844: Building the Ideal Apple Smart Home

Hello and welcome to Mac Power Users. My name is Steven Robles and joined as always is by my friend, David Sparks. How's it going, David? Hello, Steven. How are you today? I am pumped. Our outline is huge today because we're talking about smart home and I'm a nerd. I'm a smart home nerd. Yes, you are. When you joined the show, I said one of the things I want to do is get you on the show talking about home, not home kid anymore, just apple home. Once you get each on the show talking about that because for a variety of reasons. Number one, your expertise. Number two is I am struggling. I mean, I'm really struggling right now with home automation. Well, just in preparation for this episode, you started buying stuff and I didn't even tell you to yet. Yeah. Well, I've been doing some research. Before we get to that, I have a story to tell about that. But before we do, we have shown up in a great post on Obsidian. Sort of. Yeah, on Blue Sky, someone tagged us. Stu Witt said they saw this in Wales and we'll include a link to this image in the show notes. And if you're watching, you found a brew, I guess, in Wales called Obsidian. Yeah. And I don't know. We've got to figure out how to get sponsored by them, I think, David. Yeah, Magic Dragon Obsidian. I feel like there could be a game out of this that you buy like a six pack of this and every time we use the word Obsidian, you got to take a hit. You got to take a drink. Yeah. Well, we should do that during, if someone can listen to our bonus episode ranking the Star Wars, you see that transition right there? Oh, I love how you did that. Thank you. Thank you. That's a pro. Yeah, exciting news. So our Star Wars episode, our first monthly bonus episode is out. You can listen to it right now if you're a more power user member. Now, we've called that bonus feed. It's on a separate feed. We're calling it MPU Pro Max, which I think. Pro Max. I love it. I think it's pretty funny. And Stephen Hackett designed the artwork, which now has the six colors in the battery, which is pretty fun. Yeah. But if you already support the show, you have access to it. You might have heard us post about it earlier this week. We'll put a link in the show notes here and in the More Power Uses episode on how to add that feed to your podcast player. And that's where those bonus episodes will be posted. And if you don't support the show already, you can get the ad-free version, get now the monthly bonus episode, which is our Star Wars ranking. We ranked our top 10 Star Wars movies and got through some difficult moments, but we did it. Yes, we did. I was afraid a couple of times. We talked about the last Jedi and it got intense. I'll just say that. Yeah. I explained how that's the worst Star Wars movie ever made. And then Stephen said how great it is. Well, there's some nuance there. So anyway, you got to listen to it. It was a great show. I had fun recording it. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And for those that already subscribed, just to point out, this is a separate feed because of the way numbers work. So you need to subscribe to it, separate feed. And for those thinking about joining, Stephen and I are committed. We're going to try and do one of these every month and they're not going to just be like Star Wars. We're going to do some content, really serious based ones. I think we're going to do one where I'm going to teach Stephen how to use Keyboard Maestro. And we're going to have a lot of fun with this stuff. So check it out if you're interested in joining. You get the ad free extended version of the show every week and you're going to get these monthly shows. We're saying monthly ish because we might like take December off or something, but generally you're going to get a lot of extra content. Yeah, it's exciting. And if you do support for more power users, we have some Mac hardware stories. David may be bought to ish an M5 MacBook Pro. It's a long story. Okay, great. So it's great. So we'll get to that. But I'm really excited, David. Should we jump into Smart Home? Yeah, we need to talk to Smart Home, but I need to set this one up a bit. So let me explain. People who listen to the show know that I've always been eager to get into the Smart Home stuff. We haven't covered on Mac power users for a long time and I have drifted, gang, I have drifted from the true path. So originally I set up all the Smart Home stuff using Home Kit back in the day. Like we had the camera on the dog crate. We have the camera on the front the driveway in different places. And as we're going to talk about in the show, there's a lot of Home, Apple Home stuff I'm still using. But over the years I drifted, like I went into kind of the Ufie camera environment, which is a different app. I also have been playing with Home Assistant, which is kind of a different technology. And over the last six months, there have been a series of failures in my house that have been related to the fact that I got away from the true path. And the thing about this is I live with other people and the fact that I can make it do cool stuff with Home Assistant is not going to impress my wife, who just can't turn the lights on anymore. So over the weekend, the neighbor where I, my street, the houses are in kind of like little hills, like the driveways are steep. And the neighbor across the street has a nice car, but for some reason the emergency brake failed. And his car rolled down his driveway across the street and crashed into my daughter's parked car in front of our house. But it was unclear exactly what happened because my Ufie cameras failed. They did not do the job. And to add to the, insult to injury, my wife can't even get the Ufie app to work because it seems like the password resets everyone. So well, just, just a bunch of things. And then one of my neighbors, my Luddite neighbors, the one who I helped set up with HomeKit years ago, got his HomeKit camera, he sent us the video from HomeKit's care video. And it was humiliating for me as a nerd, but my wife just looked at me and said, you know, this is enough. This used to work and it doesn't. Can you just please make it work again and do whatever that involves? You know, and at the same time I've been prepping this episode and I realized, Steven, help me, Steven, one Kenobi, I think you're my only hope. I need to like go back to HomeKit or HomeKit. I keep forgetting that they named it Apple HomeKit. But I need to go back to Apple and make stuff that everybody in the house can see and that just works. And so one of the things we're going to talk about this episode is bringing me back on the true path. And we're, yes, we're going to talk about that, cameras, some useful automations that even my family members enjoy and devices, especially newer ones that have come out. So my quick history, I've been all in on Apple HomeKit from the beginning. And I will link this YouTube video that I have on my channel where I do an annual smart home tour and I go through all the devices and I talk about everything that I've gotten new and do just everything. And so I'll link that in the show notes. And I also have some updated videos I'll show, but I do all the things from garage door opener to locks to smart locks. But I've been all HomeKit forever. I dabbled in HomeBridge a little bit in my old house because we got a security system from Vivint and they didn't work with Apple Home, obviously. And so I did have HomeBridge running on a Mac mini that bridged that camera and doorbell over and even the alarm system into HomeKit. And HomeBridge has been fine. I have a homey pro hub to try and get some ZigBee devices in there. But overall, I always go back to straight Apple Home and now matter devices, because all the third party stuff eventually breaks or requires endless updates, or sometimes the third party service or app gets shut down and Belkin actually used to make a number of smart home devices from plugs to switches to even one of the few video doorbell cameras that worked with HomeKit and Belkin has announced they're not doing their smart home devices anymore. Now luckily, when a device is in Apple Home and has the HomeKit standard or matter, whether a company goes under or not, that device will work in your Apple Home forever. And that's one of the benefits from using a third party only type device or heavily something like Ufie or maybe Arlo will talk about those. And matter, which is the latest standard, which has allowed one device to be certified once and then be able to be used on all the ecosystems, Google, Amazon and Apple has allowed for way more devices and cheaper devices, which will get into a lot of specific devices on this episode, where you don't have to just buy the Apple HomeKit version, you can buy any matter device, and it will work in Apple Home and it's really seamless. And so there's show notes are going to be huge for this episode because I'm going to put a bunch of links to stuff. But matter has really helped. And for me, for my setup, I have like four Apple TVs, 15 Home Pods, and most of them have thread, which really helps with the whole smart home ecosystem. But I still run some hubs, namely Phillips Hue, Acara, Lutron, but all those devices are still in the Apple Home app. And we'll get into more as we talk about the different standards for different devices. But that's largely my setup. Yeah, so I want to talk about that. A couple things. First of all, as soon as I it's now that I've announced, I'm going to try and go more pure kind of Apple Home. A bunch of you have probably already emailed me about why I don't appreciate the beauty of Home Assistant. And Home Assistant is very powerful. I totally agree it does more than Apple Home. One of the tricks I was doing with my Home Assistant was the alarm on the refrigerator door in my house is the exact same pitch of my hearing loss. So I can be standing next to it and it can be going off. I won't hear it. So I put a thing where it would turn a light red in the bedroom and in the studio. So if I like go and nauseate the fridge and then don't don't shut it, then I see the light. Oh, I didn't shut the door. The other day, like this is another thing in the last month, this is another thing I led my wife to her breaking point. 