Open the garage. There's been a lot of talk about what you can do using the voice assistant on iPhone and your smart home and yes I can open my garage door but it can actually do a lot more. So in this video I'm going to show you my smart home with over 100 HomeKit devices and everything that you know who can operate using just my voice. Close the garage.
So first of all, yes, in order to get my garage into HomeKit, I'm using the Maris adapter. It works just with my Genie system. The most annoying part is running this crazy long line for the garage door sensor. It comes with the Maris HomeKit adapter, but I'll put a link in the video description to everything I'm showing.
And if you're willing to run that line, you can have it too. Now here in the garage, I also have some lights. Turn on garage lights.
And those are actually being operated by the Maris switches here. And as you can see, those lights turned on. Turn off garage lights. and we can also do open rear trunk.
now that one's actually not smart home, that's just a shortcut, but you can have all those actions in shortcuts and the voice assistant can do all that too. like i have this shortcut right here in a widget and if i tap that it'll close. oh yeah, close the garage.
there we go. now this isn't the voice assistant but this is the acara u50 and i can just tap my apple watch to it and it will unlock. and let's head into the house.
now i literally have every single light in the home on a HomeKit switch. This is the Lutron Claro switch. It's their newer design so it just looks like a normal paddle switch.
So I can ask the voice assistant turn off the utility room light and there we go. Turn on the utility room light and pretty fast. All right let's go into the family room. Of course we always have to stop and admire the Star Wars puzzle. So for something like the kids bathroom, turn on kids bathroom lights and there we go.
And if we go over to the smart temperature sensor over here. This is the Ecobee. Couple models old. Turn the temperature down to 71 degrees and now we can see that temperature changed all using the voice assistant. Now we also have some robot vacuums here.
I know the shelves are a mess and everything. This actually runs with Siri shortcuts, so you can hack it with the voice assistant that way, but it's not exactly HomeKit. Now this is the main family room where we watch a lot of movies and we have scenes for this. Family room movie.
That's actually going to turn off all the lights. I actually have a Hue Gradient light strip that's also in HomeKit. That turns on.
Now here in the family room, I also have a special shortcut called watch something. Family Room. It will ask what room we're watching in and that will actually turn on the Apple TV, start the Philips Hue sync box syncing the gradient light strip and the Hue Plays, opens the Apple TV remote on my iPhone.
Now you can see the Philips Hue gradient light strip syncing with the movie and all that was done with just a single shortcut. Also every ceiling fan is also on a Lutron switch so I could say turn on the Family Room ceiling fan to 50% and the ceiling fan starts. Turn on Family Room lights and there we have our lights.
And now these are the older style Lutron switches. I put these in when we first built the house But we have fan light, main lights, which are cans, and also the ceiling fan control. Now all my kids rooms have smart lights as well So I could say something like turn on Elise room lights and there we have the ceiling fan light.
Turn on Elise room ceiling fan to 50% and there you go. All right now going into the master bedroom We actually have a bunch of stuff in here including smart shades so I could say something like close the master bedroom shades and i can even ask it things like close the master bedroom shades 50 and if i do that both shades will actually close to 50 and by the way that's actually an eve motion blinds retrofit shades and these are the zemi smart some other shades i'll show you in a minute they can also do things like turning on an apple tv with your assistant turn on master bedroom apple tv and you'll see it actually turns on and it turns on the tv as well and you can start controlling it from your phone turn off master bedroom apple tv you can also turn the Apple TVs off that way too. Now we have a bunch of lights here in the master bedroom including an LED strip. This is powered by Eve behind the headboard so I could say things like turn on the master bedroom headboard and we got the headboard light. Actually turn on all the lights.
Turn off master bedroom main lights and those turns off the cans. Turn off master bedroom ceiling fan and let's do a color. Change master bedroom headboard to blue. And there we have blue lights.
Now let's go into the master bathroom because we actually have a bunch more in here. And that actually is another smart shade. This is the Canastale, which I recently reviewed. I'll link that above.
Close master bathroom shade. And you'll see those shades start closing as well. And I even have an automation here where if you start the exhaust fan, which again these are all smart lights here, that'll probably mean you're taking a shower and it'll turn the shade automatically. Even if I do it manually using the switch, then the master bathroom shade will actually start closing.
There you go. and it also knows to close the shades in the master bedroom because you probably don't want anyone seeing in there either one other automation because these are all lutron smart switches is if i turn off the main vanity it's actually going to turn off all the lights here in the bathroom so if i turn that off all the lights will turn off in a moment there you go and when you turn the exhaust fan off just during the day that shade will open back up i even have lights out here turn on pool lights and there you go I also have an Eve Aqua hooked up to a garden hose and I could say turn on the pool hose and using the assistant the water will start and turns off automatically after two hours. Turn off pool lights.
Let's head back into my studio real quick because here there's a bunch of automations. For instance my first time coming in in the morning I might do office work and that sets the scene where it turns on my ceiling fan and ceiling fan light, starts opening the blackout shades which I use for filming, and I'm ready to work. This is where I make all the videos right here.
here's my background now let's say i want to make a video so i usually do these commands even without my iphone i just shout to my home pods but i can do video blue it's actually going to turn off my ceiling fan light turn on my filming lights lowers the blackout shade so there's no light leakage from there and i have a bunch of phillips hue lights plus an eve flare that's the hue bloom and a hue gradient tube i believe and this light right here really provides good background light that's the hue sign floor lamp and now I can do custom colors right here on the back wall. And I have multiple scenes for multiple colors. Video purple. And now we have purple, video teal, and there's the teal and video orange.
And all of that, I can change the look of the entire video in just a few seconds. And then when I'm done working, I could say I'm done working and it turns off everything here in the studio. Here in the main living room, we have a bunch of smart lights as well.
I also have things like these little smart switches kind of hidden around. One click and that turns on all the main lights. So kind of a good morning scene. But I can also do things like close the living room shades to 50%.
And there we have both big windows. Shades are closing automatically. I can also go over here to some under cabinet lighting. Turn the under cabinet lighting blue. And there's that.
And by the way, those are Smartwing shades. They work with thread over matter. They're great. I did an entire review on those.
I'll link it above and in the video description. Oh, I also forgot. I'm going to come back in the office where there's HomePods.
And you can actually intercom your entire house if you have HomePods or intercom specific rooms. Intercom everywhere. Hey, dinner's ready.
Dinner's ready. Or you can intercom specific rooms. Intercom studio. Dinner is ready.
Dinner is ready. By the way, if you have HomeKit cameras, which I have a HomeKit doorbell and several cameras around the house, you could say things like, show me the garage cam. And the HomeKit app will open directly to that camera and you can see the live feed or the recordings right there. That includes doorbell cameras, Floodlight cameras like the Eve which I have up here. This Logitech Circle on the side is a little spotty but here's another one on the side.
Our snake camera and our back patio camera. Now that's just some of the Apple HomeKit devices I have here that I control via Siri. I usually do it with my Apple Watch but if you want to see a full tour of my house including things like water leak sensors, motion detectors, temperature sensors, and automations I'll link one of my videos right over here. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and hit that like button. Lots of smart home content and I'm going to include all the devices that make the smart home possible down in the video description.
those are affiliate links. supports the channel if you buy it. there's probably some great black friday sales if you're watching this when it comes out.
and if you want to learn more about the automations that i use with all this apple home kit stuff you can check out this video right up here. close the garage.