How to Build a Smart Home
Welcome to how to build your smart home 101 through this video, I’m gonna show you every single device that you need from start to finish, to be able to easily build a smart home within your own home. Let’s get started!
I help tech work for you now, if you own any smart home products, or you would like to learn more about how to use them, make sure you hit subscribe below as that’s what my channel is all about. So here we have your future smart home, so everything that you need, I will be illustrating here on this whiteboard today. So the very first thing is: you need to have a dedicated internet connection, so this is a modem coming in from outside somewhere. That will always provide internet within your home if you’re, trying to use your smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot to power, your smart home products, you’re just going to have a terrible experience, so make sure that you have an incoming modem to provide Internet now.
Next, usually, you will have a Wi-Fi router, so this is a very important part of the smart home process, as this is what allows your home to have Wi-Fi connection and all of your devices connect to it.
Now there are many different companies that sell a modem and a router together, so my parents had an Xfinity modem and router all in one, but I am using an Asus router and I did find one that is 2.4 and 5 gigahertz. So is what that means.
Is the 5 gigahertz is a faster way to connect to the router and for most of the Wi-Fi connected smart home products, you do need a 2.4 gigahertz signal, so most of the routers today have what is called dual band, which essentially means that it has both Of these contained in one SSID or one Wi-Fi connection, so you shouldn’t have to worry about that too much, but just make sure you have a good quality router and I believe my router can connect up to something like 250 devices together.
So I will leave a link in the description below of all the products I’m talking about today, so that you can learn a bit more about how they work and then, if you want to use them in your own home, you can do that as well. So once you have a dedicated Wi-Fi network in your home, this will always be sending information from your phone to your different devices to be able to control them. So this is a very important step in the smart home process. Now, next, let’s talk about how you would control these devices. So if you’ve watched my channel, you know that I do have the Google home. So here we have this little Google home device. Now I will mention that you don’t even need a Google home to get started in building your smart home. The Google home just allows for instant voice access at any time.
So if you have an Android or an iOS smartphone device, all you need to do is download the Google home application and you can get started so the Google home devices they do not have a hub built inside of them. So that means that you would need to buy products that are compatible with Google assistant. That would connect through a Wi-Fi or maybe another hub. So, whenever you’re looking for a new smart home product make sure it has works with Google Assistant labeled so that you know it is going to be compatible now next, another big company in this space is Amazon.
So you’ve probably seen many devices that say work with Amazon Alexa. Now the Amazon echo devices are set up very similar to how the Google home is right.
Now you can actually go download the Amazon, Alexa application and you can begin building your smart home as well. Now, if you do have an Amazon, echo plus or an echo, show they actually have some hub capabilities built-in called ZigBee. So that means that you can buy ZigBee compatible devices and connect them directly to the echo without needing another hub. And so there are hundreds and thousands of devices that currently will work with the Amazon products and they can work with the ZigBee or you can use other hubs as well as just Wi-Fi connected devices. Now next, let’s move on and talk about Apple. So here we have an apple home pod and if you own Apple home products in your home, that is when you would want to go with Apple right now. I currently don’t use an iPhone. I don’t have any other Apple products, I’m using on a daily basis. So I would not get Apple only smart home products, because I will not be able to use them at all Apple’s, really locked in to only being able to use devices that are compatible with their products.
Where, with Google and Amazon, you can download their applications. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android phone and use their products so for Apple to get started, you actually need a hub device. So a hub device is a newer iPad, an Apple home pod or a newer Apple TV. So if you have one of those devices, you can start creating your home kit home and start adding different home kit devices within your home. Now, if you’re, using an iPad or something that device does have to be at home, for you to control those devices. So that’s kind of interesting, so you may want to pick up a home pod or an Apple TV or something like that to be able to have it better control, and then you will be able to control all of those things via voice with Siri.
If you have those compatible products and then last year we actually have Cortana. So Cortana is kind of new to this space or Microsoft, where they only have a few different supported services that you can connect to so like lifx, Samsung, smartthings and a few others, but they’re just getting started. So they do actually have a smart speaker. You can purchase, or you can just download the Cortana app on your Android or your iPhone device to be able to get those connected and start using Cortana to control your smart home. So those are all the things that you would need to start controlling your home via voice. You can either pick up there voice-activated products or you can download the applications to be able to get started. Now. All of these products will connect to your internet via Wi-Fi connection. So as long as you already have that Wi-Fi, it will be very simple to get them connected up now.
