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– I absolutely love the
extra space in my new house, not to mention the exquisite decor. But the problem is that it
was built back in the 90's, when smart meant a
mechanical sprinkler timer and hardwired intercom. Marco. – [Jake] Polo. – That aint gonna cut it for me. But, when I looked into
expanding beyond this with smart lighting and smart sensors, honestly speaking, there are
so many different technologies and ecosystems and brands
that contribute to some or more of them that frankly
it was pretty overwhelming, even for a tech savvy person, to the point where I
pretty much had to dedicate one of my staff members to
figuring this stuff out. So together we're going
to be showing you guys how we plan to use off the
shelf commodity Z-wave devices to achieve my wildest smart home dreams. Ridge wallet has redefined
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(upbeat music) Before you begin your smart home journey, you've gotta figure out what
exactly you want to automate or smartify. From there, you'll need to do
research into the available products that can achieve your goals. For instance, if you want to
install smart light switches so that you can have your lights turn off when you leave your house, there are going to be a lot of options, with a key differentiating factor being there communication standard or what they use to talk to each other and to the internet.

Now currently the entire smart home market is in a bit of a confusing state due to a standard called Matter. It's a project that's backed by some of the biggest companies in the world, with the intention of standardizing the communication between smart devices. The problem is that Matter isn't out yet, and we still don't know
what it's gonna look like, or what it's going to mean for existing communication standards. So for now we're gonna
say it doesn't matter. That leaves us with the big players, wi-fi, Zigbee and Z-wave. Now wi-fi is the one you're
probably most familiar with. It's super fast, but it requires connected devices to maintain an active connection
with a wi-fi access point. That uses a ton of power, so it's not suitable for battery powered devices like this one. Not that we'll using anything like this, because screw replacing batteries,
if you know what I mean. Wi-fi is also what's
known as a star network, which means that all of the devices have to be in range of
a central access point rather than being able to
mesh off of one another.

It's also worth nothing that depending on how baller your wi-fi access point is, adding 20 or 30 smart devices can start to seriously hurt
your wi-fi performance. Which brings us to Zigbee and Z-wave. These are both mesh style networks, which means that devices
within the network can mesh between each other
through low energy radio waves rather than requiring all of the devices to connect to that central hub. This means they have better range, excellent battery life, and they're more resilient
than wi-fi based networks. The downside is that they are way slower. Not that that really matters
in a residential application. Even if we were taking multiple hots, all the way from the basement to the upper floor of this house, we're still talking
milliseconds of latency, which isn't to say that
they're both the same though.

There are a few main differences between Zigbee and Z-wave products. For starters, the Z-wave alliance requires that any Z-wave product goes through a very stringent certification process that requires the manufacturer to stick to standardized commands and security protocols. This basically means that Z-wave devices from various manufacturers
are way more likely to just work with one
another and do so securely. It also means though that
Z-wave compatible products tend to be more expensive. Zigbee on the other hand is fully open, and doesn't require any certification. That means that most Zigbee
stuff is a fair bit cheaper, it just might not all work together. They also operate on
different frequencies. Z-wave is around 900 megahertz, while Zigbee operates in
the 2.4 gigahertz range.

Theoretically, this gives
Zigbee the upper hand in terms of bandwidth, but since most devices are
barely sending any data, just on or off, it usually doesn't make
a ton of difference. Now there's anecdotal evidence that says that Zigbee will not mess
with your 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi, but since it's already
such a congest band, I didn't wanna take that risk, and since all the devices
that I wanted to use are Z-wave ready it was
the better choice for me. There's still one issue though, the hub or hubs. The thing is, a device
like your smart phone can't natively communicate
with Z-wave or Zigbee devices, so you need something to bridge the gap.

And this right here is
the AYOTECH Z Stick seven, which is the latest
generation Z-wave technology, which means that our power efficiency, as well as better range, not to mention convenient
backwards compatibility. Now, nothing would prevent you from using a Z-wave and a Zigbee hub, and marrying those devices on the same smart home overall network
using something like this raspberry pie running home assistant. And in fact there are hubs
like the smart things hub that natively support both, but it can add an extra
communication step, so we haven't felt the need to dabble with any of that, we're sticking with Z-wave. This concludes the scripted
portion of this video. Goodbye teleprompter. All right, Jake, let's
YOLO this thing, shall we? – [Computer Voice] Okay. – [Linus] Hey, that was the breaker. – So I heard you're supposed
to lick both your fingers- – Uh-huh. – And then- – And then put them up my butt hole? – Well, okay, after that
you lick them again. – Oh, so we're on different subreddits. – Yeah. (laughing) – There is a neutral, it's in there boys. Very nice. Okay, was this on or off when I? It doesn't matter.

