I spent the better part of two years renovating my house into the ultimate
Tech house and while the super fast 10 gig networking ball and Wi-Fi and custom
theater room are freaking awesome there's a couple of things
that didn't exactly go according to plan
you see it wouldn't be much of an ultimate Tech house if it wasn't smart
and as a father of three the first thing that came to mind was automatic lights
so like any sane person would I installed over 100 GE Jasco smart motion
switches only to discover that they were so buggy that they've rendered my entire
Z-Wave smart home network pretty much inoperable not very smart which maybe
wouldn't be so bad if even the dumb functionality like the integrated motion
sensors worked freaking half decent come
on hello luckily for me inavi another Smart
Switch company heard my cries and decided to design a Smart Switch that
would solve all of my problems using millimeter wave technology which can
detect people even when they aren't moving after raising nearly half a
million dollars on Indiegogo and spending many painful months on R&D I
finally have one in my hands and today sponsored by homie and their homie Pro
Smart Hub we're going to start fresh and we're going to try these out and
hopefully see the beginning of the end of my smart at home troubles I really
hope these work because I don't think my marriage is going to survive another
pool party with the lights turning off every 5 minutes it won't before we get
too deep into the Cool Tech in these let's talk about the problems that inavi
was trying to solve you guys already saw that the motion sensors are anything but
senstive but there's a lot more for starters if you have a three-way switch
so that's two switches controlling the same fixture you can only have a motion
sensor on one of them and then a dummy on the other side which for stairs can
be a downright safety issue because it'll automatically turn the lights on
when you're going one way but not the other this one drives me crazy I like to
have the lights off when I go to bed but I want the motion sensors active in case
I need to get up but by the time I can get away from them they activate again
and you can't reconfigure that this one's been a real be in my Bonnet my old
switches will only fade on and fade off
which can be quite hard on Smart bulbs and other non- dimmable fixtures
not that they behave much better with dimable bulbs and you can see what I
mean here in the gaming room this is one of the ones that still works the worst
part though is that they've gummed up my zwave network so much that I can't even
adopt the last 20% or so of the switches
and I'm even having issues with non Jasco devices like my baliy wave blinds
the blinds have been a particularly sore spot for me because the switches are way
up here and I'm well vertically challenged it's not like I want to
replace my switches we managed to get Jasco to release the firmware for this
product which wasn't previously available Unfortunately they never
updated it to fix any of this stuff and when I reached out to a Z-Wave wizard
who offered to help me they basically said wow I've never
seen anything this bad
before In fairness to Jasco part of the problem is I have so many devices
but like it's a smart home that's the idea and besides no amount of firmware
updates is going to fix that infrared motion sensing it's kind of last
millennium's technology let's talk about homie and first these new inabi switches
inavi was actually one of the Front Runners when we were sampling options
for the house and they would have been my first choice they've got a sick LED
bar that can help finding switches in the dark show the dimming level and even
be programmed to display alerts and stuff like that they worked flawlessly
on our testing the only problem is they didn't have a motion dimmer or any kind
of presence detector at the time but now
they do despite many delays this is a
complicated product and they wanted to make this work it's finally here let's
try it oh shoot I need a stubby uh LTD
store.com well the switch Works what
that's good so much more responsive well it works like a normal switch which is
I'll never take for granted again but I couldn't help noticing that the motion sensing is not working it's not adopted
yet I don't know what the default behavior is and this firmware is like
very Alpha okay let's adopt it just testing to do that I could use my
existing home assistant instance and Z-Wave stick but the problem with that
idea is that I don't have these new inell switches yet I need to rely on
these Jasco ones for a while longer and if I unpair them and start fresh
it is going to be a nightmare so instead I'm turning to our sponsor homie and
we're going to be using the homie Pro to start over for the uninitiated zwave is
a wireless low energy smart home communication standard that operates in
the 900 MHz Bend which is great for me
because I need to not interfere with my already also kind of mangled 2.4 GHz
Wi-Fi that's why I didn't want to go with zigg but the homie pro hub can do