2 a.m. the red light in the bedroom goes on. No idea why. Like the Seinfeld episode with the chicken place. Yeah, exactly. My wife's like, you know, the neighbors are probably looking at our house right now thinking what is going on. Exactly. So I turned it off. Then four o'clock she wakes me up again. Hey, it's on again. You know, the middle light I go downstairs. I just literally unplug the Home Assistant and I turn the light off. And so there's I know that like things like this can do things I can't do with Apple Home. But again, I think I need to simplify. So don't try and convince me. I think I want to just kind of go back to basics here. And I want the whole family to be able to use it. And that that's something. And every every video I post about smart home, there'll always be some comments saying Home Assistant. Sometimes the comment just says that nothing else. And like I understand there are some more powerful options there. But we're going to get into when we talk about automations through some shortcuts and some third party apps. I've extended some home kit automations, but they're still very first party. And that's what I want to do. I want my back end to be the Apple Home. And maybe I'll extend it with this app here, or a push notification there through push cut, which is a great third party app. But I want my core as Apple Home. And that's everything. Because I also share it with five other family members, my wife, well, four others, my wife and three kids. Yeah. And I feel like I want to follow the Robles model here. I want to get the most I can out of Apple Home, but I don't want to go into turning this into a hobby with something like Home Assistant, which really, having used Home Assistant for a couple of years, I'm well aware of what it can do. But I'm also well aware of how much time I spend updating the software and debugging advanced routines. And I don't want to do that anymore. So so that's kind of the setting going into the show. I would like to take a minute though to drill down also on matter and thread. And some of the technologies we're talking about, because I think it's really confusing for people. Now, as I understand it, matter is really a software stack. It goes on top of the hardware. And it is the handshake that allows you to take any device and use it with Apple Home, or with Google, or with Amazon, or any of the popular home kind of control centers. Right? Yeah, correct. And it's basically before, you know, a company like Govi, which has made a lot of products in the last couple of years, before matter, they would have to go through multiple certifications certified with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Home, Google Home, and then they could go to market, which delayed the release of a lot of products. Whereas matter, which Apple actually contributed to this standard. So HomeKit is in there. Matter allows a manufacturer to get that certification, build for matter, and then it opens the door to everything. And we'll talk about thread in a moment, because thread is another technology in the smart home system. But matter has allowed for a lot of devices. And this is one I actually just got recently, the Govi standing floor lamp. This is a matter floor lamp. And I had the Phillips Hue version of this, which I still have. And it's actually what making the color behind me in our video. And that standing floor lamp was like $350 when I bought it, where now a company like Govi can come in, make a very similar product. Actually, it's taller. And I find actually does just as well, if not better than the Hue floor lamp. The only difference is I had to assemble it when I took it out of the box, but it's $125. And so you can get cheaper products from more brands. And matter allows that ubiquity now or agnostic across smart home ecosystems. Yeah. And the thing is, because they had to go to each different manufacturer and Apple actually cares about security. Apple was the last one that they would always go to. That was like one of the things with my challenges in my youth. When I bought the doorbell, they said home compatibility, home kit compatibility is coming. And guess what? It never did. And that happened often with broken promises with this hardware, because Apple, you know, they actually have a security layer. Now, as I understand it, the matter standard has that same security layer. That's why Apple was so involved. As I understand it, matter stuff does not have to go out to the internet to work, which is really powerful. So this is a really good thing. Not only is making all these devices more secure and more convenient, it's also making a lot more devices available to people like Steve and I who want to use Apple Home. Right. And one of the complications, though, of matter is the matter standard has to support a device category or feature first, and then the device manufacturers need to adopt that standard. So it's something like robot vacuums, the matter standard took a while, robot vacuums then added matter to some models, and then Apple had to update iOS to support that version of matter. So there's still kind of a process for it. But just to rattle off a couple devices, and keep in mind, if you're building an Apple Home ecosystem, when you see the matter label, that's you get that, you know, it's a good device, it works with your thing. And now we have smart plugs where you can have a pack of four for like $45. You can have smart shades, I have multiple matter smart shades, the canister ones are great to get inexpensive robot vacuums now support matter, EcoVax has one, Robo Rock has one, and because it's matter, you can just add it directly into the Apple Home app scan the matter code and you're good. And even products like the Google Nest thermostat, which honestly is one of the best looking thermostats, I think, EcoV looks really good as well. But because it's matter, even Google's Nest thermostat can work in your Apple Home ecosystem. And one distinction, though, I want to make is that device and things like the Meris thermostat and the EcoV, these are all matter devices. But you'll see a distinction between matter over Wi Fi, and matter over thread. Both of those things exist. And they both work in Apple Home. But as we'll talk about in a second, thread is the newest, I would say, or best wireless standard for smart home devices that allow for fast response times, reliability, ease of setup. And if you have things like contact sensors that run on batteries, thread allows longer battery life, because it's not having to ping to the Wi Fi or try to connect to Bluetooth devices. So thread allows for better battery life as well. And so there's matter over Wi Fi and matter over thread. Okay, so let's go down that little rabbit hole for a second. So if I talk about matter as the software stack on top of everything, then you've got the communication protocol, I'll say, the radio, how does it talk? Now, in the old days, a lot of these were either Wi Fi or Bluetooth. And I have generally found that Bluetooth is terrible for this stuff. It's not consistent. It doesn't hold a connection. And Wi Fi can work except Wi Fi uses a bandwidth on your Wi Fi network, which is not good, right? Like you've got Windows switches in your house, you've got 20 Windows, that's 20 things talking traffic on your Wi Fi network so much so that some people who do this create a separate Wi Fi network just for their home automation stuff. Do you do that, Stephen? By the way? No, I had it in my notes. I do not have a separate network for smart devices, nor do I separate out the 2.4 and 5 gigahertz Wi Fi bands. A lot of people do that. A lot of times internet service providers set up people's home Wi Fi like that by default, and then they tell the homeowner like, Oh, just connect to the 2.4, just connect to this one, it's faster. And I would avoid all of that. I have one Wi Fi network, one name, and that's it. All my devices are connected to it. And I will say to your point, when you have a lot of Wi Fi devices, you do find some of those devices become, you know, a little sporadic in how they connect. An example that I use is I have a lot of Leviton light switches, which are Wi Fi only. And then I have Lutron switches, which I'm slowly replacing all my switches to Lutron. Because Lutron requires a hub, but Lutron literally purchased their own frequency bands to use with their devices. And that is why the Lutron switches are so rock solid. And between those two, my Lutron switches never disconnect, never have an issue with response. Whereas the Leviton switches, they'll occasionally say no, you know, accessory can't be found, or have to do a Wi Fi network reset on the physical switch. And so when you can, in certain areas look for thread, but also even some of these hub devices, you'll get a much better experience than Wi Fi only devices. Yeah. So to finish that thought, like one of the answers is just don't get a lot of Wi Fi devices in your home automation. And you talked about thread, thread is an alternative. You know, that is a new one. And the way I understand that technology is, if you have multiple devices, they actually each one acts kind of as its own little thread base. So the more you have, the better it gets. So it's just the opposite of the Wi Fi problem. And thankfully, there's a lot of Apple devices now. So to step one, you know, if you want to start an Apple smart home, you need a either Apple TV or a HomePod or HomePod mini. And thankfully, if you get the high end Apple TV, which is only $20 more than the base one, I don't know why they made that distinction. But the more expensive Apple TV has a thread radio, the big HomePods have thread and HomePod mini so they can all be your starting device for your Apple home. And there's a difference between a thread border router, and then a just thread device, a border router is needed for other thread devices to connect to it. And then it can kind of manage those communications. But to make it practical, one other area where thread devices are really helpful is when it's either out of Wi Fi network range, or maybe outside the house. And so one home kit device that I've used for a long time, I have an Eve Aqua, which is a connector garden hose to it. And then it can either run your irrigation automations or what I do is I have to fill my pool sometimes. And so I'll pull that in. And with the Apple Home app, I can say turn off after two hours of running. And that's an automation that can just run with this device. This has thread built in, as compared to a different same kind of device, but one from Meris, which is another garden hose thing. But this is Wi Fi based, and even has a Meris hub. And the reliability and connectivity is nowhere near as good. And so for my outdoor devices, devices, you know, I've had people put contact sensors in their mailbox, this way they know when their mailbox opens and closes. That's just something I've been trying to do. I can never get it to work because my mailbox is two houses down, and it just never reaches. And so you could try the Acara P2 contact sensor, which is thread, and it's matter. So you don't need an Acara hub. It works with Apple HomeKit, it's thread. And it's helpful if you have a thread border router near your window or near that part of your house where it can reach out to that contact sensor. And I kind of have I have a HomePod near my front window. And I actually have a HomePod mini out on my patio, which is given its