Let’s talk about different products, you would need to connect other smart home products to your home. So first, let’s talk about a hub, so here we have the Samsung smartthings hub, so Samsung smartthings is able to control two different types of products, so one ZigBee and the other one is z-wave. So, with a product like this, you would need to buy compatible products with ZigBee or z-wave. Now, one of the reasons you would want to go with something like the Samsung smartthings hub is because, whenever you add a light bulb or a light switch, if you were to buy Wi-Fi ones each time you add one to your Wi-Fi network, it’s actually going to Add strain on your Wi-Fi router, where, if you go with something like the Samsung smartthings hub, the ZigBee and z-wave, don’t work off of Wi-Fi. They have their own connected network so that they actually relieve strain off of your network and they can connect directly to the hub and you can have up to 250 devices connected directly to these Samsung smartthings hub. So here you can see what a hub looks like very simple: it can connect directly into my router and the new one can actually just be Wi-Fi only and then you just need that powered on, and then you can connect devices together now another one that you May want to get would be something like this, which is a Tsang LED hub.
So this allows you to connect up to 60 light bulbs right to this sing LED hub. So maybe, if you only want to control light bulbs, you can do that and this can be wired into your router or it can just be Wi-Fi only now. The products that can connect with sing LED are the ZigBee products as well. So some of the benefits of going with something like that is, you can pick up a singlet light bulb like this. That’S a white light bulb for 10 bucks, where, if you were to go with like something, that’s Wi-Fi connected that light bulb, would be $ 30 or there’s all kinds of different options there, but going with something that connects to a hub does save you money. The hubs could range from 50 to $ 100. If you get something like the Philips hue hub, that will cost you $ 50 and then the products are going to be a little less to connect to that. So if you do get a hub, those are some of the reasons why you would want a hub as it’s going to remove strain on your network and the devices are going to connect directly to the hub to make it very easy to control. Now some of the products like – let’s say we have the echo show to here so this is Amazon’s smart display built into here – is actually ZigBee hub. So just like the echo plus the echo show to has that ZigBee hub built in so then that means you wouldn’t need to buy another hub like this.
You could just pick up the echo show too, and then you can pair compatible products right to this and then that’s again removing strain off of your Wi-Fi network and then, like I said before, if you get an Apple iPad, that would be how you can control Your homekit devices, because they connect directly to your router, but then they kind of their signal is transferred through the iPad so that you can create different routines and everything. So those are different ways in which you can control and AD smart home products to your home. Now, let’s talk about the different types of smart home products, so a simple product, one of the first ones I got started with – was my nest thermostat. So nest is a product, that’s compatible with all of these different smart home companies and it was very easy to install and it connects directly through my Wi-Fi. So it’s sending a signal to my Wi-Fi router constantly. So if i activate my google home and say change the temperature to 70 degrees, it’s going to route that information from the google home to the internet, where it will then actually change my thermostat, so very simple, very cool. You can also just pull open the application and control that now next, let’s say we have a smart light, so there are a bunch of different types of smart lights. You can get like, I said before. You can get ones that connect to ZigBee or z-wave, or you can just get a Wi-Fi.
Only connected device like the life expose or I even bought a $ 10 one from Walmart, and that again would add strain to your network. But if you only have a few of these, it’s really not going to be a problem. Sometimes you can get them cheaper, but they just might not be as good of quality. So again, if I ask one of my assistants to turn off the light, if it’s compatible and if I’ve set it up in the application, then it will route that information to my router and turn on or off the light bulb now, with a light bulb. One interesting thing is: if somebody turns off the switch that smart light bulb then becomes unavailable because the power has been turned off to it. The switch can no longer be used, so you just need to be aware that, if you add a smart light bulb to a outlet in your home or maybe a lamp, if anyone actually turns off the switch that light switch will no longer become in use. You can’t control it with voice, so you need to make sure that either the light switch on the wall or the switch on the lamp is always turned on, so that you always have access to that.
And then, if you’re going to add a bunch of smart light bulbs to a fixture of, maybe five, that’s going to end up being a little bit expensive. So another way in which you can do this is by changing out your light. Switch to a smart light. Switch so sometimes these can be a little bit more expensive. I think I just bought one for $ 60 that was ZigBee compatible, so it was able to connect directly to my smartthings hub and then I can control it with my router. But the benefit of this is no matter what, if I turn on and off the lights with one of my assistants, I can still turn it on and off right here manually with the switch or with my phone or whatever. So this makes it always available and then I’m only buying one switch instead of buying five light bulbs, so the switch would control the whole entire fixture. Now, if you have two light switches for one light bulb, so let’s say we have two light switches and then here we have our whole lights.