both without issue so we could try zigg later for now um that was the physical
aspect of the setup so let's get it configured let's add a new homie homie
Pro mhm mhm found homie Pro hey look at
that changes color oh it supports 5 GHz Wi-Fi don't
take that for granted with smart home stuff okay set up my home how many Flo
does your home have a couple I'm setting up all the zones right now or at least
I'm trying that this is seriously like a pretty pretty clean interface well we're
set up the whole process took about 4 minutes now what while we could add that
switch as a generic Z-Wave device there is an inovi app just not officially it's
still kind of in development so I got to just manually add it typically when you
add one that has an app it'll pop up and be like you should use the app when you try to add it oh cool that doesn't work
yet everything's very Alpha by the way shout out to homie for being absolute
homies and working within AI to get this going for us they were literally fixing
things for me this morning actual Chads and what's the benefit of
an app it just gives you specific customization stuff and then we go back
to homie and in theory apps boom already
there sweet okay now we can add a device
now we can add a device we're going to have to go to the switch though let's do it did you add office yet yeah I mean
that's the only reason it took me like four or five minutes to do this is because adding on the rooms here we go
office and then connect device no belly
this is a smart present sensing dimmer I'm sure they'll have a catchier name
for it at some point yeah uh do I need to press the pair button three times
quickly and then do it again again yeah
twice more I mean let do just do it again trust me your house is pretty
mangled in the 900 MHz range for whatever reason I think it's pretty
mangled in every range right now and I imagine that switch right next to it
it's probably not helping no probably not we might need to move the Hub over
here just to get it to comend you know
that makes sense once you've got a whole bunch of devices paired to it they'll
mesh up and that's not going to be a problem but just to make life simpler
for ourselves he told me not to get these GE switches and he takes every
possible opportunity to rub it I haven't said it today yeah not today I tried to
get you to get the in ones and have different motion sensors and I
understand why you didn't want to do that but also I wanted it all clean and
integrated if you could go back would you I think what I would have done is
just left regular switches until inavi developed these but then inavi might
have never developed these if I didn't make my video complaining that they didn't exist yeah so I would change
nothing you know what's inside there it's actually a raspy compute module
really yeah it's a cm4 oh cool yeah that
means it's good and should actually be really well supported yeah that's a good
sign hey there we go hey look at that device completed
perfect continue setup we are in the office i' already picked that up and
then I guess we should just change this to like office switch like this whole
thing is so beta still that they only made like 50 of this version and we got
two of them to test out uh I mean it works as a light switch right now let's
see if the motion's picking up oh look at that motion alarm
yes oh and cool actually let's see so
with the lights all the way on it's 50 wats of power and we should
see the light value the luminance go up in a little bit here
probably let's see oh wow there's even like
charts no data obviously cuz we just adopted it I do today no no day yet okay
we're paired now which means in theory I should be able to turn it
off probably it's a lot smarter than my old ones and it has a bit of a delay on
this but I should be able to move oh it
definitely disects you oh well for crying out loud okay well how do we make it turn on with motion well I think we'd
have to leave for a bit and then come back
okay oh I can do that I actually I don't
know what the timeout is like they didn't send me a list of parameters it
seems that they match up with their old style switches for the other stuff but
obviously the old style switches don't have a motion sensor cool okay I'm going
to try it's still detecting motion what it still detects us like most smart home
things it doesn't update all the time because otherwise it' be way too much
traffic so it probably updates like once a minute or something like that all right we'll give it a sec I don't know
maybe we're in the reflection of something right now
oh glass door you know uh okay stuff like this is part of
the reason they're not actually going to be using that sensor that's in that
switch in the production version there's a new sensor which uses I think 79 GHz
instead of 24 GHz in that one and it has a bunch more configuration like you can
tell it to only track in a small section of the sensor and stuff like that
actually now is a good time for us to explain this new sensor technology that
they're using the big game changer here is millimeter wave the old ones use
passive infrared sensors which measure radiation or heat from things like