life, not that it's dead, but it just gets terribly dirty. And it's like outside, and you're not supposed to put HomePod outside, but it acts as a thread border router for the stuff that's in my backyard too. So if you're listening, you can probably tell this episode is going to cost me money, because I'm trying to upgrade some of this stuff. But so we've talked about the thread, which I think is so much better than using a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. But there's one other category, and just bear with us as we get through this underlying technology stuff, because I think it really informs the rest of the discussion. There are also vendors who kind of have their own. You talked about the Lutron Cassetta lights, where they've got their own frequency, you get their base station, and you're not really on thread, you're not on Wi-Fi, you're on something else, you connect to your network, you go. As I understand it, is that the case too with Akara? So Akara devices fall into two categories. Akara has some devices that require a hub no matter what. An example is their Waterleak sensors, which I use. They're these little like half dollar size sensors you could put under your sinks. I have one under every sink. That requires- I love those things. Yeah, amazing. Again, links to all this stuff will be in the show notes, but I have those everywhere. So that requires an Akara hub. There are other devices that Akara has been making that is matter and thread or Wi-Fi that don't require a hub, like their new G400 video doorbell, which we're going to talk about in a second, and also their G5 camera, which you don't need in Akara hub, and some of their devices like that G5 camera act as a hub. So they can actually- you can have an Akara Waterleak sensor, and the G5 camera can be the hub they connect to, and that's all you need. You don't need another little box sitting in your network closet to actually have an Akara network. But ones that do require it is Lutron. You need the Lutron hub no matter what, and you do need the Hue hub if you want your Hue devices in Apple Home. And I've used both Hue, the regular hub, and now the Hue hub pro. Migrating is a nightmare, just side note because you have to reset all your Apple Home scenes they don't carry over. But if you have any questions about that, leave it in the feedback or at me and I can get you on the Hue stuff. So I think we've got a good understanding now. So we've got, you know, you've got the Apple kind of ecosystem around this stuff. You've got different radio technologies, which you want to be smart about what you get. I think the takeaway I have from my experiences over the last few years is I avoid Bluetooth like the Plague, and Wi-Fi has to be really something I really need, and there has to be no other option for me is Wi-Fi. And in general, I'm looking for Thread Radio devices or things like Lutron, which kind of have their own thing going on. But using that better technology, I think results in a much happier experience. This episode of Mac Power Users is brought to you by Mercury Weather. Mercury Weather is a thoughtfully designed weather app that shows all the essential weather details at a glance. It has a gorgeous colorful interface that dynamically adapts to the conditions with a warm orange palette on a sunny day, icy tones on a cold day, or a deep blue on a rainy night. And Mercury uses a glanceable chart layout to present the hourly and daily forecast in a way that feels intuitive right away. And a really cool feature is for frequent travelers. Mercury's trip forecast feature automatically shows the weather at your destination right in your daily forecast timeline. So you always see the weather for where you'll be, not just where you are. Now I actually love Mercury Weather. I featured it in a video months ago on my channel unrelated to this, but I love the design. It's actually a fresh take on a weather app. But one of my favorite parts is the amount of widgets that Mercury Weather gives you. I mean, it is the most widgets I have ever seen in an app. From the small to medium sizes, you can do trip countdowns, you can do interactive hourly and daily forecasts. And because I live in Florida, sometimes hurricanes are a thing, you can actually have a storm tracker widget right on your home screen showing the path. Honestly, I love all the widgets. And Mercury is really good at that storm and hurricane tracking with maps, live positions, forecast paths, cones and intensity. Mercury Weather's gorgeous interface makes it a delight to check the weather every day, even on gray and rainy ones. And the app's business model is simple, no ads, no selling of user data. Mercury is available on all Apple platforms minus TVOS. You can download it, use the standard features for free and upgrade to Mercury Premium to unlock all the features. So go to mercuryweather.app.mpu to download Mercury Weather now. Use that link to let them know you came from the show. That's mercuryweather.app.mpu. The link is also in the show notes below. Try it out and get all the standard features for free. Our thanks to Mercury Weather for their support of this show and all of Relay. So again, thinking about if you're getting started or you want to add to your smart home, you want to draw the line between sensors and HomeKit and Matter has a lot of different kind of sensors that then complain to automations, which we'll talk about later, and versus devices like a plug or a switch. And so when you come to sensors, I talked about the Akara P2 sensor and contact sensors are a way to tell if a door or window is open or closed. And I use a lot of these around my garage door has a contact sensor, all the doors in my house. And these are usually like little two part sensors and the little magnetic field will tell the sensor when it's closed or not. This is one of the Akara devices where you don't need the hub is just matter thread. And it just works right out of the box as with your Apple Home. So you have things like contact sensors, leak sensors, and then you can set up automations like when this door opens turn on this light device versa. There's also motion sensors from companies like Eve Hue and others, presence sensors, which these are really cool. So recently rather than motion, which let's say you're sitting reading a book, and you want to set up an automation where if no motion turned light off, well, if you're sitting there reading a book, the light's going to turn off on you. Well, the presence sensor actually uses MM wave, which are like the higher gigahertz frequencies to detect just presence of a body. And there's actually a new Akara sensor coming out where it can actually detect if someone's laying on the ground, or if they have fallen, or if they're standing up or sitting down. And now just think of the implications of you want to be able to detect if someone's laying on the ground in a room, or if someone has fallen in addition to the fall detection on Apple Watch, presence sensing is getting really advanced and fun for automations too. Yeah. I mean, the biggest problem I always hear about whenever we talk about this on the show is someone writes me and says, look, I just want to make a thing where I walk in the room and the lights turn on when I come in and turn off when I leave. And I can't do that because like my wife is sitting there knitting and the lights go out and then all of a sudden I look like a bozo. And I'm telling people these human presence sensors are the solution. That in the age old problem of turn the lights on when I walk in, turn them off when I walk out, we have solved it now with these human presence sensors. And Akara now makes one that's battery powered because the original ones were all USB powered. You had to plug it in somewhere, which limited where you could put it. But they've got a battery powered one. I just ordered one of those. I have one in my presence yet. I'm upgrading guys. So I'm like you, I'm spending money here. Stephen, have you worked with that battery powered Akara human presence sensor yet? I have it right here in my studio and I have an automation where when it detects motion, when it detects occupancy between like 8am and 5pm, it turns on my studio lights and then when it stops detecting occupancy, it turns everything off. It's battery powered, 50 bucks. This is again as a matter over thread. And so actually I said matter, but it is thread, but I think you do need the Akara hub for this one. But just came out today as we record, Akara released a new thermostat, the W200, which is matter and it will work in your Apple home and it's a presence sensor. Of course it is. So this, I actually, I installed it. I'll link my video. I just did a video on this and some other devices, but if you put this in your living room or whatever, not only can you now control the temperature in Apple home and do your automations, this is a hub also. So it doesn't require a different Akara hub. Then you can also set occupancy automations where when this thermostat detects occupancy, the lights are on, when it stops, the lights are off. And I've set up some if statements, which we'll talk about in a little bit, that it kind of watches for if this device is on or off, then run this automation or not. So you can kind of customize that, which why some people do home assistant and other third party apps for that kind of stuff. If you get sophisticated with some if statements and sensors, you can do it directly in Apple home too. All right. So are you, let's just take a little side trip here. If I buy one of these new Akara P2 sensors and put it on my refrigerator door. Yes. What kind of if statement could I write to give me a notice that doesn't make it look like we just turned our bedroom into the red light district? Wait a minute. Okay. Well, for your fridge, I will say, so one of my favorite automations, I have a mini fridge outside. I have the Akara P2 contact sensor on it. And one of the things Apple home can't do natively is open door notifications. Whereas if this door is left open for a certain amount of time. So I created a home automation converted to a shortcut, which is something you can do in the Apple home app. And what it does is when that contact sensor is opened, so when your fridge is opened, it waits 60 seconds. So it waits a minute and you can adjust that weight command to whatever time you want. And then it checks the status of that sensor. And then if that sensor is closed, it doesn't do anything. That means the door is closed again. Sure. But if the contact sensor is open, I get a notification that I've set up through the app push cut. It's an app free up to three notifications. And I'll get a notification that the door was left open. And then you can add to that another check another minute later, or you can change the weight command. So you can have a contact sensor and get a