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in today's video we're going to be doing 
something a little bit different we're going   to be having a look at how you might go about 
starting a smart home using a cara check it out what's going on guys i hope you're all doing 
well some of you that have been subscribers   for a little while now will know that just before 
christmas i moved to my new house and since then   i've been slowly but surely building up my new 
smart home with various different products and the   brains of the operation what binds everything and 
controls everything is home assistant and that's   where acara comes into the fold so i'm going to 
be creating a mini series probably consistent of   about three different parts and each part is going 
to focus on a key area or aspect of the design   of actually creating my smart home using acara's 
products and although this video is sponsored by   acara they're just providing me with the products 
they're not actually giving me any direction or   telling me what to do and they also don't watch 
and review these videos before they go live   i'm also going to try and stagger these videos 
so when i put a part out if you guys have got any   suggestions or ideas for how to actually improve 
my designs using the cara products then you'll   be able to do so and i'll be able to make those 
changes and implementations for the next video   for this first video we're going to primarily 
focus on the actual planning process   so i'm going to be sharing with you my actual 
ideas and plans for where i'm actually going   to play psychiatrist devices and how i'm actually 
going to go about setting them up we'll also look   at the different methods for using the car as 
devices so whether you want to keep it in the   acara ecosystem and use their hubs to link up all 
the devices or you want to integrate those devices   into existing smart homes like home assistant 
which is exactly what i'm going to be doing   and of course if you've got any good tips or 
unique use cases where you've used acara devices   in your own homes then do let me know what they 
are in the comments below let's get into it then   before you start purchasing any products for a 
whole house setup you should at least first test   a few of them out just so you get a feel for how 
they work and to actually decide if you like them   or not and this goes for any product range not 
just the cara's the other thing you should think   about is how you're actually going to connect 
them up and what methods you're going to be using   what's great about acara's product range is 
the fact that they're all zigbee 3.0 certified   acara also recently announced that they're 
going to be supporting both thread and mata   in some of their new products and this is also 
going to come to some of their older products   so if you do own some old products 
you're not going to be left in the dust   and this is just nice to see that they're going 
to be doing that by far the simplest method for   setting up and connecting your acara devices is by 
making use of one of akara's herbs the hubs come   in a few different variants and each variant has 
its own set of unique features and differences but   ultimately the hubs all offer the same thing which 
is a simple and convenient method for connecting   and setting up your devices all centrally from one 
location the setup process of linking a device to   the hub is very quick and simple and you can do 
it within a few seconds once you have done that   you can make use of the acara app and you can 
start writing your own automations and scenes   and this is where the power will start to come in 
if you're only using the acara ecosystem that's   pretty much all you need to do is just grab a hub 
grab a few devices that you want to make use of   and then you're good to go if however like me 
you already have an existing smart home system   you might not have a need for the acara hub 
as you may already have a zigbee coordinator   to actually connect all your devices to so that 
already is a big saving for you as you don't need   to buy the acara herb and have another hub in 
your collection or if you don't have an existing   coordinator or maybe you're moving from an akara 
only smart home over to home assistant then the   acara hub is still a great choice with the acara 
hub you can link this directly to home assistant   and any of the child devices that are connected to 
that hub can be passed through to home assistant   and you can use those devices then in your own 
scripts scenes and automations just like you would   with any other device and that's a great option 
for anyone to use especially if you are moving   over to home assistant but one important thing 
to note here is that if you are making use of the   acara hub as your main coordinator you won't be 
able to pair other zigbee devices so things like   your philips hue bulbs or other zigbee products 
you'll only be able to link your akara devices   in addition to being able to pair the devices to 
the acara hub and using the acara app will pair   in the devices to home assistant and using home 
assistant you can also pair the devices to the   acara hub and use the devices through home care 
however the process of setting up and using the   devices with homekit isn't something that i'm 
really going to be touching on in this little   series in the next video when i actually get 
onto the installation i'll be covering all   of those different methods so that way if you 
are using one of those set methods you'll be   able to just follow along having used a lot of 
acara's products in my old house i roughly knew   what kind of devices and sensors that i wanted 
to make use of and just to help me a little bit   further i decided to create a rough floor plan 
of my current house just so i could decide where   things were going to be placed and this isn't 
something that you have to do but i personally   found that this really helped me especially with 
deciding on what automations i wanted to happen   in various spaces but also what informations i 
wanted to get from various areas and various rooms   sparing no expense i made use of microsoft 
paint and just added some little splodges   to my floor plan for where i wanted these 
various different sensors and devices to go   i could then just tally them up and decide on 
what i actually wanted and what i didn't really   need by making use of my floor plan i was able to 
decide on some of the devices and sensors that i   wanted to make use of so in this mini series i'm 
going to be making use of some motion sensors   some windows and door sensors some other car 
s t box sensors some temperature sensors some   wireless buttons some roller drivers some leak 
sensors and also some of the cars light switches   there may also be a few other devices and sensors 
but we'll get to those as we start doing the   installation out of all of the acara products one 
that i hadn't really played around with before   with the light switches so i got a couple of 
these just to try them out just to make sure that   i did like them the light switches again come in a 
couple of different variants you've got the single   or double gang switches and then you've also 
got the neutral or no neutral versions of these   the key differences between the neutral and the 
no neutral version is the fact that the neutral   version offers power monitoring and also overload 
protection whereas the neutral version doesn't   but with the neutral version you obviously don't 
need that neutral wire having played with the   switches i was happy with them and one cool thing 
that i didn't know you could actually do with them   you can actually decouple the switch in the relay 
so this allows you to independently control them   so you might not necessarily want the switch 
press to actually turn that relay on and off   so if that's something you were interested in 
doing you can do it with the acara switches   once you've decided on the kit that you 
actually want you can go ahead and order it   and when you order it there's a ton of different 
retailers and locations you can actually pick the   akara stuff up from you can now even pick 
them up directly from within apple stores   again checking out and testing some of these 
devices before you go ahead and make a big order   is definitely something that you should be doing 
just in case you don't get on or agree with the   devices if you start off small you can't always 
expand and as it's so modular and it uses zigbee   it's very easy to just add more in the future and 
there we are i've got a rough plan an idea of what   i want to do and what i want to achieve with 
your car attack and in the next video we should so as i was saying we've now got this big box 
of tech and in the next video i will be showing   you the setup and installation of some of 
this stuff as well as giving you a bit of   product information so we actually know what 
it is we've got and how we go about using it   this has been a bit of a different video but 
if you have enjoyed it or maybe you want to   find out what i actually do with this stuff in 
the future then don't forget to drop me a like   and if you're not already hit that subscribe 
button and ding dong the notification bell   you'll then be alerted to when that future 
video is and as always a massive thank you   to these awesome dudes these are awesome dudes my 
patreons if you're interested in helping support   my channel which in turn allows me to create 
content like this then you'll find a link to   my patreon in the description below thank you for 
watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers you