actually The Deco switches um and they do offer smart switches but they don't work with either of the platforms that we use in our home so I'm not able to use those so I swapped them out with these switches so we got one for the foyer then we have one for the kitchen and then we have one in the middle for the dining room and that's a Cara Smart Switch moving in the kitchen I have a smart door handle here this is the hollow Mark door handle um and if you open it you'll see it's got the buttons on here so you can enter your code right here I just locked it so I'll have to unlock that but I can do all that with apple home um and I can do it with Siri if I wanted to and it actually is set to a couple automations for when we leave and when we go to bed it automatically locks so it's a really good option if you don't have a dead bolt there so that's perfect for our garage entry door it would be perfect for your office or a closet that you might want to lock up so couldn't recommend that door handle enough moving to the kitchen I want to point out we have the aara fp2 present sensor right up there that's the first aara fp2 that I'll point out today um and I have that set up with three different zones I have the kitchen I have a passing through area and I have our dining room um and it does different things depending on where you are so if I'm in the kitchen it'll turn the lights on automatically as soon as I enter that zone if I'm just going to the passing through area it'll wait 3 seconds to turn this the lights on right here in the kitchen and then when I enter the dining room it'll turn those lights on so absolutely love those sensors and we'll talk a lot more about those um in a minute I actually did a video if you watched last week's video you saw how I'm using those from beginner to deep and so you might already have seen some of those automations but um absolutely love those things under all of our sinks including our kitchen sink right here anywhere where that there's potential for water leaks we have the accara leak sensor um and that's just to keep us alert if something's going on that we need to know about when as it pertains to water and the last thing here in the kitchen that I have is the aara m1s Hub I have all of my aara devices run into Apple home and also into home assistant because they are matter compatible now so moving on into the dining room like I said this is a zone for the fp2 motion sensor um so that light will turn on it's on that aara smart switch I also have the uh smart Wings smart Shades here which are a new addition to this area if you didn't see that video this is kind of the final building block of the puzzle in our downstairs area absolutely love these things they open in the morning when the Sun rises and they close in the evening around dinner time to about halfway and then they close all the way around Sunset I also have a flick button here to manually control them so um I can push it once to close them double press to 50% and then hold them to open them all the way so I absolutely recommend having a physical controller for all of your smart home devices and so that's why I have a a button right there so let's move into the living room now here at the TV area I have two homepod minis those are running audio from our TV whether it's the Apple TV 4K that I have set up here or if we're playing the Nintendo switch here it'll run the audio straight through uh the homepod mini and like I said we're running an Apple TV 4K on this TV um you just can't get any better in my opinion and then I have Phillips H light strips on the back of those I know there are better options for bias Lighting on your TVs but these are working for us and maybe I'll upgrade soon in the future moving over here we have a Philips H uh bulb in this lamp right here and then under this table I actually have a a Cara smart button just so I can manually control the scenes in here um that's a great option if you want to have add a button to it right here I have an ecobe thermostat now we have two ecobe thermostats we have a twozone home and this is the uh ecobe with voice buil in so it has C and Alexa built into it they are AirPlay 2 compatible so you can play music to them which is really great moving over here I have another Philips bulb this is the Phillips Hue filament bulb and then finally here in the living room our curtain are automated by two switchbot curtain 3s I love these things they're quiet they're consistent um and they just do a great job of just keeping this open and closed when we want it to which is typically in the morning and in the evening so um and then I have them set up for my movie scene and our relax scene as well so um love the switchbot curtain 3s finally I want to move into my office which is the final stop downstairs so let's head that way so we are here at at my office and we're outside of my office cuz I want to show you this door handle now it's just a fingerprint sensor battery operated not smart home it's just a thumb print reader um you open it it buzzes it lets you in and you can open it right there so stepping into the office we have a lot going on in here so I have a Phillips Hue bulb right here um that's the color changing bulb I have a Maris uh smart oil diffuser right there and I have that kind of on automations once a week or so just to keep to smell up Google homehub I don't really use a lot of Google products um I do like that it's a display and now that matter is a thing you can actually bring a lot of stuff into that but I personally don't really like the interface anyway and the way that it looks on there so Amazon assistant right here I do have some home assistant automations that utilize the devices in my own I'm moving over here another Phillips H bulb right here in this lamp and this is mostly just for background lighting for when I'm recording videos here's another uh Cara fp2 present sensor and this is set up with three zones really two I have my whole office and I have my chair and then I have my desk um and it does a really good job while I'm sitting at my desk to not turn my lights off while I'm here um and then uh once I leave I have an automation to turn all my lights off if I'm not in here for 10 minutes so again you can't go wrong with that um on my TV I'm running another Apple TV 4K and I'm also running a chomecast Ultra it's an older model chomecast ultra um and I'm using that in some of my home assistant scenes so when I start a video meeting or I start recording a video it'll actually put a background on my TV using home assistant so that's really the only reason I'm using the chomecast is for things like that for our Wi-Fi I am using Deco routers and I get a full gig down on that so it's perfect for for our house