door open notification, just with the home app and an app like push cut or burr is actually another new app for these kinds of notifications be RRR. I'll link that in the show notes too. But to go to push cut, because it's made by my friend, Rosemary. So, oh, I didn't know that. Honestly, I didn't know that. I love push cut. I do battery notification through that. So if my iPad falls below 20%, I get a push notification, I do all that kind of stuff. Well, maybe you just saved my marriage. Yeah, do that. I also like I even have automations. We'll save it for later. But I have stuff where my kids leave lights on randomly throughout the house. And so I have an automation that runs at two in the morning to just shut all the lights off. Yeah, that's good. You know what I mean? And if someone's up in a week, yeah, someone's like at 2am, they should be scared. They should be scared. So and also other sensors, by the way, and again, all of these sensors can be automated, light, humidity and temperature. And even things like the home pods now have temperature and humidity sensors built in that are surfaced in the home app that you can automate. So if the temperature is over these degrees, turn on the ceiling fan, all of that's built in. And there's some multi sensor things like a camera. So if you get a home kids secure video camera, which we'll talk about, that acts as a motion sensor as well. So you can set up automations for when motion is detected from a camera, you don't need a dedicated motion sensor device. So we talked about lights, but let's have the conversation anyway. I am a big fan of Lutron and Paseta as are you. And while they're a little bit of money, it takes it takes time to kind of replace the switches. When I did they were, I don't know, 50 to 100 bucks a pop, just to kind of depend on what you're doing. But I spent like a year and a half just like every month, I'd buy another one. And now my whole house is Lutron, cassette it out. And installing those like, I don't know, four years ago was the last time I ever thought about it, because they just work, you know, there's a switch in the wall, and you push the button and lights go off and on normally, but they also can be fully automated. I'm a big fan of that over light bulbs, because light bulbs, you know, even the LEDs eventually go out and it's just very much a hassle. Because let's say you set up a bunch of light bulbs, then somebody turns off the switch on the wall, they don't have power anymore, so they don't work anymore. I just feel like the case is really easy. If you want to automate lights, spend the money, get the Lutron, Caseta and do it at the switch level. That's how I do it. You know, I have a lot of people that will write to me asking about rental situations. And so if you do rent, that is a situation where you probably don't want to switch out light switches or maybe not be allowed to and so bulbs would be an option for that, putting it in lamps and things like that. When it comes to bulbs, there are some thread bulbs out there, but I found the most reliable bulb solution is Phillips Hue bulbs. They have, you know, ambient white, they have a color LED bulbs. And those are good, but for me, I want to switch out the light switch because the other complication with bulbs is someone might physically turn the switch off or click the lamp off. And now that smart bulb is disconnected and you can't control it. So I always air on the side of a switch or dimmer and Lutron is still expensive, but they have two newer models, the Diva dimmer and the Claro switch. And they look just like normal paddle switches. So if the last time you looked at Lutron switches was a long time ago, you know, they had kind of these multiple buttons with little icons everywhere. That's not the case. You can get Lutron switches now that look just like normal switches, a little dimmer track on the right where you can, you know, slide it up and down. It is like $70. I think the Claro is like $65. But like you, I've just been slowly switching them out. And there are some good thread over matter switches and dimmers. Eve makes one. I actually have it here in the studio and Eve switch and they're good, but Lutron is just rock. It's so rock solid that I want all my switches there because I never want to think about it again. And that's, I think the difference between like home assistant and trying to set it all at home. Like, do you want to think about your smart home or do you want to just set it and forget it and just do the things you want? And I want to set it and forget it. And that's why I do the Lutron and stay in Apple home. Yeah. If you live with other humans, they expect when they push the button that the light goes off or off. That's the thing. And with the Lutrons, you get that 100% of the time. It's just that. Exactly. And that's why going, so we talked about sensors going into other things, the switches are one, you can do smart plugs, which I talked about some Maris ones. And that's something you could put on the end of a lamp. And I would do that before the bulbs personally, because the switch is going to stay in the outlet no matter what. So even if someone clicks off the lamp, you might be frustrated because you can't turn it back on from the switch, but it won't show that the device is disconnected and then it might, you know, see in your home app that you can't access it. So I prefer the plugs over the bulbs. And if you're a renter, that would work for you as well. Do they make dimmer plugs? Like if somebody wanted to hook it up to a light bulb, could they vary the amount of current going into it to make it like soft or bright? Lutron made one like that years ago. I don't think they do it anymore. There was like no ground on the outlet. And I think it was, you know, very specific use case, but I don't, I don't think you could do anymore. There are some like in wall smart home devices. So like not the switch, but literally like the behind part, you can switch that out. But I don't think you can get a dimming plug right now. Yeah. But for those that you recommend, like, is there any specific brands that are like thread matter? I mean, you kind of want to look for the best technology for this stuff right now, if you're getting into it. For like the bulbs specifically? Or no, for the plug. Oh, for the plug, yeah, just get something thread and matter. The Meris has one. Eve makes a lot of great products. They have an Eve energy, which is thread and is matter, but it also does more things like energy monitoring, which is not, and this is one of the things we'll get into in a minute. The Eve energy monitoring is not a home specific feature or matter feature. So you don't see in the home app that data, you do have to go to the Eve third party app to see the energy from that specific device. But if that's something that's interesting to you, you can set up an automation in the Eve app, and maybe you have like a deep freezer in the garage. And if for whatever reason it stops working, well, you can have that Eve energy tell you if there's no current flowing to this device. And now you have a notification if your deep freezer died as opposed to just a smart plug, which can't tell you that kind of information. So depending on your use case, that might be valuable to you. And I actually said that at the top, we were talking about the underlying technology, but the matter of means it works in Apple home, you don't need to use their app. However, and there's a big asterisk there, a lot of times there's additional features if you go in the app. And that we're going to talk about I've mentioned a car a lot, but they've honestly been making a lot of the great devices recently. But I'll just say it now, they are building more and more features directly in their app and using their hubs that are not an Apple home. And an example is I just got their new video doorbell. And when you ring it, the video or at least a screenshot of the video can show up on the thermostat, which is a cool feature. Ecobee had that as well. But you need the ecobee doorbell and the ecobee thermostat. And that is not a home Apple home feature or even a Google or Amazon feature that's specifically to the brand. So you have to have an Acara doorbell and the Acara thermostat and use the Acara app to set that up. And that is one of the features. And there are many others, even things like 2k video resolution, which we'll get into that are brand and app specific that are not in the Apple home or matter standard just yet. So there are distinctions there. You want to go to doorbells now since you've raised it? Let's talk about doorbells. So one thing about doorbells, you can, there's not a lot of options out there for home kit secure video. And this is a distinction that if you've not heard that phrase, home kit secure video is Apple's video storage solution that you get as part of your iCloud plus subscription or your Apple one bundle. So if you play pay for iCloud storage, you get home kit secure video as a feature, meaning if you get a doorbell video doorbell that supports it, the recordings are in the home app saved there and you don't have to pay another subscription to a brand for the video recordings. So as an example, my mom, there weren't good wireless video doorbells out there that were home kit secure video. So I got her the Arlo video doorbell, which is wireless, but she has to pay the Arlo subscription. It's like five bucks a month, but she has to pay Arlo for the recordings for the last 30 days and access those on the web and in the app. Home kit secure video means my, when I pay Apple for iCloud storage, I get everything for the security video. And that's all the cameras I have in my house. I have probably eight different cameras around and they are all home kit secure video, including my new doorbell, which I'll just be honest, I really love it. It is the new Akara G 400 and it is thread. It is matter. It is home kit secure video. And for the first time, you can get power over ethernet in a video doorbell. And that's something a lot of people, this is why they went ubiquity and to other brands, but you can now get that now in this device. It looks pretty good. It is way better than my logitech circle view. It is, you can do power over ethernet. You can do a standard wiring, which is what I have. You can do that. It comes with a chime. So if you want to chime somewhere in the house powered by USB C, you can do that and it works incredibly well. And so Akara has this option. There's also Akara has wireless options. And the only other option besides these Akara ones that are home kit secure video is the logitech circle view, which is so old. I don't think you can even buy it anymore. It's not on Amazon anymore. You can probably still get it at an Apple store, but don't do it. It's too old. It doesn't have the latest Wi-Fi standards. And one other