Your Christmas Wishlist of Devices!

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With Christmas being pretty close, I was just wondering what some of you guys are putting on your list of amazing devices you are asking for for Christmas? These typically include devices you wouldn’t normally justify wasting the money and buying for yourself!

Update 1: I included a section for “Front Door” which I forgot in my original post!
Update 2: Updated the OP to be based on device categories and not by company

I personally am looking at the following devices and wondering opinions also if anyone has ever used them and their experiences with them…

Speakers

The top of the list!!! I heard that you can setup the SONOS speakers with SmartThings to say a custom message when something happens such as if at sunset the hub calls the “Night” routine I would imagine it is possible for the Sonos speaker to state out loud “Activating Night mode” or so as that’s what I’m really looking for. Another example would be putting motion sensors on the washer and dryer and when done, the Sonos speakers state “Your clothes are now done”. Plus the link above you get 2 speakers which is nice so one of each floor sending that message out! However what I’m looking for might not be possible with these speakers (although I do have Alexa if she’s even helpful with custom messages), so just thinking.

Front Door



The mysterious area that everyone seems to be interested in currently haha! But I see the 2 biggest winners that I’m interested in are the following. Kuna seems to be the best path forward and just looks cool haha! There is also Skybell but from another SmartThings thread I’ve been following, there seems more complaints than likes so I didn’t want to pursue it!

In terms of the Aeon Labs doorbell, I’ve heard some issues out there in a SmartThings thread as it’s a slightly new device. Many issues seem to be that pressing the button doesn’t always trigger the siren but it uses a short frequency I guess. My main concern is that it seems to require an outlet where I was looking to replace my hardwired existing doorbell alarm and push button but I don’t think this device can be hardwired?

Motion Sensors


I have used the Fibaro version of the motion sensor and it’s great, very fast response to turn on lights so I highly recommend it and looking to pick another one up!

Switches

http://www.amazon.com/Aeon-Labs-Aeotec-Z-Wave-Switch/dp/B00VQISOCG/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1450379429&sr=8-8&keywords=aeon+labs

I should receive the smart switch in the mail tomorrow although I have heard rumors regarding it must be located close to the hub or it drops off but I planning on using it for the Christmas tree!

Home Safety

I was looking at other flood sensors and even got a cheap one (due to the price) but this guy looks amazing, just put it on the ground and it also floats on the water so no sticking it to the wall then hanging the sensor down!

Miscellaneous

This Remotec module isn’t pretty but I have a fireplace that is operated by a lightswitch connected directly to the fireplace meaning it’s not connected to the circuit board (if that makes sense) so I heard to automate my fireplace I could place one of these guys in between that switch and it will allow me to control the fireplace (noting of course huge safety concerns perhaps)!

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This has become my most fav motion sensor. The custom device that we have here, uses its full potential. And I think the eye looks just like in the picture and the color coding based on temperature is pretty cool. This gave me the idea to set my hue bulbs based on outside temps, which turned out pretty nice too :slight_smile:

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Oh interesting! What device type is that? I just checked mine in the dev site (and I thinkkkkkk it’s listed as the default) which is “Fibaro Motion Sensor TW”.

I took out what I mentioned above in terms of “not looking like an eye” as it sounds like it’s some simple color tweak adjustments I just didn’t make so I don’t want anyone thinking it’s not possible!

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This…

And coupled with this

Blows Gen 6 out of the water!!!

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Ahhh thanks thanks! By Gen 6 do you mean when compared to the Aeon Labs one? If so, then I will just stick to the cool looking fibaro eye as I already use it and can say it’s worked great!

Seems like a couple tweaks that I will need to make on that custom device type so I may need to spend a little bit of time later reading the posts as I’ve heard some setting can kill the battery so I will 100% look into that! Thanks!

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Have had no problems with it once I set it up “carefully”. I have the two Aeon Labs older versions and not happy at all with them. So I kind of lost faith in them…For the 10 extra bucks, fibaro is well worth

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Couldn’t agree more. I replaced my Aeon Labs motion (which were unreliable and unsightly looking) for my Fibaro and love the Fibaros!

