This Smart Home Isn’t Stupid 

Dude is dripping like years and years worth of smart home experience and wisdom into one vid. Great vid.

Linus: Spends 2 years getting a dumb garage door to be smart then trying to avoid monthly fees on a smart one. Snazzy: So I plugged this in

Jank City: Linus Tech Tips has entered the chat (with his garage door opener)

I love your focus on utility rather than purposeless flashiness in a smart home.

I died at “hey siri eat shit”🤣

“Old” 2018 Mac mini.

Excellent stuff man!!! Glad to see the house coming along

This is 100% the exact requirements I had for my smart home technology. You brought up so many issues that people rarely bring up when it comes to smart homes. I went with the caseta switches for that very reason. Lots of great suggestions!

The videos production are getting so good, nearly Linus Media Group class. Really impressive for a such a small team. Well done, this smart home series is amazing

Lutron are widely used by construction companies when building higher end apartment buildings and one off residences. There are a huge number of devices, ive been using them for years and they are bullet proof just as you say. Good choice

I found it funny that the address in your automation at 18:16 is for Arby’s in Salt Lake City

Just gonna keep coming back every few months asking for a part 2 lol. Just one of my favorite smart home videos out there. Your approach is so much better than the deep, cross platform integration that ends up having everything work half as well as it should. Wondering if any new smart home tech has caught your eye that you’ve been using lately

Quinn, I admit, I’ve missed your content for a few months now. I watched this video today and wanted to say how much I love this new style. High quality, professional video and audio, and great presentation as usual. It’s great to see you take another leap forward from what was already top notch content. Congrats!

Great video and the G4 doorbell message display working with HomeBridge is something I didn't know about. Also those are some good rules to keep your smart home from getting out of control.

Videos like these are why I keep coming back to this channel - Quinn's tasteful pragmatism pairs perfectly with his aptitude and understanding of the technology that makes the tech work. Keep up the good work. 👍

I really like the content you’ve been making about home gadgets. I feel like the Mac RU-vid scene is so saturated right now, and while you do make the best content in that area, this is a breath of fresh air and I’m here for all of it.

Running homebridge on an “old” 2018 Mac mini? That’s more recent than anything I’ve ever had 😁

Holy CRAP, I LOVE that new intro, I’m so tired of blaring sound intros that are just shy of 10 seconds that I can’t skip past. Yours was clean, simple, looked awesome, wasn’t too long, and it was QUIET. Nice work, keep it comin’!

The beep on “siri” is making this video the funniest you ever made!

Perfect timing! Was literally trying to plan out my smart home. Thank you sooo much for this awesome video, you’re a life/time saver.

oh, Quinn, as a native Spanish speaker, I really love your Spanish voice.

Great video! I love how you censored Siri 😅

One of the better home automation videos I've seen on YT. Functional and reasonable. Well done, Sir!

Great video and coverage of HomeKit! I agree, can’t go wrong with Lutron. Also, the Home+ app is great for creating automations! 👏🏻 👏🏻

Nice video! I'm glad you went for the "I have a smart home but it doesn't control me or bog me down" approach 😁

Just gotta say Quinn your video quality and professionalism is amazing, glad to see how much success you're having over all these years

Just found out about this channel and these videos are really refreshing to watch! The themes you pick and how you approach them are really what do it for me… Haven’t been this interested in a new tech channel some few years now. Definitely subscribing!

Really appreciate how much work put making this video. Great job Quinn!

Say it with me, "Cah-say-tuh." Took me a couple years to figure out. Great setup! When will the HomeKit app be available for Android?

Here when it's unlisted! Cool cool

Wow. Excellent content! Easy to understand, fun to watch, and rich with information. Thank you!

Excellent video. I'm moving, and my current smart home is feeling outdated. I'm redoing everything, and this video came at the perfect time. Your setup is an inspiration for what's going in my next home!

love the meta moment at 6:00, need more of this! and the transition!

Awesome video - interesting to get a deeper look into HomeKit (and customization beyond the officially supported devices)

Dude amazing work, the quality behind this video is masterclass! Do you have a video on a deeper dive on the process of creating your “Smart-Home”. I’d love a how to video to try and recreate this for my own home, I know many others would love that as well! Cheers and blessings your way snazzy 🔌

Great video! I’m been slowly adding more Lutron devices since we built our house last year, I love them!

Awesome video, makes me want to dive into it more and get it fine tuned. Would love videos showing how you did the automations you do.

FINALLY someone recognized that having a smart home doesn’t necessarily revolve around digital assistant! Like you, I mostly use wireless switches (which acts like dumb ones) in addition to Home app & NFC tags. Homebridge exposes all of my Xiaomi ecosystem devices to Apple Home.

I love you homekit photos for each room!