thing is this G 400 actually has 2.4 and 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi in addition to all the other stuff. So setting it up, speed of accessing the live stream in the home app, accessing your recordings, everything is super fast. And lastly, sorry, I'm really excited about this video doorbell, it has a micro SD card slot. So if you want to record those things, so when your neighbor's car ran down the thing, even if home kit pooped out and you didn't have access to the recordings that way, you can have a micro SD card in here and recording 2K video footage locally to that card that you could just pull out and import. And it's pretty great. Yeah. I mean, so let's talk about the video camera storage situation. Like all of these vendors have a service, you know, it's usually 100 bucks a year in that neighborhood of, hey, we're going to store your video for you for 30 or 90 days and you just pay us every year. And that's part of the model for them. Like they want, you know, they sell the lose money on the razor, make money on the razor blades and they want you to sign up for it. But like even with Ufi, they had a security compromise and it's not clear whether it was intentional or not. I don't know. But you know, the screenshots were getting sent to their servers from the cameras. And that was a big deal. A couple of years ago, a bunch of listeners really gave me a hard time about it because at the time I had some Ufi cameras. The thing about home kit secure videos, I kind of trust Apple implicitly on this, that that's not going to happen. So it doesn't, not only does it not cost you money, I feel like it's a more secure way to like actual get recordings. And maybe we'll talk in a minute, but I don't really want recordings inside the house either anyway, but I think outside the house, they can really make a lot of sense. But that I think is a big point about home kit secure video people don't make. But then there's the downside and that's the resolution resolution and the controls. And so in all the links that I put for the show, I'm going to put multiple cameras because you can have cameras inside and outside that are all home kit secure video. And just to rattle off a few, I mentioned the Akara G five, you can do power over ethernet or Wi-Fi, it's home kit secure video, it's about 200 bucks, but it's a great camera. You can get the topo actually this camera is actually great and it is $35. I actually use this on my patio. And this is actually a pan and tilt camera up to 2k resolution. But this is where the limitations of home kit secure video come in, it uses home kit secure video. So you get the recordings and iCloud in the home app. But the home app doesn't have controls for pan and tilt. So you have to use the topo app if you want to be able to move the camera and home kit secure video max resolution is 1080p. And so the fact that Apple hasn't upgraded the 1080p resolution is kind of wild. I'm really hoping at WWDC this year and I've set it for the last four years that they upgrade that to 4k. But you can get the topo camera, it's 2k pan and tilt home kit secure video. Eve has great outdoor cameras that are floodlights. These are home kit secure video, you add it right to the home app. I have one of these on a barn. And even Eve has a great home kit secure video camera. This one's 1080p. But again, there's lots of options out there for cameras. You can do power over ethernet now both for your video doorbell and outdoor cameras like the G5. Use home kit secure video everywhere and not pay another subscription and not trust a third party with your video recordings. Yeah. So my inclination as I'm resetting my system is to just go with home kit secure video cameras. I'm very interested in that. Was it the G5 or the G4? G5. That one looks like a great camera. And I do have one area where power ethernet is feasible for me, other areas where it wouldn't. However, just like the home assistant mafia has already come for me, I'm going to hear from the ubiquity people next. Because my old pal Stephen Hackett is a 100% believer in ubiquity cameras. I know several friends and nerds who are listeners who are also super into them. So that's a question I have. If I'm going to start making some changes, I'm going to spend some money. Why don't I just buy ubiquity cameras? I have a ubiquity unifying network here. So I've got kind of everything I need to just plug into it. But I'll tell you the thing that's bugging me is I just want it accessible to my wife. I don't want to have to go in another app. And like a lot of the automation stuff that I want to play with with the stuff really requires that it be in the Apple home. So I'm probably going to just get some of these G5s and use those. But that's another kind of question that I think a lot of people can ask. If you're all in on Unify and you want to use your cameras, that's great. But they don't natively work with Apple home. And I don't really want to monkey around with some way of trying to get them to work and have to deal with the points of failure that come with that. And I'll say I'm all in on ubiquity, Unify for my network. That's what powers everything. And I love their stuff. And I think up until now, one of the big reasons people wanted to do the ubiquity cameras is power over ethernet or just ethernet in general, because it's a much more reliable connection. And I would say now that we have power over ethernet and ethernet devices and to be clear, the G5 camera, you can use it with ethernet and still power it via USB-C. So if you don't have power over ethernet specifically, you can still connect it via ethernet. I think it has been incredibly reliable. This video feed is super fast to load in the home app. And it is never disconnected. I mean, I've had it set up for months now. And so now that you can get power over ethernet, and there's more matter devices being introduced, even shades. I actually got these smart wings, shades that have power over ethernet. And so you can have your smart shades that way if you never want to deal with charging and you want to have a hard wired ethernet connection to your smart shades, you can do that too. It's kind of nuts. Now in retrospect, if I knew this was where we would be today, I would have ran ethernet everywhere when we built this house five years ago. I would have run it to my doorbell. I would have run it to every window frame. So then I could have had just a little tiny ethernet cable go into the shades and never think about connectivity or whatever. But that's one of the reasons. And lastly about the ubiquity, one of the other big reasons people do it is because they want they want to store their video footage locally, like on the hard drive in their closet. And totally get like if that's what you want to do, there's still options for you, like some of the cameras allow you to upload videos by like FTP, or sometimes network attached storage servers. So sometimes you can do that. But you can also do the micro SD card on the G five on the new video doorbell. And it's not like the servers that you would have set up with ubiquity, but it is an option. And for people like you and I, where I have other family members that access the cameras, and they don't want to use another app, and just be easy. I think the current home kit options, Apple home options are pretty good. And just for clarification, I'm sure some people don't understand power over ethernet. It's a special networking kind of protocol. Basically, you can run power over your ethernet cable, ubiquity, unified gear supports this. So if you get one of these P O E cameras from Akara, there's just an ethernet port on the cable and you plug into that that gives it power, but it also gives it a wired connection to the camera itself. So you don't have to worry about like Wi Fi failing or it not being able to communicate. So it's a it's a very stable way to do it. The downside, of course, is you've got to run an ethernet cable anywhere you want that camera to work. And for those of us with older houses, that's not necessarily trivial. I was able to run ethernet when the house was at the stud phase and I could have done it. I just built this studio three years ago and I could have done this. Well, I do have some ethernet in here, but I don't have it going to the outside camera points, you know. Right. And that's again, there were no ethernet home kit, secure video cameras when we did it. So I didn't think it was a need, but I guess if you're listening, you're about to build a house, you're going to buy a lot more ethernet cable. This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash MPU to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code MPU. So gang, recently I was out and about and bumped into an old lawyer friend, someone I hadn't seen for years and he introduced me to his wife as his webmaster. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about until I realized I had set him up on Squarespace like 10 years ago and he still loves it and uses it for his law firm. 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Definitely going to get a G5 camera, probably a PoE one as a test. And yeah, so we're going, but now Stephen, let's talk about the front door. How are we going to unlock? So I have a Ufie lock, smart lock there with a fingerprint sensor that the family is happy with. It has a camera in it, which is a nice feature, which is inconsistent. And I'm ready to move on. Where do I go next? So once again, again, Akara has not sponsored this or anything I've ever done, but they just make some great devices. They're now first to the market with the Akara U400 ultra wideband lock. So I have this, I did a whole video on it, but it has the fingerprint sensor has the pin code for unlocking. It has Apple Home Key. And if you didn't know Apple Home Key is where you can just tap your Apple Watch or your iPhone and it will unlock the door. You can just do that. But this one also has ultra wideband, meaning you can just approach the door and it will unlock via proximity. And in my testing, it'll work about eight to five feet away. You can tell the Apple Home app, you don't need the Akara app for this, you can tell the Apple Home app only unlock when I approach from the right, the left, forward or all three or any combination of that. And you just, you know, your groceries are full, you're holding, you know, grocery bags, and it will just unlock just by proximity and it will even unlock faster if it detects you are running. And so I was at CES, it's wild. I was at CES and there were guys testing this. And if it detects a fast approach, it will unlock sooner at like 10 to 15 feet. This way it's unlocked by the time you get to the door. So Akara has this lock. It is the one I would recommend if you want fingerprint, if you want the pin code, which my kids like the pin code, because they