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BTW, if Apple ever decides to really get into Home Automation, Fibaro would be a great acquisition for them. They are very sleek looking.

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Agree that Fibaros devices are fantastic looking, even that flood sensor haha!

Has anyone tried out the SONOS speakers? That is the top item in my list as it looks incredibly interesting in terms of automation with SmartThings. Just thinking I can attach some sensors to the washer/dryer and then when done (with a SONOS speaker on the 1st and 2nd floor) they will state “Clothes are now done” via a custom message so wondering if that’s possible as I know someone had to have experienced with them so far!

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I have the next size up in my kitchen and everyone loves it. I have an NFC tag on the fridge, so all we do we swipe the phone and have our fave radio station playing. In the good ol’ days when the dogs were barking using TTS, that speaker served us all kinds of reminders, from the laundry is done to don’t forget to take the trash out. Maybe one day, when @slagle seals the deal for the new TTS its glory days will come back!

Check out this prank on Tim :smile:

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@mxrugg …these are the good ol’days I am talking about…:smile:

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Your assessment looks good. :sunglasses:

As far as video for the front door, the following topic has a lot of discussion. Different things work for different people. Skybell has just this week added an IFTTT channel, which improves the possibilities for integration with SmartThings. In my own case, I got the Kuna and I’m very happy with it even though it doesn’t integrate with anything else. But it just happened to fit what I needed.

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As far as Sonos, many people have them and really like them. They have some unique technologies.

As you search the forums, it’s very important to know that Smartthings originally used a TTS (“text to speech”) service that allowed you to create pretty much any spoken message that you wanted to and use it with Sonos. It was very popular and worked for about a year.

Then, something happened. A lot of rumors about what it was but in any case the end result was the only messages that had been created during the previous time period Could still be used. It didn’t mean you had to have created that message, just that it had to already be somewhere in some database that smartthings was accessing. But there was no way to create a brand-new message.

We still don’t know for sure if that was a technical issue or a business partnership issue or what but it continues to be a problem today. In fact some of the original smart apps were withdrawn from the marketplace.

All of which means you can find a lot of old topics and videos talking about doing things that can no longer be done with the current system. So you just need to be aware Of that while you’re doing your research. But that’s what community members are talking about when they talk about TTS.

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Yea I understand I have had SmartThings for a long time although wasn’t a kickstarter so yea! I just got very busy with work for awhile now and HA fell into a hole that was buried which I’m now trying to dig back up with a bit of vacation that I have now haha!

@fstbusa thanks for the video, it will help tremendously for setting up the messages!

@JDRoberts yea that thread you mentioned was the one that I was following and even posted a few times in there wondering about Kuna as that looks incredibly tempting but just that upfront cost of around $330 to get 2 light fixtures (1 with camera, one without) is holding me back as my wife will not allow different fixtures there. To make matters even worseeeeee, we have 2 additional fixtures by the garage as well so that’s a total of 4 fixtures that would need to look the same and ouchhhh, adding all that up, not worth it :frowning:

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The custom message video is one of the old TTS ones. That smartapp is no longer available.

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Ahhh yea! Guess I didn’t look into it enough, sorry! From checking out the link you mentioned it seems that @SergioDJ posted a solution by setting up a new SmartApp and using the SmartThings “Speaker Notify with Sound” template for a new app that “seems” to fix the issue so that custom messages can now be stated (aka Laundry done) when a sensor has not detected vibration anymore?

Earlier in the thread before @SergioDJ mentioned his post, @SBDOBRESCU had concerns about not using anything else until SmartThings brings back the official application so is this the official one you guys are referring to?

There is another app mentioned in the last post but just wondering your guys opinions since you actually have SONOS speakers haha!

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EDIT: Nevermind.
And 20 characters

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Nevermind, it doesn’t work or neverming, you don’t want to share it does. …ha, ha, ha!

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I don’t want to share that it works.

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