Dude.. The only thing I hate about this video is how incredibly fine-tuned, well-chosen, and practically biased your smart ecosystem is. I've used them all, acknowledged what's available and how each is "ideally" implemented, and would just repetitively forget about it altogether (too much flexibility eventually pushes people back to that "it's just a damn light switch" mentality). I think it's fair to say your setup gives chaos some seriously needed structure and organization while leaving a healthy amount of room for flexibility in how you choose to use it. You clearly write code that most would find desirable. How well you explain your choices and exactly why you went each setup route was just the cherry on top. Like and sub absolutely deserved my friend....

I can feel Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook drooling over your personal data haha

Quinn, your videos have been nothing but pure art. Thank you so much for this impeccable quality.

I discovered your channel yesterday while doing research on how to make my internet connections at home wired through ethernet. Still working on that project, but now you've got me wanting to turn my whole house into something smart. I love the video for all of the ideas it's giving me, and I hate you for how much money I'm about to spend. Thanks!

I decided to start using Smart Home stuff with homekit last year and after looking around a bit, landed on Caseta. Such a good system to use and setup. It went from a few key light switches to now ceiling fans, almost all of our house lights via hardwired switches or plugin dimmers and we couldn't be happier. The only mistake I made was plugging in a high amperage device (saw) into an outlet on one of the switched circuits (overhead plug-in basement lights rather than the 20A unswitched line) and cooking my switch. I ran out to home depot, bought a replacement and had it up and running on the system in 5 min.

I’m an electrician and I install pico’s almost daily, they’re great for many different uses!! Love the shades! I’m gonna have to check those out

The presentation style in these videos has grown significantly. Quinn could one day host an Apple event with his constantly improving style. Also, nice approach that the smart devices should not get in the way of doing anything. Keep up the good work 😃👍.

I freaking love this. I had a hazy recollection that someone mentioned there was some way to link UniFi stuff and HomeKit, but I had no idea how simple it was. And now I can see my Protect cameras on my AppleTV. Love it! Thank you for the encouragement to actually check it out!

Amazing video thank you for showing a lot of possibilities, homekit + homebridge are a really neat solution. would absolutely love to see a new 2022 version of this video and what changed in your home :D

Looking forward to the VLAN video. Very interested to see how you manage your IoT network. Keeping things connected on isolated networks is tough and something I'm currently having trouble with.

Great video Quinn, love the 3 principals and think they are extremely important for anyone getting into the smart home world! So many people dont take these into consideration 🤯 P.s would love to try convert you to Home Assistant sometime 😅

Good stuff!! Whenever I watch smart home videos, I always think to myself how much more inconvenient they ultimately seem, as opposed to say just flipping a light switch for example

Please make a part 2. Loved the workout room/garage video but would be great to see how your house is holding up and the tech since this video was made!

6:15 kept rewatching: "Casetta by Lutron" 😂😂 'Vamos a la casa!!'

I'm actually pretty happy with Alexa, and this surprised me. I installed wired in TCP smart switches which have manual switches and also $10 sonoff switches where manual switches aren't required. Having lights on timers is super useful too. Alexa is way cheaper if you buy all of your amazon echo on prime day (June and December).

Another great video, Quinn. Loving the videos like this and your home networking one. Keep it up! 👍🏻

Great Vid very helpful and simple to understand. Thanks.

“These shades are bullet proof!” Cut to: me standing awkwardly with a smoking gun in my hand, and a disappointed look on my face

Hey Quinn, excellent video. You've convinced me it's possible to have a smart home that isn't gimmicky or stupid. I completely agree with you about the necessity of also having manual control for smart things. Didn't know about those Lutron switches.

This was awesome!! Been waiting for this!!

Big thumbs up on the water sensor and automatic shut-off. I'd also strongly recommend using their alarm or doing some other integration to ensure you wake up and go running if the leak sensor goes off. The time it can take for the alarm to get tripped and the shut-off to finish and then the pressure expansion tank to de-pressurize, you can have gallons of water soaking into the floor and running into the walls and ceiling of floors below. Just got done ripping the ceiling out of my neighbors for a toilet hose connection that broke when they were home. They had the alarm go and they shut it off within a minute but water had still gone everywhere. Unfortunately they didn't have an auto-shut off which would have saved a few gallons worth that got out.

OMG those leak sensors that's fucking genius! I've never heard of them, but I'm gonna get a bunch asap lol

This is a great video about automation and I love the rules, especially the one about still being able to use that product manually. But it also illustrates the good and the bad side. The blinds for example. Good for security, time saving, potentially even better for the environment (allowing in natural light means potentially less time lighting and possibly heating are on). If you have a disability, medical issues or just the fact old age has crept in it would also be great. But is it also bad? 8 batteries per blind?! Sure they might last several years but then they might not. And what’s wrong with closing or opening a blind by hand? Is it just a sign we’re getting lazy? What about warranty? What about if in 2 years you change colour scheme and want different coloured blinds, do you have to buy an entire unit (that assumes of course they are still in business, make the same model/product etc)?

Great video. And great setup.

I'm loving these house videos, keep them up.

