OK, here’s a place to share your favourite recent home automation acquisitions. Singles Day, Prime Day, Black Friday, December Holidays—Lots of sales, lots of stuff. Did you get anything you’re really happy with?
At our house, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in the forum, about a month ago we got the Sunbeam WiFi Heated Mattress pad. About $139 for the king size when not on sale; we got ours for about $115 for a queen size. No direct integration with smartthings but it does work with Alexa and Alexa routines, so it’s easy to set up a schedule to, say, turn it on to preheat 30 minutes before bedtime, but only if you’re home.
This is a pretty new item that was originally very hard to find except in store at Walmart, but it’s now also available at Amazon and other retailers.
We’ve only had it a month, so I don’t know about long-term durability, but we are definitely enjoying it.
The king size and queen size have two different zones but only one controller and Alexa thinks it’s all one zone. That’s fine for us, but some other people might care.
I got the mattress pad version so it would always be flat and there was less concern about the dog chewing on it. Another community member got the electric blanket version.
Life is incomplete without an electric blanket… ahhhh
Anyways, I needed to slim down on routers, 5 was fine but the cabling was a disaster so I decided to build a switch server cab in a top cupboard in my office at home… Good idea, pain to construct, non the less got all the bits I needed, brackets, pdu, 24 port patch panel, 24 port switch, short patch leads and brush panels for a good price, probably saved about £20 which is not a great saving but it’s something
Note to ones self, use fast clips in future and maybe be more careful with a saw
ST plugs into it is the only thing I can think off that makes it relevant
I picked up a handful of Zooz products this year. The two that are still sitting unopened are a ZEN32 Scene Controller (it’ll be perfect in the hallway if I can figure out how to run a neutral to the switch) and a ZST10 Z-Wave Stick (for firmware updates and other shenanigans). Also got 3 of their Q sensors, have 2 of them on the walls already, and may end up ordering a few more before the sale ends. I really like the mounts - they hold to the wall solid since they’re screwed on, but also have a good range of adjustment for where the sensor points. They look good too, since most of what you see is the lens with very little of the white plastic housing. The motion sensing seems responsive, though I’m just getting started on automations for them and haven’t tweaked the settings yet.
I also jumped on the SharpTools sale just before it expired last night. I was on the fence since I already had a different dashboard running, but seeing that it supports custom capabilities tipped the balance for me.
A few Bali roman shades on order. Those are easily the highest WAF devices in the house.
Nothing much here. With the demise of Groovy approaching, I decided to get a Meross Garage Door Opener to phase out my MyQ in case there is no path to use it going forward. I also got one of the Meross Air Purifiers to check it out. Then some zigbee plugs for repeaters and motion sensors.
How do you like the Meross items? Their outdoor plug has been rock solid for me.
The only thing I ordered myself recently is the Echo Show 15. I really look forward to testing it out as an easier option to a Fired HD 10 and custom wall mount.
Black Friday week is always crazy in social media land, so I did get sent some cool items for content:
Aqara G3 camera. No SmartThings integration, there is Alexa and HomeKit integration. This thing is awesome. Solid camera with good motion tracking, zigbee hub, alarm system, IR blaster, etc. Good enough that it really makes me contemplate switching a lot of my home over to HomeKit.
more SwitchBot items: door/window sensor and full color bulb. both integrate nicely into SmartThings, although only the contact capability comes over (no motion or lux in SmartThings). between the door sensor, color bulb and curtain motors I was able to create a nice morning wakeup automation fully in the SwitchBot app with curtains opening, light gradually raising up, etc.
Kasa light strip, outlet and RGBW bulb. All have SmartThings integration, Kasa devices have always been reliable for me and the price point is nice.
I have enjoyed the Meross products… both indoor and outdoor plugs over the past coupe of years. I got the Meross Garage Door for homekit 2 weeks ago when it was available as a lightening deal at Amazon. I received the additional accessory to set it up with my Garage Door yesterday so I set it up last night. TIP: don’t set it up late at night and when it is freezing. I got careless… that is all I will say on that matter. LOL
Set up was much easier than previous Meross Homekit devices so that was a welcome change. But once I applied the available firmware update, I had to connect it to the Meross app again. The accessory they send you, if needed, is basically a remote button that connects by wire to the Meross device and you can program to connect to your Garage Door.
Working well so far. The one thing I notice with the Meross Garage Door Controller vs the MyQ Garage Door Controller is there is no beeping/flashing of the garage door light when you go to close it. That is another welcome change.
I used this camera to bring Zigbee sensors into HomeKit. If you buy from Amazon in the US, your account will be held on US servers, which will matter to some people.
Yeah, that absence is why it’s not UL listed as a garage door opener.
The beeping for remote operation is not a requirement yet in most jurisdictions, but there are a few that have adopted it, that is that require that garage door openers be UL listed, so it’s just something to be aware of.
