My Smart Home Tour - The Tech I Actually Use in 2024

It's 2024, and I actually wanted to take you  through my smart home and show you all of the different products I've currently been using.  My smart home currently is actually a smart apartment, so for those of you who live in an  apartment and are kind of bummed that you feel like you can't actually do a lot of automation,  I'm here to tell you that is definitely not true. I want to start here at the door because there  are two very important devices, even for renters, that you can typically put

in. The first is  a smart doorbell, so I actually use the Nest Doorbell Battery. It has package detection, so I  know exactly when a delivery has been left at my door and I can just go grab it. It works with the  Google Home app and overall has been really good. I've reviewed it, and I'll leave a link to all  the reviews I mentioned in the description below. Now, the second thing with the door that  I think is really important is the lock, and I'll show you the one I've got here. This is  the A

ugust Door Lock. I think it's their fourth generation. It's a little bit slimmer, and  it has Wi-Fi built into it. Though I actually got a bridge for it that connects to Wi-Fi, and  then this connects to the door lock. The reason I did that was the battery life on here, if you  just connect it straight to Wi-Fi, is not very good. The great thing about this for renters  and anyone else who doesn't want to have to change the outside door lock and change keys and  all that stuff is you just pop the

deadbolt off, put this thing in, and it works with existing  keys. Overall, the motor here is pretty strong. The only thing that nobody who ever visits  me can figure out is how to actually get out of the door. They don't realize it's just a  rotating thing here. Another thing I really like about this door lock is it's designed for  the batteries. You just push here at the bottom, pull this tab out, and you get to the batteries.  My batteries last me now about 3 to 4 months. Alright, so the nex

t thing to talk about  that I've got right at my door is actually a light switch. This is a Philips Hue  Tap. It works with just kinetic energy, though they do have a newer model. I have  replaced almost every single bulb in this apartment by now with Philips Hue bulbs. I was  just a really early adopter for Philips Hue, that's why I have them. But smart lights  are probably for any home, and especially if you're a renter and you're living in an  apartment, the first thing I would change out. No

w coming over to the next kind of area of the  apartment, another kind of central hub here is a smart thermostat. It just makes automating  your home's temperature a lot easier. The smart thermostat I've been using for the past  several years now is an Ecobee. The reason why I originally went with Ecobee is they had  sensors you could put in different rooms, because typically in every structure there's  always a room that is hotter or colder during different types of the year, and what you  real

ly want is an aggregate temperature of the entire structure. So, Ecobee had that. Now  I think Nest and some others also have sensors and can do similar things, but yeah,  I've been pretty happy with my Ecobee. The other thing I've got here is a HomePod  Mini. I have smart speakers everywhere in my smart home. The HomePod Mini is here  just to kind of pick up any voices to, you know, turn on and off lights, control  different things, things like that. Alright, and now we're in my studio, like  a

uxiliary bedroom here. This is the room in the home that probably has the most amount of smart  home types of equipment. As soon as you walk in, there's a little sensor here that's also a Philips  Hue sensor. So typically, I have it set up where when I walk outside the home, when I've traveled  somewhere, all my lights turn off. And so, anytime I come back into a room after I come  back, then the sensors will make the lights turn on. I use these sensors everywhere, like  even in this closet here

. You open up the door, boom, I know. For those who are still used to just  controlling the lights with switches, it's going to be a very weird sentence to probably hear, but  yeah, I rarely ever touch a light switch anymore. Another thing I use lights for in here is they  will change their color temperature throughout the day. So right now, they're set on a daylight. As  we get into the afternoon, it'll be a warmer light and to be a little bit more relaxing and also  mimic kind of what the sun'

s doing outside. And then as we fade into nighttime, they'll actually  fade into a red sunset color and kind of fade me off to sleep and help melatonin production as much  as possible so I get a pretty natural sleep cycle. And the next thing to talk about in here  is probably smart speakers. So not only do I have my Pixel tablet, my Nest Hub, that  is also a sleep tracker as well, which is pretty cool. It uses the Soli radar chip in it  to do that. So I have Echoes in here as well, and I have on

e, two, three, four, five... I have  six Sonos speakers in this one room. Right now, you're probably asking, why not? Not a huge  reason. I actually have always liked kind of where I work to be surrounded by music  when I'm not wearing headphones. And so, having a speaker basically in every  corner of the room and then one here kind of at the center, it just sounds so  good. It sounds like I'm in an orchestra. Alright, now the next thing to point out in  this room is my smart fan. Now I got this

fan from Govee. It's right down here. It actually  has a digital display on there that reads out what the current temperature is, which I  think is really cool. But the thing about this is it's just a tower fan, but you can  schedule it to turn on when the temperature sensor hits a certain temperature, and it  integrates with the smart home platforms, which is really just what I always wanted with  the fan. So it turns on automatically at night, turns off in the morning, good to go, never have 

to worry about it. That actually replaced a Dyson fan that I had in here for six months.  I actually shipped that Dyson fan off to Dyson several months ago for repairs. I still  haven't gotten it back though. Not a great sign from that company. Normally I like Dyson, but  jeez, that product's been kind of a headache. It's kind of related to Dyson, and that is my  Blue Air, called the Dust Magnet. So it sucks air in and dust. Does it really work? Yes and  no. I mean, it definitely does collect d

ust. Do I still get dust accumulation on all surfaces,  especially since I was an idiot and picked black furniture for this entire room? Yeah, I still  have to dust like at least once a week. And the nice thing about the Blue Air though, you can  control it with all of your smart assistants. Alright, moving on to the desk. The new Pixel  Tablet. I reviewed that a couple of months back. Really been liking that. That has replaced my Nest  Hub Max that I used to have on my desk. And I like it becau