humans cats Etc the new Switch uses millimeter wave which is named after the
wavelength of radio signals in the 3 to 300ish GHz range it uses those to detect
presence and these sensors are so accurate they can easily detect someone
even if they're trying to stay still because just breathing is enough to
trigger them that makes them useful not for just motion and being aware of
something that's broadly in the vicinity but exactly how many things are in the
vicinity where they are and potentially what doing it's like radar so cool a
little big brothery but cool any luck oh
I don't think it's working Jake oh no no oh it did work on the other one it
showed on my side that when you walked in that it was on but it wasn't on I
love Alpha Testing should we try the other one they sent two of them who
knows maybe this one's bunk the most important part for me is honestly not
the turning on when I go near them I already got that I want them to not turn
off when I'm just sitting still in the room while we're waiting why don't we
pair some blinds cuz I was having a heck of a time getting any of those to pair
with home assistant okay I mean realistically are you going to control
this area differently than those ones actually maybe yes yeah okay so we'll
call this like the Nook yeah sure okay
um I could put it under kitchen maybe y
new Zone kitchen mil and we'll put it part
of lovely connect device let's try it all right oh wait we got to add that the
app perfect we can add the app new app I
don't know why it opens in a web browser but it seems to work like beautifully so
whatever uh Bali there's a new version of my blinds
that has Bluetooth that makes them a little easier to configure and stuff it
would have been like you probably missed the cut off by like a couple months nice
I had an absolute demon of a time trying to get these things to pair with my
setup like they just wouldn't Nook middle
blinds I guess okay I mean you're not
going to need to address them individually but it would be good to
have it set if you did have to do that okay and then I guess this one okay um
how I mean I I don't need a I can read
I'm fine I can't believe these are just
pairing yeah did you try them before I did but setup like did it work what do
you mean like did you try them with my setup before with no no they don't work
yeah I guess that's the issue with a mesh network if it's made up of devices that
are just a mesh get it a mesh a
mess anyway the point is Windows are one of the main things you'd want to build
automations for because you know Energy Efficiency and stuff like that and I
just haven't been able to do it cuz I haven't been able to pair these bloody things to my broken Z-Wave Network this
is great and the homie hub's not even that close anymore now that we've got a
couple light switches paired to it the mesh is happening fortunately homie is
compatible with a ton of other products so if you don't already have Z-Wave
blinds in your house you can use something like the rise Smart Shade
system which can turn normal blinds into Smart Ones in order to control all these
as a group I'm going to use something called a flow which is what homie calls
its automation system I went ahead and created one that says when this flow
started that's something you would just like manually Trigger or trigger with another flow and then set all the
positions to 100% which is to open all of them the opposite one close sets them
all to 0% and then when we hit go hey there we
go for those that want even more control they also have advanced flows in the web
version of the homie app it's still easy to use everything is drag and drop but
it gives you a lot more flexibility for example I made an advanced flow that
pulls our subscriber count from the YouTube API that way I can make it so
Linus's home automations only work if the subscriber count goes up that day
now we get to try the light switch what do you think Jake motion going to work
doesn't seem like it they clearly weren't working are you
kidding me what do you mean they clearly were working they weren't working yeah
but we could have checked the thing to see I already did and it detected it
yeah it still says yes as of 20 minutes ago I think there's something in this
room that moves enough that it's triggering
still we might have to try it in a different room oh you know what lonus
look what's right right in front of the light switch smart thermostat no turn
around what the vines no those are fake
yeah but they'll move they're not going to move like with the HV fact they might
I reckon we try it in a bathroom or something where like nothing's going on
there's a reason they're changing the sensor and there is no tuning parameters
right now it will be better credit to
homie though their stuff has worked flawlessly so far I know this actually
been great it it wait it just worked it
worked it worked it it picked you up
from under the door crack well like like I said it's really sensitive and this
light switch is pointed at the door so even like walking over here could be
