Automated Home Show

I probably should have waited to buy some of these during Black Friday, but I picked up some cool new products for my smart home recently.

I'll be unboxing these products and getting them setup and going over the coming month and I'll keep you posted on how they all go.

Learn more about Automated Home here.

I had the pleasure of catching up with David Webster recently to get into the nitty gritty of why it's not necessary to split up your home wifi into separate 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz networks.

David has A LOT of knowledge about smart home products and connectivity issues, so I certainly learned a lot from this chat.

Even if you're already an expert in this stuff, there's probably still something here for you. If you're a newbie to smart homes or if you're wondering if you need to split up your home wifi, this conversation is a must listen.

Learn more about Automated Home here.

Thanks to Tim for the comment on my last Youtube video which helped me to get my Aqara lights connected and online in Homey. That was a big help.

I was able to get some Homey "flows" going with the motion sensor and those Aqara lights, but there are a couple of things that I'm not thrilled about.

1. The range of the P1 motion sensor isn't great, and

2. Why won't Homey let flows re-start before they're finished? That makes no sense to me

Learn more about Automated Home here.

Last update was a total disaster, but I've fixed most things and in many cases, things are better than before.

There are still a few issues, but it seems much more manageable than a couple of weeks ago.

I got an Aqara motion sensor, set up an Annke camera for baby monitoring, setup the Sonos voice assistant that I didn't even know existed and just had my first Govee product delivered.

Learn more about Automated Home here.

I just created a 2.4GHz wifi network in my home and chaos ensued.

What I thought was a piece of cake ended up becoming a disaster and now I guess I'm looking down the barrel of a bunch of factory resets and re-adding devices.  

Seriously, this was not what I had planned for my Sunday.

Learn more about Automated Home here.

My hopes of turning my dining room table into one giant "light switch" didn't work out when I learned that the Aqara vibration sensor isn't as sensitive as it would need to be for that idea to work.

...sigh...

Oh well, I'm sure I'll find another idea for that vibration sensor eventually.

Also, why is Alexa going crazy today?!

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I ask why I can't enjoy the full-feature capability of my new Aqara light bulb. Is it a business decision or do I just not understand it?

I discuss some recent wins, and some failures and talk about upcoming plans.

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Today I got stranded in a shopping mall because of some rain and ended up buying a couple of Aqara products that should work with my Homey Pro.

I talk about an Amazon routine that my wife absolutely hated and vetoed in all of 24 hours, talk about a couple of things I've learned recently and then end with a funny story that's completely unrelated to smart homes.

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Do you think the Sonos CEO should resign or be fired?

Lots of people are angry about the app update that rolled out nearly 3 months ago and the CEO of the company has finally issued an apology and shared a timeline for fixing some of the issues with the new app. 

Read more at https://automatedhome.com/

In this brief update, I talk about how I unboxed my Homey Pro smart hub and got some bad (or maybe good?) news regarding the compatibility of some other smart home products that I was about to buy. 

Automated Home links:
https://linktr.ee/automated_home