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It’s time to give my home a smart home makeover! Unfortunately, the process wasn’t as smooth as asking Siri to “set it up,” but after trying out tons of products, I finally found some that actually work together. Let me walk you through my setup and what it took to get here!
▶️ MORE VIDEOS
Skip the iPhone 16! https://youtu.be/-KtPJM0HORs
iPhone 15: The Final Review https://youtu.be/TlJPF_6I-Ns
0:00 My Smart Home Disaster
1:26 Doorbell
2:24 Door locks
6:30 Indoor cameras
6:24 Thermostat
7:24 Waterbottle
12:20 Lights
13:17 Outdoor camera
14:05 Home alarm
17:09 Wifi update
17:40 The future & final conclusion
📋 Featured Products
ecobee Smart Thermostat Premium https://www.ecobee.com/en-us/smart-thermostats/smart-thermostat-premium/
Aqara Camera Hub G2H https://www.aqara.com/us/product/camera-hub-g2h/
Aqara Camera Hub G3 https://www.aqara.com/us/product/camera-hub-g3/
HOOBS Box https://hoobs.com/product/hoobs-box-starter-kit/
Ring Alarm System https://ring.com/home-security-system?srsltid=AfmBOoq2RkKitSEnlklSQpvi6kjfx0VMPMsLIVHhQLkg6mFx9S3dbHn8
Logitech Circle https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/cameras/circle-view-security-camera.961-000489.html?srsltid=AfmBOoq6-mfkg0WJJB2ZtjoubmVK4XpWfwPkHqjG6lhfc2LPglaUUZS3
Aqara U100 Smart Lock https://www.aqara.com/us/product/smart-lock-u100/
Lutron Smart Switches https://www.casetawireless.com/us/en
Aqara G4 Video Doorbell https://www.aqara.com/us/product/smart-video-doorbell-g4/
Nest Thermostat 4th Gen https://store.google.com/product/nest_learning_thermostat_4th_gen?hl=en-US
Aqara Door & Window Sensor P2 https://www.aqara.com/us/product/door-and-window-sensor-p2/
eero Max 7 https://eero.com/shop/eero-max-7
🎥 GEAR: https://kit.co/JonRettinger/youtube-gear-2020
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I have the same issue with Aqara, Jon. Be prepared for plenty of spare time with MyQ and adding in the controller to connect easily to HomeKit. It’s like a monkey humping a football to get it connected! Lutron rocks!
Lutron never failed
beautiful house. i’m a bit envious
With the aqara locks you can setup and automaton when you unlock one of the locks the other Auto Unlock’s
Awesome tour, I took a few ideas from you😊
Ohh I have that same problem sometimes with my Govee light strips. Sometimes they don’t connect and turn off
Honestly as an "Apple just works" guy, HomeKit is the most un-Apple experience imaginable, you’ll have a FAR better time with Home Assistant at the expense of some prettiness
Great video Jon. Thanks for sharing your experience.
That’s a lot of headaches, I have a nest and eufy camera and door lock and I don’t have any problems. Even my cheap smart lights are connected to my Google home and vacuum everything works 99.9 percent of the time. The only times it doesn’t work is because my dogs knock down the power to my router. Everything is connected to my Google home and has never had an issue. My wife would have taken everything out if it didn’t work for her, she is not techy
Try a professional home automation system like Control4
I’m not sure if you mentioned it or not but I’m assuming the locks go off a trigger when the door is shut can’t you just also set it as a back up like most of them where it’ll just lock regardless after a certain timeframe like safe for example the 10 seconds after you shut the door they should’ve locked, but they don’t couldn’t you just have like the default locking mechanism set for like a minute Just in case?
Myq closed their API so no way to make it work to HomeKit
Great walk-through, been wondering about some of these things
Have you tried using home assistant? You may be able to unlock more features using home assistant rather than HomeKit, and if you have devices that are not using HomeKit compatible hardware, you could use something like scrypted to make it homekit compatible.
I use Samgung door locks and they still autolock flawlessly after 7 years. They dont have any connectivity, which to me, is better. Theres no reason to have a network connected house door.
If someone needs access they can call me and I can provide the passcode or give them an nfc kwy that I can invalidate manually later.
Hoobs use to work great, now mine is basically a brick and none of the things I had working work anymore. Just reading on their subreddit sounds like I’m not alone either
Homekit NEEDS to be better.
I saw all the comments, excited to try Home Assistant. I’ll film an update video.
Hubitat…
Great video Jon. Really frustrating that things just don’t work the way they are supposed to, given it must have been pretty expensive to set all this up. Curious what the cost was of all of it including all those Lutron switches. Curious why you chose HomeKit when there are so many more compatible devices with Google and Amazon.
i am running my setup with Home bridge running on a raspberry pi 4 with Tuya device from Ali express and it seems to be working sometimes its does take a few sec because the Tuya plugin i am using on Home bridge is an online one so it needs to go through the internet and back to my house for the action to take place.
RatGDO for your garage
Theme I’m seeing is HomeKit is the source of all your problems. Just go with Alexa or Google Home.
My Logitech camera and doorbell are flawless after a year plus.