This changed my mind on smart homes. I only know one person who turned their home into a smart home and it just seemed stupid to me at the time. He had a smart lock on the front door so you had to wait for the phone to pair with the lock to get in instead of just using a key and then you had to stand in the dark and be quiet so his Alexa could hear him issue the command to turn the lights on and then wait for it to understand what he said and then wait again for it to actually turn the lights on.

Man this was such a good intro to doing a HomeKit based smart home. Might finally start working on something like this.

Awesome all in one video, super informative, keep the good work!

This is a great video. Quinn, thank you for not just making a shake-y vlog tour of you changing the lights in a couple of rooms to different colors. It's nice to see that even in your older home, it doesn't look like a Best Buy forgot to pull out. Also, you dropped a bunch of smart-home knowledge that more people need to know (like how smart devices should be able to be used manually, and not EVERYTHING needs to be in the system, that it's ok to have an island or two in your setup). My only critique is that I don't think HomeBridge and Home Assistant are the same, though I believe they CAN be used to achieve the same thing. You nailed Homebridge being, well, a bridge and being a part of a HomeKit setup, but HASS is it's own automation platform, so it's more of an alternative to HomeKit for people who know what YAML is. I've heard of folks using HASS with HomeKit by putting devices into HASS and then exposing everything to HomeKit and using that as the front-end while HASS has all of your devices and automations.

Video on vlan? Man! I really can't wait. So much crap on RU-vid and I'm sure you will do this properly. Thanks

This contest is like early access 😂

Thank you. Very nice solutions

I also set up custom wallpapers for each room. But love what you did with the color gradients and masks. Definitely stealing that. Thanks for the great video!

This is exactly what I was looking for. Once I finally take the plunge and start making my house smart this will be very useful. Your rules for smart devices should also prevent me from tearing my hair out trying to get everything “perfect”.

Your house is almost like you're Tony Stark with all the smart things.

What a great video! Man, you knocked it out of the park with this one :)

Amazing video! Great set up.

¡Me mato el "VAMONOS A LA CASA"! I love to see Quinn speaking spanish!

Hahahahahaha vamos a la casa! Muy bueno el español en su voz 😂

This video was absolutely well done, enjoyed watching it!

By far the most thought out smart home vid, kudos Quinn!

For a native spanish speaking guy, I really laughed when he said “VAMOS A LA CASA”

Lutron… amazing company, amazing products.

Excellent and very helpful video. I am just now starting out with HomeKit and smart home setup. Thank you for putting this content out.

Best video regarding smart home setup I’ve ever seen! About to buy my first house and I’ll 100% be copying this setup, more or less. Thanks for the inspiration and doing the research for everyone else’s benefit!

Hi! I'm always looking for new ideas on smart homes, thank you for this. I 've tried to stick to Homekit because then and now there are so many standards; Siri was fun, but since it became catatonic, I use Alexa. We have a premise: Automation means doing things by itself -mostly no voice controls or switches-. In our case, this is a family issue, we use timers, presence detectors and geolocation. No centralized controls: we use Echos, IPhones, etc, working and sometimes competing between them, as an example, the Home app and the Hue app, use different schedules and mess with each other. This is just starting. bye!

"Hey Siri, eat shit" is my favourite one.

Thanks so much for this walkthrough! Doing some home improvement this summer, and actively researching smart home options, preferably compatible with HomeKit. So this was timely and much appreciated!

Hi Quinn - Great video! Thanks for this! - Hope that you can show more of your HomeKit setup in future videos. Maybe go more in depth into what scenes and automations you created in each room, how you use them, etc. Have a great day!

6:21 snazzy labs just became laboratorios elegantes for a sec right there lol

i loved the two iPhones "hugging" to symbolize your wife and you both having iPhones

Thank you for this video! We just started with Caseta in two rooms so far and like it for all of the same reasons you listed. We still need to get a Home Hub device before we can really start to go down the rabbit hole with the lights and other stuff, but Caseta devices do work well without any central control! Looking forward to your video on using Ubiquiti VLANs to segregate the iot stuff, we have the same concerns with security.

A truly well-presented and most helpful video. Thanks!

After seeing this video I feel like I need smart things in my home that I don’t need.

Snazzy beard 🧔🏻

Absolutely love this video. Gives me tons of ideas for what I could do for my own smart home.

Happy New Year Q! Been a minute since I checked in. So many new cool home tech products out these days but how do we know what to trust. We need an expert. A voice of reason. You're not the hero we deserve, but you are the hero we need. How about a part 2, huh? Love this video

The old 2018 Mac mini... me sitting here with my 2014 MacBook

If his wife decides to ever cheat on him, he's gonna pull up all the receipts lol " why was the humidity really high in our bedroom, when I wasnt there? I know you were at home I saw when you walked through the door"

Great tour, I added it to my smart home tour playlist!

Finally someone that gets home automation. 100% standing by your main 3 principles. The most difficult part for me is the hardware that actually switches the power to the lights, and I was a bit disappointed that you didn’t cover that part in this otherwise awesome video. Do you use a Lutron Homeworks Processor? Or something else?