so moving over to this wall we have another Philips hu bulb you guessed it I have a um another flick button right here to control the lights here in my office I have another switchbot curtain 3 running this curtain and then this is another smart Wing shade um and I use those just depending on the light outside if I'm jumping into record a video I want pure black that'll close the curtain or if I want still some of that ambient light coming in this is a 70% shade so um it's really good for that and moving over to the desk this is a flexi spot standing desk I got this not too long ago I have a key light air from Elgato right here um and that is my fill light and I have that actually smart through home assistant they have a plugin so um whenever I start my film scene that turns on through home assistant my key light right here is just ran into a smart plug a meris smart plug which is also tied into home assistant so I have some some automation going on of when that is on my fill light turns to a different brightness and color when that is off it just turns to this and when I step into this area it just kind of turns to a warm dim light to give me some working light right here so I have the homepod mini right here um you can't go without a homepod mini in your office I don't think and then the accara cube I think it's the T1 Pro is what it's called um absolutely love this thing all you got to do is flip it to a different side and it'll set whatever you have it set to do that is my office tour um the next stop I think is we're going to head on upstairs so let's head on upstairs and finish the tour out all right I wanted to pause right here and point out that along with the motion sensor that we have in the foer downstairs we have a motion sensor right here so no matter which way we come into the foyer um whether it's the stairs or into the foyer from the kitchen we get these lights turn on and this light is tied into the same lights so how we're accomplishing those is with these two switches right here now these are both the Maris three-way switches um and this one is for the stair lights and then this one is for these upstairs lights right here we have um the switchbot blind tilt this just opens the the blinds um in the morning and then closes them in the evening and we know that no one can see into our house um when they're not supposed to do so or ever really um so we also have my TV up here my ceiling mounted TV one of my favorite things in our home that is running through an Apple TV H&D so it's the very first Apple TV I ever bought I actually have that automating to go up and down based on whether the TV turns on or off using switchbot Bots and I actually talked about that in another video which I'll link down below so you can see how I did that but I also have a switchbot hub too right here this is how all my switchbot devices are running um they're all actually in that Hub and they are into Apple home and home assistant through matter so the last stop I want to make is our bedroom as you walk into the bedroom you'll see right here I have an aara button um that's mostly so I can hit it once at night we can set a nighttime scene um which locks Down The House shuts down all the lights and turns on the alarm system so coming into the bedroom right here we have our all of our lamps are Philips Hugh uh bulbs and they are all tied into a group in hum kit so um if one turns off they all turn off and then you can go in control each one individually um love Philips Hugh right here on our dresser we have the air Versa ap2 uh air purifier which does a great job cleaning the air um over here on my wife's side the only thing she really has is a old Lutron Aurora uh kind of a dimer uh button uh which works for all of our lamps and these were actually brought over from our old home uh which had the toggle switches and you can put these on over those toggle switches um but we don't have those here so I just grabbed one and through right here so she has control of the lights from her side of the bed and then moving over here we have our bedroom TV now this is a Google TV uh that is actually home kit compatible so I can control you know power and and input and all that from this TV um from the home app so and then another fp2 present sensor right up there now if you saw a recent video I tried the Sleep monitoring feature over our bed um and didn't really like how it worked so I moved it back over here um where it can kind of keep an eye on the whole bedroom and do a little bit better a job of monitoring and automating and then down here I got all of our hubs and bridges and internet stuff the router the modem all that stuff uh I will point out I'm running an aara M2 Hub uh which is my favorite aara Hub um for now they just announced that the M3 is coming this year so uh more to come on that but U I do have the N2 Hub and then my Phillips Hue bridg is down there as well so HP pod mini I have another Phillips H lamp I I said earlier I do have an aurora uh dial right here but I also have the flick twist right here um this is really cool new device that came out this year from flick and it's got twist and a button put on there really cool probably did a whole video on that a while back so make sure you check that out that is the bedroom uh last thing I want to show is our smart closet um which is not as fancy as it might sound you see when I open the door the lights kick on I have a door and window sensor and a motion sensor tied to an A Car wall switch and all of the automation is done within the aara app so very simple very easy to do um and I just have timers set on if there's no motion for a certain amount of time turn it off um so that's what that does I also have an Amazon Echo Show in here um really just so I can hear the weather in the morning when I open that door it just plays the weather and and kind of the events of my day so um yeah that is the bedroom that is the upstairs area let's head back downstairs and wrap up the Tour all right so that wraps up our 2024 smart home tour thank you so much for watching if you're interested in any of the devices that I mentioned today all the links are down in the description along with any videos that I've done um on the devices so make sure you check those out and make sure you hit the Subscribe button 2024 is going to be a really fun year on this channel I have a lot of ideas and a lot of ideas that are coming from you the viewers so make sure you're subscribed and uh I mentioned last week I am doing a giveaway so if you haven't intoed that giveaway check out last week's video about the aara fp2 I'm giving away an aara fp2 in partnership with aara so make sure you check that video out as always thanks for watching and I'll see you next time”