enough of like an air pressure differential to move the door enough to trigger that like it's not a great
position to have a millimeter wave sensor you know what I mean but but with
the other one we could set no zones for it right yeah over to here would be like
detection and then here the door should we try one more different spot with the
other light switch you just want me to zap myself I mean kind of we want to do
another demo in the bathroom downstairs so I'm just throwing in one of in's red
series switches so I at least have a working switch in this room it's been driving us crazy while we've been trying
to scrapbook yes I scrapbook there's nothing wrong with that in this bathroom
there should not be anything that can move so hopefully we can get a good
clean demo here I'm actually super excited though that these are so
sensitive because that bathroom upstairs man if you sit and you know play mobile
games or read something on the toilet
you're stuck in the dark and I already showed you guys how hard it is to
reactivate the motion sensors I have now you're figuring out your business in
the dark until you're all the way up when that happens so this is going to
be awesome with proper presence detection those lights in there draw 25
WTS if you're wondering wa no wait they have power monitoring that's pretty cool
they also have light sensors so if it's like really bright in a certain room and you don't want the lights to turn on
automatically when it's bright you can set it up to do that how would that work with homie you could say like if it
turns on and this is too high then don't
sick yeah
okay okay it works you hadn't even walked in yet now the question
is how sensitive is
it well there's probably a timeout
right I don't I don't think it will trigger again until the motion is like
cleared for a little bit and then triggered again knowing in AI I'm sure
there'll be configuration options for that too there just isn't right now or
at least I don't know what they are it still knows I'm in here though right oh
yeah cool why need you walk out for a second and then try it again okay I'll
walk out let's see I'm kind of stoked on how simple homie is it's really simple
why did I do the whole home assistant thing again well I don't know hey look
no it's clear okay so it's about a minute run in there again it might be
exactly a minute I want to see just how sensitive it is you're going to sneak up
on it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah just just
hold on dude the door is going to trigger this a l hold on I'm going to
just I don't think it can see me down
there ow my finger is
stuck okay well yeah oh that's why it
couldn't see cuz of the molding dude dude the second I was clear
of this occlusion here it was
on I don't think we're going to fool
it it still says motion buddy you're just wasting your time I give up there's
no way I'm going to be able to hide from this thing which is a good thing you want a presence detection system to work
like this so that's good now you can Doom scroll on the in peace I think
the best thing about today is just how painless everything was I'm used to
having range issues that I need to sort out with like USB extensions on my zwave
stick but instead the homie Pro just
immediately worked cuz I can put it anywhere I want instead of it being stuck in my concrete basement they've
got a ton of different solutions so while the homie Pro is a little on the
pricier side for some they also have the homie Bridge which is a much cheaper Hub
that can be used as an extension for the homie Pro or can be used Standalone with
their Cloud software in a subscription for myself I just like having everything
running locally and fortunately homie does have that option and doesn't
require subscription for that we'll have links to homie and the rest of the stuff
that we showed off in the video description before we wrap up there's a couple other things we should highlight
from homie their dashboards are in beta they provide a customizable visual
interface to control and monitor your smart home devices there's a high degree
of personalization you can have real-time control and insights into things like temperature energy usage or
security status it's available on the homey app for iOS and Android and we
haven't even shown you some of the other really cool features like homie mve
they allow you to quickly capture and set the lighting in your home by creating custom moods or choosing from
pre-made ones and while Jake showed you guys homie flows there's a whole other
level of customization with homie script which I think is more for the Jakes of
the world and I probably wouldn't touch what I will touch is those finished
switches and then maybe between now and then we can figure out do I keep home
assistant or do I just go with something simpler I don't know homies seems to
work pretty good and they're homies
if you guys enjoyed this video why not check out the one where we originally installed my Jasco switches it was kind
of a nightmare but hey what do you mean it kind of a nightmare we're still
living in it sometimes that's fun for you guys