Its good to see that no matter what ecosystem your choose, there are always going to be problems. Here’s to another year of devices that disconnect when you actually need them.
I really enjoyed this video. I started my smart home as a google home with all nest everything, but as an apple centric person I slowly switched everything over to HomeKit and it has been so much better.
I feel like the thing most people don’t understand about smart homes is hubs make all the difference. WiFi is too flaky and inconsistent but a good hub based system (Lutron, Phillips Hue) will change your mind on the whole concept.
My setup includes multiple hubs including 16 HomeKit devices (4 Apple TVs and multiple HomePods) and I also use Aquara and Meross devices and everything works great (for me).
Good luck with your setup.
Home Assistant is exactly what you need! It has integrations for almost any smart home device you could imagine. You can install it on loads of devices and there are plenty of guides online to get you started. I’m running mine on an old laptop. I have the same locks and Ring door sensors and the automations are nearly instant for locking doors. I’m also using Unifi Protect for cameras and it’s incredible (I have indoor, outdoor, and doorbell cameras). You get integration with various types of object and sound detections too. As for MyQ, do yourself a favor and install a ratgdo. The install isn’t too difficult and you’ll never need to mess with MyQ again. For areas without a lot of reflective surfaces the Aquara FP2 sensors are great as well.
One of your best videos ever, thank you!
I was always wondering what smart home tech you tech youtubers had.
Google home ecosystem is better.
I have a lot of Google cameras and the Google doorbell, which I think function great and I use HomeKit with Starling! It works good. Starling makes Google products work with HomeKit so easily. It’s probably the easiest thing I’ve ever done.
Thanks for doing this as I think we all have experienced a lot of what you did. I’ve ended up using most of the same things you have. You didn’t mention leak detection and for that I use YoLink which. isn’t directly Homekit-compatible, but will work if you want it to via Homebridge/Hoobs. Why YoLink? Because it will shut off all water to the house in the case of a leak without Interenet, without a home network, and without power to the house at all. Also, I knew you’d get a lot of HA-related comments, which I tried and abandoned. Not because it didn’t work, because it did and works well, but because I’m at an age when I have to think about who can maintain and/or operate a HA system if something happens to me… Lutron is a perfect example of a maintainable system as the switches just work whether or not you have Internet or a network. Thank you.
Why not just make everything Google Nest?
With your Aqara door locks, you can setup an automation in the Aqara app so if your door sensors are closed for 3 minutes to lock your doors
This video validates one reason Android ecosystem > Apple ecosystem
Do you find yourself creating custom solutions and “bending” HomeKit to fit your needs a lot?
Have you used any wifi scanner device (or app) to see if you’re running into channel congestion in the 2.4G band? That can cause a lot of intermittent connection issues.
Move to home assistant and save yourself the trouble
Nice video Jon, do many of your tech items have well built standalone apps outside of the HomeKit connection?
I made my home smart using HomeKit / Home Assistant and a lot of what you mentioned I have had issues with in the past and found ways to fix them.
Feel free to reach out if you have any smart home questions! 🙂
@igageit
the Hoobs is just a raspberry pi, you can buy the raspberry pi and run Home bridge on it for last cost
I love your content, but honestly, some of the stuff just frustrates me. I wouldn’t even bother with HomeKit. The only reason I really wanted it was to get video notifications on my television, which ended up not being that big of a deal since I have so many Alexis screens around my house that would just show me the doorbell if somebody rang it or if I got motion at a certain camera outside at a certain hour Late at night so that solved itself but honestly, the Alexa ones just work so much better I never have this issue with my door locks while they are smart by default. They just lock. I think I have mindset to every 30 seconds and it never fails for that kind of money to spend on both of those locks I would definitely invest in something different because they shouldn’t be doing thatthat would be really frustrating
Is it secure having those large door windows near the locks? I mean, couldn’t they just break it and enter their arms to open from the inside?
This video is pretty frustrating as a Home Assistant user. It’s way more flexible and powerful.
Could the issue with the locks be signal/interference related (the homehub being too far away?)
Edit: just to clarify I do believe that it needs to either be a homepod or apple tv. The camera hub only should work if connected with the aqara app
1 emp and ur house is emptied
Home assistant is the answer! It can be as detailed or simple as you want to make it.
I used to be big on Smart Home stuff, I convinced my gf at the time about it and invested a lot of money on Google Home devices, but after many headaches with things not working as advertise, multiple reports of companies gathering information about you and listening to your conversations, plus data breaches and someone hacking into your cameras, I decided to go back to being a "cave man".
Got rid of everything "smart" and the only thing there is left for now is a huge paperweight called Google Nest Audio, now I used to keep the mic on mute, but for whatever reason Google loves to remind you that the "Mic is Off!" every couple hours, so I honestly don’t know why I haven’t thrown it out the window yet, since even playing music it struggles with, loses connection constantly and stops playing and even when asking Google the most basic questions it struggles to answer… I am never again investing in a "Smart" setup.
Home assistant if you like to code your own controls
Don’t slide the alarm setting button and HomeKit. When do you want to change it to away or off or home just touch those buttons.
I’ve got the same set up and it works every time for me without having to fight it to change the state of the ring alarm.