You do need to buy a certain type of light switch. So this is known as a three-way switch. So then, you will need to make sure that you have the compatible three-way switch where this is probably the main switch, and then this is an adapter you need now. This should also work if you have multi locations as well. So you just need to make sure that you do some research on these, but if you just have one light, switch single pole is what that’s called very easy to add a light switch to here and let’s say I had a bunch of light bulbs, it would Control all those on a single fixture all at once. So then some other products that I’ve used is here. We have like a smart outlet, so this is really convenient.
If maybe I have Christmas lights or I want to turn off a certain light or a lamp in a room without having to deal with getting a smart light bulb, this can do that as well. You can get them so they are Wi-Fi connected or you can get them ZigBee and z-wave, so they would connect to your hub as well. And then I have a bunch of different smart cameras. So here we have a product called wise cam and it’s only about 25 dollars and it will connect to your echo devices. So you can actually view this camera right here on the echo show, but it’s not compatible with Google assistant. So you just need to make sure that any product you buy is compatible with what products you already have so last here we have the nest, hello doorbell. So if somebody rings this, it can automatically alert my Google home and then here we have the ring video doorbell.
So the ring doorbell is only compatible with the echo show to show pictures or the Amazon Alexa app. Where, with the nest, you can actually view the nest hello on both the Google home hub, as well as the echo show from Amazon.
So just be aware: if you have a ring video doorbell, it will not work with your chromecast or Google Home Hub devices. So there are hundreds of different products. I will be showing off a bunch more smart cameras in the near future, but for right now just make sure that if you’re purchasing any of these, that you know what you want and that it will be compatible with your different products. So, to recap: what you need to do? First off, you need a dedicated Wi-Fi network connection. If you don’t have that, you won’t be able to control your devices when you’re away from home. So right now, if I left my home, I could pull open my phone over here activate my Google assistant and, I could say, turn off all the lights in my house and it would turn off all the lights at once. Without the internet we wouldn’t be able to do that. So then you need to make sure that you know where you kind of want to build your smart home. So you could be like me and you could get a bunch of Google home devices and echo devices kind of have a split personality or you could stick to one where you have all Google homes and we’ll get into the difference about those on another video. Definitely that will take a lot of time to cover so decide where you want to go, and so then you would need products that are Google assistant compatible and was on alexa, compatible apple homekit, compatible or cortana compatible, and then once you have that decide. What kind of lights that you want?
Do you want to just add a few smart, Wi-Fi light bulbs to your router? That’S very easy to do. You can go pick up one so then you would connect it to its compatible app and then you would go through here and connect it to one of those. Or do you want to buy a hub and connect a bunch of light bulbs to a single hub or a bunch of different smart products to one hub, and then you would connect that hub to your smart devices and then what other devices would you want in Your home, so do you need a thermostat? Do you need to switch out lights, which is? Do you need smart plugs or smart cameras? There are so many different options available. I’M definitely anything for your price range. If you’re looking for super affordable – or maybe you want to spend a little bit more so and then, depending on each device, there’s a bunch of different features for each one of those. So if you don’t have any of these devices, you can simply get started by just going and buying a Wi-Fi, compatible light bulb, connect it to your router and you can begin from there and then once you get one of those set up. Maybe you want to get a voice-activated speaker in your home. You can go and pick up a Google home mini for under $ 50, or you could pick up an echo dot for under $ 50 as well. And then you can begin controlling your smart home all via voice, and then you can create rooms and different groups and routines where automate certain things by certain commands that you would say, and so there’s just so many things that you can do once you begin, starting With one device and then you can build from there now, I do suggest that if you start using one, maybe you start using smart things, try and get all your devices to be connected through the same protocol so either ZigBee or z-wave. It’S just gon na save you a bunch of money and the long run right now in my home I have a bunch of devices from all kinds of sorts, and so it gets a little confusing, but the goal here would be to have less applications you need. So if everything connects to one hub like the smartthings hub, that’s only one app. You need to go in to adjust things and then you can go into the Google home and control all of that as well. Now I know that was a lot to take in, but hopefully that helps you know exactly where you want to go with your own, smart home, so that you can save money and find the best devices for you now. If you do have any further questions, I’m always available in the comments below and if you would like to see more compatible products for your Google home or your Amazon, echo devices make sure you select the playlist over here on the side. Thank you. So much for watching we’ll see you on the next one.