might not have their Apple Watch or you know, my youngest says don't have phones. So it has all of that. And I will mention if you don't want that, or if you don't care for the ultra wide band and you want maybe an inexpensive lock, Thor Bolt is actually a great brand. I've had multiple of their models. The X1, it has a pin pad, has a fingerprint sensor, works with Apple Home and has thread. It is really reliable, really fast. And it still works with home keys. So you can tap your Apple Watch or iPhone to it, and it will unlock. There's also an X3 version that's even cheaper without the fingerprint scanner, if you don't want that. And so Thor Bolt makes some great ones. Akara, the Schlage end code plus another one with a pin code home key and thread. And I'll mention level lock too, because if you want a smart lock that doesn't look like a smart lock, level lock is the way to go. It's the one that looks most just like a normal lock, but it is very expensive. You know, it's like $300. I think the new level lock pro is 330. It uses home key, so you can just tap your watch. It has NFC, so you can program NFC cards and keychain tags and you can tap it to the lock and it'll unlock. It looks really nice. I did a whole video on that as well. I still have one set up on one of my doors, but it is very expensive. And for me, I might put that on my front door, but I use the Akara ultra wide band on a patio door. I use the Thor Bolt on my garage room utility door, and I do all of that. And yeah. I think ultra wide band is the same technology that you're using for the car, unlock and the car stuff. My car got that like three months ago. Yeah. And I can tell you it has not failed once. Because my car came with like a little card you carry in your wallet, because the original connection, I think it was Bluetooth. It wasn't the ultra wide band and like nine out of 10 times, it worked fine. And then the 10th time you'd be standing next to the car waiting for it to unlock and just wouldn't. And you have to pull the thing that you want. I'm so tempted to not carry that card anymore because it just never failed. And I suspect you'd get the same thing with the door. So if I put one of these in, the whole thing is like, you just want your wife to be happy, right? You know, it's like, yeah, she comes on with groceries, she's got her phone in her purse, the door unlocks, no, nothing further. It seems like that's an easy upgrade. It is. And it's also smart enough to know what side of the door you're on. So this is one thing where a level lock, it worked, it did have proximity unlock, but it worked over Bluetooth. And like you said earlier, Bluetooth is not great for a variety of reasons. But one of the issues with the level lock is if you walked by it inside the house, it might unlock because of things you're approaching. It doesn't know what direction you're coming from. That's not good. That's not good. The bad guys at the front door, they walk up to the door to look through the people when the door unlocks. Exactly. And so the Akara Ultra Wideband one knows what side of the door you're on. And I tested it multiple times. You can walk on the back side of that door, and it will not unlock. It won't unlock because it knows you're inside, it will stay locked. And it's even has some of the settings you have to go to the Akara app for. It has like double entry settings. So if you have like a screen door or other door that's like a couple feet from your main door, you can tell it that and it'll know how to work it all out. So yeah, it's the Akara one's really good with the Ultra Wideband. And I also want to mention just a side note, talking about entryway. I also have a garage door opener. And this one has been complicated for a lot of people because the Chamberlain garage door openers, they've been working very hard to make it impossible to use smart home devices with their engines because they want you to pay for like the My Chamberlain subscription or whatever to open your garage, which is insane. Everybody wants to monetize. Yeah, everybody monetize. So, but so Meris really makes the only one that I would say is worth getting. So this is the version that I have. It works with my Genie motor. If you don't have one of the newer My Chamberlain ones, this one will probably work with yours. It's 50 bucks. It works over Wi-Fi. It doesn't have any of the newer technologies, but it's actually really reliable. It works. I've had it for years. But Meris also just released this newer version. It's a little more expensive, but it's specifically made to work with the pain in the neck motors, like from Chamberlain and LiftMaster. And so if you have one of those newer garage door motors, and it doesn't work with like the hard wiring options, you can try this new one from Meris, and they're trying to get around it too. So we'll link that. Could you also just like get an IR blaster or something to just send this to signal? Like. Yeah, I mean, yes, you can. I mean, that's I think even my car, I could program that kind of stuff in. But if you have CarPlay, one of the nice things is when you enter a one mile radius of your home, your garage door control just appears on the CarPlay. And you can literally just tap it to open and close your garage. I open and close my garage a lot for my watch. If I'm walking outside to take the trash out or whatever, I'll say close the garage, open the garage. And it's really reliable. And IR blaster might work. I don't know how you would get that in home kit, maybe with a smart plug, but I would do the Meris one. It's a pain in the neck. You do have to run a contact sensor. So you have to run a cable from your motor that Meris gives you in the box all the way down to your door garage door somewhere. So the contact sensor knows when the door is open or closed. So that's a pain in the neck. You have to be on the ladder for a while. But you do that once and you're done. And I did that. Well, the good news in my house is what used to be called the garage is now called the shop. And the garage door does not get opened very often. So I'm not super into that. But the, I think another edge case people run into often is ceiling fans. Like how do I get a ceiling fan on home kit? You can do that too. If you crack that nut yet, see? Yes, I have all my ceiling fans are in home kit. There's one switch, guess from who? Lutron. And once again. But they have, yeah, they have a ceiling fan control switch. They never updated the design. So it still looks like the older style Lutron switches with like the, you know, actual fan icons and stuff like that. But this works with fans. You do have to be careful of your model fan, because a lot of fans now come with remotes in the box. And they want you to control the light and the fan from the remote and not a switch. And so you need a fan that is made to be wired to two separate switches. So the light part of the fan would be on one switch. And I would, I put those on Lutron dimmer switches. And then the fan part needs to be on a second switch, namely this smart fan control. And you have to work with if someone's installing it for you, if you're installing it, sometimes the fans have a module specifically for the remote. And you might have to specifically not install that part. So the fan works with double dual switches, but maybe ask the people at Lowes Home Depot, wherever you're buying it. Or I might try to find my fan that I've used all over the house that works with this. But the Lutron Cassetta one is the way to do the ceiling fans. All right. We haven't talked much about robot facts, but that is now a thing with HomeKit, right? That is the thing with HomeKit. I do not use robot vacuums in the home app, mostly because you don't have all the options that you still get in the robot's app, namely like room specific cleaning. Sometimes it could work. Sometimes not the kind of cleaning. So I have robot vacuums and mops. And there's like vacuum level intensity. There's mop level intensity and a lot of different settings. And so even though I have all the smart home things, when it comes to robot vacuums, I just use the robot vacuum app. And I know we just talked about this brand in a negative way. But my favorite recent robot vacuum and mop that I've been using is actually the Ufie Omni S2. It is a roller style mop. So it's not the circular mop pads that spin. This actually has a roller and it's pretty fast and it's pretty good. Now this was given to me by the brand for like a sponsored video in the past. They did not sponsor this. But I've got a lot of robot vacuums from a lot of sponsors. I have Dreamy. I have D-Bot, the Ecovax, Narwhal. Narwhal is pretty good. I do like them as well. But this has been my current favorite for robot vacuums and mops. Yeah. And I don't have a thing against Ufie, but my cameras are like five years old and they're all kind of just falling apart. And I kind of was thinking about this morning. My parents lived in the same house like 40 years till they died. You know how many doorbells they had the whole time? One. Yeah. It's like, this is the thing. If you get into this, it's like you're not going to buy one and have it for 40 years. It's going to be a thing you upgrade. And I'm just in that cycle now where a bunch of stuff needs upgrading. And the experiment of trying to run a camera system outside of home has just kind of been a failure with the rest of my family. If I lived alone, maybe I would be better off. But it's a, well, I wouldn't be better off. But I don't want to fiddle with it either. And one of the things about home kid secure video cameras in the home app, you have controls permissions with the users that you add to your Apple home, including can this person view the live stream and the recording just one or the other or none. And so you can add people to that. And Apple home has actually added the ability to add guests that are not in your iCloud family, but that you might want to give access to a door lock like we've been talking about, or even your garage door. And you can even give them permissions on a schedule. So someone just has access to the door lock on Tuesdays from 10am to 12pm. You can do that. And there's a lot of permissions that the Apple home app now just handles that you don't need third party apps for. And I appreciate as much as I like complex automations, I like not thinking about them once I've set them up. And the Apple home app allows for that. Yeah, we had that happen. What's my sister got to the house like 15 minutes before we did. And I just unlocked the door for her so she could go in, you know, and that that is really nice. So have we hit all the hardware at this point? See the other categories we missed? We've been a lot of hardware. Let me just rattle off some devices that I think are fun. And one that I just set up yesterday. Wait, let me get my credit card out. Yeah, yeah, please