– It does matter actually. – Oh, shoot balls. I don't have the little poky jabby. – You don't need a poky jabby. – I do need a poky jabby. – Why do you need a poky jabby? – So I can get the thing out. Hold on, hold on, don't, push it in a bit before you pull. Yeah, there we go. – Holy mentos. – [Linus] What's up, Andy? – [Andy] Hi. – How you doing? Now because this is a smart switch, we can't just wire our two black wires up to the two black
screws and call it a day, it actually requires the neutral wire, which is gonna be this
silver puppy right here. So we're gonna wire that
up to these white wires. Now, we've also got a fourth
connection for traveling. – That's for a three way. – Ah, it's for a three
way switch, perfect. Oh good, so this is three way compatible. – Yeah. I think you need their
specific ad on switches, but yeah, you could do a three way.

– Again, ladies and gentleman, this is not what we would recommend, but we're just doing this to
kind of test it out today. So we're just gonna jam both
of the wires under the screw so they'll make contact that way. Hold on, I think I can
loosen it a bit more. – [Jake] How much do you
trust your handy work? – Enough to test it right now and then immediately put the
other switch back on properly, and then have a qualified
professional do this again later. Haza. Okay, so we've got our line and our load, and then we've got, normally we would our morrette and a wire chunk to go
to our neutral here, but we didn't.

We just put them both there. Just ignore that. We're not even gonna screw that back in. So nice. Actually we should screw it back in so no one gets burned. And boom. – [Jake] Yeah. – All right, cool. – [Jake] It's so cute. – Yeah, it's, stop it. Stop it. Another cool way we could have
checked if power was running, shout out to Fluke, is with the volt alert
setting on their multimeter. So check this out. (multimeter beeping) (multimeter beeping) (multimeter beeping) Cool, huh? – What do you want a
tutorial or something? – No, I just, I wanna see how does it pop up in Home Assistant.

If you're not familiar with it, Home Assistant is a piece
of software that allows you to connect basically
any smart home ecosystem to another smart home ecosystem and then set up automations
based on the data that you receive from each one. It's super cool. And theoretically our
switch is gonna show up pretty much like that. – Actually, before we do that, we kind of need to set up the hub. Now technically I kind of
did this in the background, but if you need to do this yourself, all you gotta do is
install the Z-wave JS ad-on into Home Assistant.

If you have Home Assistant
running in a docker container you're not gonna have ad-on support so you're gonna have to do
this in a separate container, but if you have it on
a Ras pie like we do, it's really easy to install. You basically go to the ad-on store, type in Z-wave JS and install. There's two versions technically, one that's built right into Home Assistant and has less configuration, and then there's the fully featured, full fledged web gooey one, which is what we're gonna use because it is way nicer. Look at this, you can see everything. – [Linus] That is super cool. I don't see our switch yet though. – Because we haven't hooked it up yet.

So by default nothing's
gonna be configured. You're gonna have to pick your USB device, we have it there. You're gonna wanna set your network key, and then you should be able
to see your controller. Ours is the 700 series based controller, it's the Z sticks, gen seven whatever. It's in there. We can see it's alive,
we can see it's happy. Then you wanna add your devices. So you wanna add the switch? – Yeah. – To add a Z-wave device, it's called an inclusion. So we're gonna go in the controller and tell it I wanna do an inclusion. Now go click both the buttons on there at the same time. – [Linus] All right, I'm
going, I'm going, I'm running. – I think that's the way you do it.

Oh, it worked. – [Linus] It worked? – Turn it back on. Haza. Okay, device found. Sweet. So now that it's found the device it shows up unknown AF, oh wow that was quick. Nevermind. Okay. So it interviewed the device, found out what the device can do, what it's called. And we can see in here basic switch, binary switch, (indistinct). – [Linus] Oh, nice and snappy. – Target status on. It's a little slow 'cause- – These are fluorescent lights. That was (snapping fingers)
basically instantaneous. – [Jake] Oh, were you
trying to host right now? – Yeah, I'm trying to host a video.

– Oh, sorry, here you go. – Geez, geez. – Should we play with some other devices? – Absolutely, I already got
this one out of the bag. – Oh, this one I already set up too, but I mean the process is the same. Basically Z-wave devices usually have an action button it's called. So in this case if you got this brand new, you plug it in, start your inclusion. – And you get you some action. – You click the action button and it just does it. – You're a smart home enthusiast so that's the only action you're getting. – Jesus. – Don't include that in the video. – [Computer Voice] Okay. – Go plug it in. – So I can action myself
here with the button. – [Jake] But I'm gonna action you for you. – Jake's gonna action me.