se it integrates with Google Photos, so I  can see photos I took years ago that I didn't even remember I took just kind of coming on throughout  the day. And the nice thing about this one is it's actually a fully functional Android tablet. So  I have my text messages on there, all the apps, and it's actually a pretty great auxiliary device  to have next to my Mac, which is the main thing I work on. Mac Studio, Studio Display with height  adjustment, by the way, which runs like two grand, which i

s way too much, but the display is really  good. This isn't actually a smart home device, but one kind of hack I have in this room is  I have just a bunch of USB-C cords. These are really long USB-C cords. I'll leave  a link to these in the description below, but just having these everywhere, I can like  charge my camera, I can charge my pretty much any device now that I own, I can charge  just at this dresser table kind of area. Alright, moving right along, you've probably seen  these in some o

f my shots before. These blinds here, these are actually smart blinds from Lutron.  This company gave me these smart blinds several years ago. They gave me a significant discount  on them, and then I installed them in this room, and they've been actually really great. I can  rotate their angle throughout the day to kind of match where the sun is, they open and close  at specific times, and I can automate them from the majority of the smart home apps. And  yeah, I think when I finally get a house

, the smart blinds are definitely going to be  something I put in most rooms. And if you're a renter as well, I did have blinds already in  here, I just put these over the existing blinds. Now another thing to talk about with  any smart home is automated cleaning, and I do have a solution for that  in here. This is the S8 Pro Ultra, and I did review that a couple of months back.  Again, I did get that sent though completely free, but I actually really like having robotic vacuums.  Just you can a

utomate it, set it on a schedule, and typically it's always the higher-end ones  that have enough suction power and performance where you actually can notice a difference in  the carpet and like see, "Oh, this is actually sucking up quite a bit of dust." And luckily  enough for me, this one does that. The only downside with all the robotic vacuum cleaners is  even though they can automate a ton of cleaning, you still do have to do maintenance on them, so  that's something to consider with those

as well. Alright, moving right along, let's go into  the bathroom now. My bathroom doesn't have much smart stuff in here, but you'll notice as  I walk in, I didn't even have to turn a light on. I just have a light sensor here. This is  actually one from Aara. So even if you have Philips Hue lights like I do, you don't  actually need to have Philips Hue light sensors. I actually have this Aara directly  connected to my Home Pro, which is a smart home hub. Now the only other thing I'd point  out i

n my bathroom here, I don't have like a smart shower or anything like that. I do like  listening to music, like listening to podcasts, and so for me, having a shower speaker is pretty  important, and this is the Sonos Roam. It's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, and it's a shower  speaker. It has Amazon's assistant built in as well as Sonos's. It's like IP67, I think, for  a shower speaker. It sounds pretty darn good. Now let's go out into the living room and talk  about a couple of other smart home

gadgets that we've got out here. So this behind me, you can see  is the TV. Yes, it is a smart TV. Do I recommend always getting a smart TV? I don't really care,  honestly. But I use an Apple TV 4K for this for the best picture quality, best performance.  It's just a really great streaming box. I'm regretting already showing this to the internet.  Now I got my modem in here. That's another thing, internet, really important for your home. I've  reviewed a lot of Wi-Fi routers over the years, and

the one suggestion I would always make to  people is buy your own modem if you can from your ISP. Just bring it. Don't rent one from  your ISP, and then buy your own router as well because typically, you're just going to get better  performance. So the one I'm using right now is the Netgear Orbi. This is a Wi-Fi 6E router. This  Wi-Fi router has been pretty good so far. I do have some hiccups though with it, like my printer  always goes offline it seems like with AirPrint, and I didn't have that

on the other Orbi I had, so  I don't know if it's this router or the printer, could be either one, but overall, for  pure speeds and the amount of devices I have on my home, it's been really  good, and I've continued to use it. As I mentioned before, anywhere that you  would typically have an analog photo frame, this is a Google Nest Hub, and again, just  shows different photos and stuff. It's great. You can change it out easily from the Google  Photos app. I'll leave a link to the reviews I've

done of the home hubs over the years in  the description below. And it's always nice when family comes over as well because they  always get to see new and updated photos, and you can even gift these to family  members and then you can manage the photos. One of the last devices I bought recently is my  smart bird feeder. I did get a Bird Buddy. I did review it a couple of months ago as well, and  I love it. Just being able to see all my bird visitors and learn about the different birds  in the

environment here, it's been really, really fun to use. You can't really do  any automations or anything based off it, but I just like being able to see all the birds  that come by and visit and learn more about them. Alright, moving right along, let's move into  the kitchen here, pick up my latte. I'm not a big kitchen gadget person. I say that as  I look at a bunch of kitchen gadgets here. The two that I've really used that  I guess you can classify as smart, one is actually a device called a S

witchBot.  It's a little tiny battery-operated device that you have to connect to, I believe it's a ZigBee  hub, and you can just place it over any button, and then it automates that button. So my  espresso machine can heat up in the morning before I even come to it to brew some coffee. Oh  yeah, the other thing though that's really cool, open can. Super cool. It's from Simplehuman.  I haven't done a review of it, although I did a YouTube short about it. It's voice  activated. It is not connecte

d to the internet, which sometimes is really nice. And not only  can you voice activate it to open and close, once it's already open, you can instruct it to  stay open, and it'll just keep the lid open as you like bring things over from the counter and  put it in the trash. So I've really liked that. And that's been the smart home tour. Let me  know if you've got any questions on anything I went over. And if you want to see how I  automated this in more detail and some of the principles with aut

omating this smart  home, you should see that video I just did on how to automate a smart home. You can get to  that by clicking here. If you like this video, make sure you hit that thumbs up. Look in the  description below, I've left a ton of links to all of the different products I've mentioned.  And if you want to see more smart home content, don't forget to subscribe. For 6 months  later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.