do. Go ahead. So one device I just got a yesterday, HomeKit Buttons has been a thing. And when we talk about family using your smart home, I actually try to get buttons. So like my kids, my daughter, she has her fan, fan light, HomePod and a lamp in her room. And they're all in HomeKit in the Apple Home app. And controlling it, she can yell at the HomePod mini, but sometimes it doesn't understand her and that can be frustrating. And so I like HomeKit Buttons. And there's been various models over the years, but they've all been a little wonky, like sometimes they disconnect, they take coin batteries, you have to change out every six months. And so this new one is from Air Versa. It's a brand that also makes like air purifiers. But this is a HomeKit button. It's thread. It's so it works with Apple Home. It's not matter. It's Apple Home specific, but it has thread. So connectivity is great. It's reliable, works fast. And the best part is it doesn't take a coin battery, it's rechargeable. So you can recharge it over USB C. And then you don't have to worry about coin batteries has three buttons. And each button can be programmed as a single press, double press or long press. So you can actually program this one little remote to have nine different functions. And it even comes with a little wall plate. So if you want to put it on the wall, it'll magnet attached to the wall plate. And then you can pick it up and take it with you as a remote. And this kind of stuff, this is how I want to be doing buttons going forward. It's pretty sweet. Yeah, I on the button category, I'm a fan of the Acara buttons. Again, very essential. As long as you have one of their hubs, they're not expensive and they're super useful. And I use the same way you've got three presses, once double press and long press. And so I've got like, I've got one under my desk as I'm sitting here, and I can set the studio lighting just just by tapping underneath the desk. I've got one by the door that doesn't have a light switch. I've got one in my nightstand at night. I take a eyedrops every night, I have to keep my eyes closed so I can set the lights off and on without having my eyes open using just one of those little buttons. But a three-rigged button giving me nine options. Exactly. Well, you know, that one's going to get ordered. And there you go. And so now I'll actually go quick. So I do use the Philips Hue sync box and light strip to sync stuff to my TV. And there's lights behind my TV. Oh, yeah, that's a thing, right? You put the light strip behind your TV and it reflects whatever's on the TV. And I think it's super fun. And so I'll put a link to my video in the show notes, but I do it. And whenever we watch a fun movie like Mario Brothers or something like that, it's fun to have the lights syncing behind the TV. Yeah. And that is like, it's not a small investment to put that in. But if you like movies, I think that is something that really adds a bit, doesn't it? It does. And there are other, I use the Hue one, but GoVee has an option too that's cheaper. And so you could try theirs and it would probably still work pretty good. All right, now actual lightning round. There's a little table lamp from Marist that can change colors. That's pretty fun. It's inexpensive. The more expensive Hue twilight lamp. I have this on my nightstand and really like it. You can change multi colors. It actually has a light from in the front and shines to the back. So it can reflect off your wall and color that. But it also has two buttons on top. So those can be surfaced in HomeKit in the Apple Home app. And you can actually program those two buttons to like run scenes and stuff like that. So that's pretty cool. And just to think about it, like if you have a light where you can set the color to the light, that becomes a communication device from your home automation. Like if the Dodger's wind, it turns blue or whatever, if the refrigerator is open, it turns red. But getting one or two of those, you can find interesting uses for them. Absolutely. That's a twilight lamp. I have an Eve flare. It's actually behind me in the video. It's the little round ball that glows. And it's just, it's actually rechargeable so you can carry it with you, bring it outside and do fun stuff with. So the Eve flare is fun. The Gobi floor lamp I mentioned before. I also have a light strip behind my headboard in the bedroom. And it actually makes for really nice lighting when it's late at night because you don't have to have the, you know, top lights or canned or ceiling fan lights on. And it's kind of this back glow. And it's easy on the eye. So Gobi makes a great light strip for that. Those are also really good under kitchen cabinets. Yes. And I actually have a kitchen cabinet light in all the links to the GE SYNC plus, I believe I have those under my kitchen cabinets. This is also cool. This is a Leviton scene controller. It is only Wi-Fi, which is unfortunate. But what's cool is this replaces a light switch and the bottom button is the light switch switch. So you can turn the light on and off via that bottom button. And then the top three buttons are home kit buttons. So you can actually have those program scenes. And now you have a hardware switch plus three other controls that you can run anything or just control a single apple home device, whatever you want, but it's then in your wall wired. And that's pretty cool. I use one of those. And, and then it was the home kit button. So that's, that's some fun devices and links to all the stuff down in the show notes that'll all be there. Yeah, I'm going to have to like really like, you know, sell a kidney after we finish this. Well, let me, last thing I wanted to do, I wanted to just mention some automations that I have, that I find because people are wondering like, well, what is the purpose of a smart home? What, what can you even do that matters? Matter pun intended. But anyway, so these are just a few of my automations that I run. Number one, my bathroom, my master bathroom has like six switches. There's like the vanity light, the exhaust fan, the shower light, closet light, toilet room light, toilet room fan. So there's six switches. And when I'm someone's leaving the bathroom, if they turn off the vanity, chances are they're leaving the bathroom and I want all the lights off. And so one of the automations you can do is when an accessory is controlled, namely when a switch is turned off, do this. And what I have it do is turn off all six switches at once. So when I leave the master bathroom, click one switch and everything in the master bathroom turns off without having to go around to every switch. That's pretty fun. I'm thinking about in my bathroom, because of the human presence sensor works so well, but we have to kind of walk through the bathroom to get to the toilet. And if you get up in the middle of the night, I can see the way it's the architecture is you can actually put a human presence sensor that doesn't face the actual bedroom. So I was thinking maybe I'll get one of those. So if she walks through the bathroom at night, the lights go on dim and then when she leaves, they go back off. I think that would be a clever use of one of those human presence sensors. I think that would be a great use. And in another bathroom one specifically, we have a window in our bathroom and I have a smart shade on it. And whenever someone takes a shower, they want the shade closed. And the because we also have two big windows in our master bedroom, which connects to the bathroom. And so you can kind of see in that way. So I have a when an accessory is controlled, namely the exhaust fan in the bathroom, which is something everyone's going to turn on when they take a shower, you turn that on all the shades close in the master bedroom and the bathroom. And the ceiling fan turns on in the master bedroom because sometimes you're hot when you get out of the shower, we live in Florida. And so all the shades close, ceiling fan turns on and that automatically happens when you turn on the exhaust fan. So that's pretty fun. You know, last time I looked into the automated shades, they were just really expensive, but they didn't seem that good. Have they got better at this point? They've gotten much better. Again, you can get matter over thread shades and I'll link these, but I would get the canisterio. That's what I have in my bathroom. And I've tried them all. And a lot of them are rebranded as they're like the same shade just rebranded, but canisterio is pretty inexpensive, depending on your window size. It's been reliable. You know, I have to charge it once every six months. It has a little USB C port. You can get a solar panel and a USB, you know, to keep it charged via that if your window faces the sun, but I love the smart shades. And that's one of those cool automations where an hour after sunset, all my shades close and then an hour after sunrise, all the shades open around the house. And so I have that pretty much every window in our house has that. And the last automation I'll mention, my kids bathroom, it's got three switches, vanity, shower, light, exhaust fan, and my kids always leave those on all the time. And the kids bathroom was like right across our little family room from my office. And so they leave the exhaust fan on, I hear it. And so I have to turn it off. And so I have a contact sensor, a car P2 on the door. And whenever it detects the door opens, so the active opening, it waits 10 seconds and then turns everything off. And the only time it would detect the door's opening is if someone had it closed and has now opened it. And 99% of the time it means one of my kids was in the bathroom and they're getting out. And so now every time someone leaves the bathroom after the door being closed, everything in that bathroom shuts off 10 seconds later. And I don't have to worry about the exhaust fan running all day. Okay, so you're pulling that off the shortcuts? Yeah, well, no, it's actually just built in. So you can do when a sensor detects something, when a door is opened, and I have a wait five seconds command, and then turn off all the things or wait 10 seconds, turn off all the things. So that's just built in. Yeah, the part that I'm confused about is like, how does it know so the door is being closed because they went, so they always, the door remains open when they're not in there. Correct, they leave the door open when it's not in there. So it only activates when it was closed and is now open. Yeah, okay, makes sense. Yeah, so I have my mini fridge contact sensor left open automation, which I talked about. I have all my scenes here in the filming studio for different colors, like these are all different smart scenes. I have a scenes for movies. So when we're in the family room, going to watch something. And then the last one I mentioned, my coffee grinder, I have it on a smart plug. And