So look mom, no hands. Do you always ride your
bicycle on Toby's (indistinct). Wow, that did work really well. Now this is a Yeelight, it's a smart light. We could be cheating right now, but we're not. – [Jake] We're not cheating. – This is through Home Assistant. – [Jake] Proof. – Next I'll show you guys
something that would have been super handy to have when the contractors accidentally plugged the drain
for the air conditioning unit that's up in the attic. This right here is a moisture sensor, and what we can do is we can say "Hey, if you detect any moisture, "turn off "some device." Say for example the air conditioning unit. Cool, right? At $50 it's a lot cheaper
than these drywall repairs. Another really cool thing
that I wanna use extensively is motion sensing. Now, you can get switches that
have motion sensors in them that will just turn on for
a certain amount of time and then turn off. But with home assistant we
can make it so much smarter. These GE switches that we're using have both the light switch on and off, and the motion sensing component independently addressable
through Home Assistant.

So we can create all kinds
of fun little integrations. For example here in the theater room we could tell this switch hey,
if you don't see anyone move for let's say two hours, turn off all the lights, and while you're at it make sure the air conditioning's off and turn off the TV to save power. Dads love that kind of shit. Of course not everyone wants
to buy all new smart switches, so for those folks, check this out. We actually turned off the motion sensor that was built into the switch, and instead we're using one
of these simple little javis. This is an AYOTECH, I believe it's a six in one sensor. It's powered by USB or battery. So it absolutely sips power. It'll tell you temperature,
humidity, motion, I can't remember but there's six of them. Oh, it's UV vibration, which will be useful for tampering, and then also light, so it can tell not just
if there's any light, but it can tell how much light there is.

So you can tell it, for example, hey, look, if it's a
bright sunny day outside, there's already a lot
of light in the room, don't turn on the lights. And conveniently this GE one
that I'm planning to deploy also has that functionality, so I probably won't need
many, if any of these. Oh, and one thing that's nice is they have a wider field of view than some of the ones that
are built into the switches. Here's something cool, a lot of these AYOTECH devices, and for that matter, a
lot of smart devices, have extra sensors that you can pull to get extra data. So, for example, you can
see the multisensor six that we're about to show you a demo with in the mechanical room is measuring 23.3 degrees celsius, while that water sensor that
we had in the upstairs hallway is at 31.7.

I feel bad for the contractors here. I was like, I told them, I was like "I'll pay for
internet in the house, "you got internet, I'll
run the HVAC for you guys "while you're working," but then they broke it. I tried. For our last trick, AYOTECH
also makes a whole house energy monitoring solution. And we're just gonna
open this up real quick and see sort of how scary it looks. And if it's too scary, then we're gonna have ♪ Brian the electrician ♪ – Hook it up. Oh, it's actually not that scary. Everything is, everything is (indistinct).

– [Jake] Here, why don't you
take the whole thing off? – I'm trying. – [Jake] It's hitting the breaker. – Yeah, this is really
clean, they did a great job. I mean I don't, it's not that
I like hanging out in here, this is not my, this is not my happy place. – How are you supposed to do this AYOTECH? – Yeah, way to go AYOTECH. You were doing real well up
until this point in the video. – [Jake] Okay, that looks
probably like it'll work I guess. – I mean what the heck
could this thing even do? So this'll monitor your power and then what? If your power goes over a certain amount you could get like an email? – [Jake] Oh, it's working.

– Oh, is it working? – [Jake] Yeah. – Oh cool. – [Jake] So guess how much
power your whole house is using. – Let's go look. I mean right now, hold on, okay, let me think, let me think. 'Cause the HVAC's not running, range isn't running. Okay, I'm gonna say- – [Jake] The whole house. – The whole house- – [Jake] There's not very
many lights on either. – It's gonna be like four amps. – [Jake] Yeah, actually, almost spot on. – Really? – 640 watts. – Oh, that's freaking awesome. (Jake laughing) you know what, here we could
turn on this microwave. Okay, ready? – [Jake] Yeah. Is it bad to run an empty microwave? – I have no idea.

– [Jake] Refresh. – What do we got? – 750. Hold on. – What are we at? – Oh, 2000 watts, holy crap. – Now I can't leave this here because as part of the home renovation we're pulling out this 125 amp service, and we're gonna replace it with a 200 amp service, or maybe even more because we actually wanna put a couple electric car
chargers in the garage. But, that's a project for another day. Make sure you subscribe
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If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out our HVAC video where we got a proof of concept running for how we're gonna use
Home Assistant to control multi zone air conditioning
with just a dumb AC unit. Mind you I think we're, oops. Thanks Floatplane, you guys are the best. (indistinct).