This is Technology Bytes, episode 33, for October 22nd, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I want to share a few new things that I’ve done in my smart home setup.
Things that I have never tried before, and even though most of it was done in the last hours of this day, or the beginning hours of this day, but hasn’t been used for any extensive period of time, I still have initial thoughts on the devices that I installed and what I think about them.
So let me go quickly down the list, and then I’ll come back and talk about each device a little bit more in detail.
So the first thing I did was put up a video doorbell.
I know those aren’t new, and many people use them, but I wanted to make sure I had something that was HomeKit compatible, that worked in the Home app, and I bought a doorbell from Aqara.
It’s A-Q-A-R-A, and it is inexpensive, and apparently has some limitations, but I don’t need a lot from the doorbell, and so far it’s very good.
It does what it’s supposed to do, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute.
The other thing that I purchased in the recent past are some smart switches, just light switches, so instead of putting smart lights in places, and there are places where it’s cost prohibitive, really, to put in smart lights, and I have a lot of cam lights in my current house, so I thought maybe it was easier to go with smart switches.
I went with switches from Ross, and you guys have heard me talk about them in the past, and I’ll explain more about that in a few minutes.
The last thing I did was get some light strips from LIFX.
I’ve used a bulb from LIFX in the past.
It doesn’t require a hub.
It connects directly to the Wi-Fi signal, and my wife and I bought some bookcases with some glass doors, and we both thought it might look nice to light those, but we weren’t sure exactly how.
I thought light strips might be the way to go, and I think they probably are, but I did not fully install them yet because my wife is not here, and she is not able to see exactly what they look like, and so I’ll talk about that in a little bit as well.
So let’s go back and talk about this doorbell from Acara.
So a fairly simple doorbell.
It’s interesting that it didn’t come with any instruction set, and so that was a little bit frustrating, although it wasn’t all that difficult to figure out exactly how it goes together, but the one thing that I misunderstood is that you have to use the chime that comes with it inside the house that will talk to the Wi-Fi for the doorbell to talk to the Wi-Fi and to talk to HomeKit, and while that’s not bad, it just means you have to have a device plugged in an outlet in the house somewhere fairly close to the doorbell, which may or may not be challenging, and you have to use that device to connect to your smart home world, and then the doorbell connects through that device.
It’s almost like a hub, I guess, although the Acara doesn’t require a hub because it connects directly to Wi-Fi.
So other Acara devices, they sell cameras that are actually hubs that then connect to your Wi-Fi, and all the Acara connects to them.
This is my first Acara device, so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but it is something that has to be run from inside the house, but the camera is super clear.
The doorbell works great.
It is either powered or battery-operated.
My current doorbell had power, and it actually worked to power the Acara doorbell, so very easy to install.
Mounted right over the hole where the existing doorbell was, used the existing wires, it gathered the power, all of that works.
It will actually chime to the chime that your original doorbell rang to, and so that was kind of neat.
But at the moment, I have both the chime that came with the doorbell and my house chime to both go off, and so that’s kind of weird because I get a weird echo, so I’ll eventually turn one of those off.
But you get an alert on your phone when the doorbell is pressed, and then you can probably get alerts when the camera sees things.
I have those turned off at the moment, but I will be testing those over the next days and weeks and see how that works as well.
But it was very easy to install.
It took me very little time, maybe a half hour by the time I connected it to HomeKit and had it working.
I called my son, or sent a message to my son who’s invited to my home, and then sent a message to my wife who is in California.
at this time, and both of them could see the doorbell, could see the picture, could see all of that, and so that was pretty cool.
I haven’t tested out the talk feature where if someone rings the doorbell, you can actually talk to them through the doorbell, so we will have to test that when my wife gets home, maybe tomorrow or sometime through the week.
But overall, very satisfied with the device.
Again, it installed really simply, and I think it’s going to do well for what we want to use the doorbell for.
So you know now, if you’ve listened to my microcast for any length of time, that I like the company Meross.
They connect well to HomeKit.
Their devices are relatively inexpensive, but they seem to work as good as anything I’ve used from anywhere else.
And so my smart switches that I purchased, so I got two smart switches for I think less than $50, and all the ones that I have seen up to this point were probably $50 by themselves, if not a little bit more.
And so the smart switches that I bought are only good for replacing a single pole switch, and it just so happens that one of the places I put it, that’s all it is.
Single pole switch, it actually connected very easily.
It screws right back into the same place your original switch came out of.
The wiring was simple.
They give you all the tools, not the tools, but wire nuts and guide to help you set up your switch, and it was very simple, even though you’re dealing with electricity.
I actually shocked myself once because I got crossed up between the common and the power, but nothing drastic, just a little surprise of which wire I touched because I thought I was being super careful to keep them separate.
Probably should have turned off the power, but I didn’t feel like I wanted to mess with that because then it means I have to redo stuff that’s in my house already.
The switches look good.
They’re just a white switch, so they match with the switches that are in my house.
So if you need colored ones, I actually don’t know if Moross offers different colors.
I don’t think I saw them, but they look good, fit right in place of the current switch that was in the wall, and the wiring was fairly simple, and the connection to HomeKit went without a hiccup.
It found it almost immediately, installed it, it also asked what you want the switch to look like.
You want it to look like a lamp, you want it to look like an outlet, and so you can decide based on what the switch controls what you want the device to look like in your home setup.
So the first one I did was a single-pulse setup for a single light in my kitchen transition area, and that went very well.
The second one I did is in a hallway situation where at one end of the hallway, there’s a switch that operates the light, and then as you go out the front door, there’s a switch there that operates the light.
And that’s the one I chose to replace, the one by the front door, because that’s the one my wife and I use all the time.
And so the cool thing with smart switches is you can actually use the switch and it doesn’t mess up the smarts.
It understands how that works, and even though it was a two-pole switch, I just capped one of the wires off and used it as if it was a single pole, but that means that I have a switch at the end of the hallway that I can’t use.
If I use that switch, my smart switch is no longer any good until I push the switch the other direction.
I think I can go in and short some of those wires and make that switch unusable, and then that will solve the problem of anyone maybe touching that switch and making the smart part of that switch not work.
But they both work great, connected to HomeKit great, do exactly what I wanted to do, offer me the home automation that I like to get the lights to operate as I want them to, based on time of days and where my wife and I might be at the moment.
The last thing I got, as I mentioned, were the LIFX light strips.
I got 80 inches of light strips, so they actually come in two sections of 40 and then they just plug together, and you might be able to actually do more than that.
I haven’t tried that yet, but I did buy two sets, but I only took one out because I’m not sure my wife’s going to like what they look like, and I’m not sure how they’re going to connect.
I think I’m going to have to use them as separate ones if I put them in the bookcase.
But they look good, they have multiple sections that can be controlled so they don’t all have to be the same, but I think in our instance, we will use them so they’re all the same.
It’s thin, it came with its own backing to press into or onto walls or whatever else you might want to put them on.
If my wife doesn’t like them for the bookcase, I may see if she might like them under the cabinet counter in our kitchen.
Anyway, I’m still thinking about that, but they connect so fast to HomeKit and they work so well with HomeKit.
The LIFX bulb that I used did very similarly, and so I’ve always liked them because the hub is not required.
I will report more on that in the future because at this point, I’m not exactly sure how they’re going to be used.
A little bit longer episode this week, but that is all I have for today.
If you have comments or suggestions or questions, you can send them or ask them at technologybytesatmericfamily.com and I will respond when I see those questions or comments or suggestions.
Thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast.
I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