there was one time I ground my bean, I started a grinding, and I left the room and I forgot about it. And if you've ever done that, the coffee beans, it's a burr grinder, and all it started overflowing, and all the ground beans got up into the burr grinder, and it was a mess. And I was like, I never want this to happen again. So with a smart plug, you can have it set. This is a built-in automation. When an accessory is controlled, so when it's turned on, wait two minutes, that's exactly how long it takes for it to fill the little ground thing and then be done, and then turn off. So if I turn it on from the smart plug, which every smart plug has a little button where you can manually turn it on, it waits two minutes, and then turns the grinder off. So no matter where I go, or if I forget about it, the grinder is going to turn off and I don't have to worry about it. That's how I do it. Nice. Now, what about for your home, apple home setup? I mean, you use zones and rooms and all that as well. What are some good tips for people who are trying to get that together? I would be specific about the rooms because you can give the voice assistant, which I haven't really talked about, but I actually do use the voice assistant a lot for controlling my smart home. Be specific about the room names and what people will naturally call it. So in my daughter's room, I call that room Elise's room. And if she says turn off Elise's lights, it will just turn off the lights in that room. It won't turn off all the lights across the house unless the voice assistant misunderstands and then it's, you know, that's want to happen. But honestly, it doesn't happen as much as you would think. And so, you know, name the rooms, what people naturally call them, that will help family members and other people in the house actually control the things and tell people like, you know, you could say lights on, you could say lights off, close the shades. One little thing is I, you can group devices too. So in my master bedroom, I have two windows, each one has a smart shade on it. And in the apple home app, you can group the devices and they appear as one in the apple home app. So now I can press one device in the apple home app and it closes, closes both shades or opens both shades. And I also will call the individual devices blinds and then the combined device shades. This way, whether my wife says close the blinds or close the shades, they'll close. So, you know, little tricks like that can help a lot. Well, you know, the reason I put that button on the nightstand is because I was using Siri to a home pod. Oops, I said the word. But the, I was, you know, using the voice assistant to turn lights out in the bedroom when I would do the eye drops. And one time we had some friends over and they were my kids and some of their friends and my wife, they were all downstairs having a great time. I went to bed and I told the voices and to turn off the bedroom lights. And it turned off every light in the house. And it was a dark night and the whole house went into darkness with people here. And yeah, that's not good. That's why I decided to use a button that can actually force it to never make that mistake. You know, hanging over this whole conversation is, is that voice assistant and Apple's intelligence going to get better in a few months. I mean, I could see a world where Apple Home is a lot more appealing with a usable artificial intelligence. And especially one that can create automations and scenes for you based on a voice command. And this is actually something when I was at CES, I went to the Amazon booth and Alexa plus can actually do that. So you can just say, Hey, dingus, create a scene that when I say abracadabra, all the lights in the dining room, kitchen and living room turn on. And it's smart enough to parse all that information and actually create the scene. Now in the booth, it couldn't really tell if it actually created it accurately. But that's the promise. And I think that would help a lot because now people could create automations just by telling their home pod and not having to go through all the taps and actually creating it. But another tip, I do put a lot of home kit scenes in the control center of my iPhone, which you can put home kit scenes and devices there. There is actually an entire page of the control center, which Apple will make just your smart home devices. And it will intelligently change throughout the day. And I find it to be pretty good. So I have scenes for like go to bed and good night. And once it gets to later in the day or in the evening, those controls will, you know, do that, it'll show on that control center pane. And I'm big in the shortcuts. I have a lot of smart home devices plugged into different shortcut automations. And that's something you can do in any shortcut, you know, controlling Apple home and getting your home state, you can do in shortcuts, even things like getting contact sensor states. So I have a shortcut where I can run it, it gets every contact sensor on every door, and then shows me in quick look, here's all the doors, here's whether they're open or closed. And you can basically create these like automated home reports, based on, you know, doing that in shortcuts in your contact sensor. So utilize shortcuts, control center, get some home kit buttons, make things easy and natural to say with the voice assistant and the home pods. And I think you can have a good experience. It's been worth it for me. I've enjoyed it. Did you say that you're getting a dynamic control center, that it changes the available home kit actions based on the time of day? That's right. That's built in. How do you do that? I mean, when the control center was updated in Iowa's 26, when it's now like customizable, you know, if you go down and just swipe, there should just be a home kit control center there. Yeah, I've got one. I set it up, but I've never seen anything change on it. Oh, yeah. No, it changes. And you can even, you know, you can create multiple control centers in Iowa's 26. And if you go to add a control, there's one called home, where it's just like kind of a nondescript home thing. And when you tap it and add it to your control center, you can then expand it to be the entire width and breadth of the control center pane. And then there's a little toggle that says use recommended. And if you leave that toggle on, it will just try to figure out what it is you want to control. I must have turned that off at some point. I am a big fan. Tell me if I'm doing this right or wrong. I'm a big fan of scenes. So I've created a lot of real custom scenes. Like when I'm recording a show, I push a button and it turns a recording light over the door and does, you know, does different things. And a lot of times I find scenes that have elements that spread throughout the house, you know, for different things. I do have a scene that I want all the lights on the house to turn off on that sometimes makes sense. I have one that turns most of them on. If I hear a noise at night and I just want to go downstairs and see what's going on. So I think if you're not using scenes, that's something you should probably look into. Is that your approach to or what do you do for that? Oh, definitely. I mean, I have seen these are all my scenes. I have a bunch of them in my home. And I have some for I'm done working and shuts off everything here in the studio. I have one for I'm done recording. And so it'll raise my blackout shades that I have here. These are E motion blinds, you know, I have all that. And there's scenes that I set up for my kids. So I'll ask them like, Hey, what are you going to say at night that you want your room to do stuff? You know, when you say good night. And so and when you create a scene, remember, you can ask the voice assistant the scene name and it will do it. So when I'm getting ready to record, I literally do this every time I make a video, I'll say, Hey, dingus video blue, and it will set everything. Actually, I'll do it right now. Mutual devices real quick. If you're going to, if you're listening or whatever. But if I say, Hey, Siri video blue, and you should see behind me pretty shortly, there we go, my scene turned blue. And that actually does more than just change the color. It lowers my blackout shades. It stops my ceiling fan. It does all the things in the studio ready, and actually lowers the temperature two degrees because it gets hot in this little room when I'm recording. And so it does all those things. And so yeah, highly recommend setting up, take the time and set those up. All right. So that was a ton of stuff. Listen, if you have questions, we're in the forums, the MPU forums, you can reach out at the links in the show notes, but we're going to put, I'm going to put so many links in the show notes. And just so you know, a lot of them are to Amazon, but they are not affiliate links. You know, I didn't, didn't want the show to feel like it was salesy. I really just love this stuff. And, you know, trying to recommend the best products out there. So if you get anything through the links in the show notes or through the email, they're not affiliates, we're not going to earn anything from that. I'm just putting the devices that I'm excited about in there. So. Well, I'm going to be behind some, Steven, because it's time for me to kind of get this wrangled. And you've given me a lot of good advice. I've, you know, I've already got a decent setup, but I want to improve upon it. I think the cameras are a big deal to the family. I'm going to start with some of those and I'll be up in the rafters running ethernet the next few days. Pay somebody to do that, David. Just, just pay somebody. You, you can, they can do it. Task, grab it, somebody. Last and last pro tip, I will say, if you're going to do cameras and you're going to run lines to cameras, I do have a camera in my garage because every once in a while, if you have a smart garage door opener, sometimes the sensor may get confused. It thinks the door open is, is doors open when it's closed and vice versa. And I like being able to pop in there and check my camera in the garage to confirm if the door is closed or not. So if you're planning on getting a bunch of cameras, maybe put it in the garage too. Yeah. You need an indoor camera in the garage. Those are not that expensive and just, just hook it up. Exactly. We're going to record some more power users. David had an M5 MacBook Pro ordeal. I'm talking about my studio display and maybe some outdoor stuff, but you can get the bonus episode and add free version of this and listen to our Star Wars movie ranking in the bonus feed that's MPU Pro Max by going to relay.fm slash MPU. Again, everyone who already supports the show, you got access to that monthly bonus episode as well. Thanks to our sponsors, Mercury Weather and Squarespace, and we'll catch you next time.