Flume 2 Smart Water Monitor

 I have had the Flume 2 smart water monitor on my watch list for the past year.  Its regular price is $250 but it sometimes drops to $200.  On Prime Day it dropped to $150 so I pulled the trigger.  The device basically monitors your water usage so you can see where and when you are using water.  It is kind of like the Sense Energy monitor but not quite as slick.  The big selling point of the product is that it can detect leaks, which will allow the product to easily pay for itself if you can avoid major damage or save some money on your water bill if you have a leak that you did not know about as was the case with me (more on that later).  

The product consists of the monitor itself as well as a bridge that needs to be plugged in within the line of sight of the monitor.   It also comes with a tool for removing water meter covers and gloves as apparently some water meters are outside and installation can get messy.  My water meter is in my basement so installation was very easy.  I downloaded the app, took a picture of the face of my meter to check for compatibility, plugged in the bridge, adjusted the rubber straps on the monitor, and strapped it to my meter.  The app then asked me to run the water while it calibrates and about 30 seconds later I was up and running.  The app almost immediately notified me that there was a leak detected and was losing .04 gallons a minute.  I figured the most likely culprit is my sprinkler system which I confirmed by turning off the water to my sprinkler and Flume was no longer detecting a leak.  So now my question is how much is this leak costing me. So .04 gallons a minute is about 2.5 gallons an hour and 75 gallons a month.  I pay $6.85 for 1,000 gallons of water so the leak will consume 1,000 gallons in a little over a year so it is not costing me much.  I turn the sprinkler system off for the winter so the leak will take 2 years to get to 100 gallons.  I will eventually get it fixed but I am in no big rush to have my lawn torn up for a small leak.  The good news is I know it is there and can continue to monitor it in case it gets worse.

I am a data guy, I just love data, reports charts, and analytics.  So I was really looking forward to what I could see about my water usage.  Flume uses AI to detect what appliances are using water and can break down usage between indoor and outdoor usage.  The reports themselves are OK.  Nothing like the real-time interface that Sense provides.  There is some customizations in there as well such as monthly budget which I haven't had a change to play with yet.  Below are a couple screenshots from the mobile app.  The same data is available by logging into the web app.

When I first started looking at Flume they were charging a monthly fee for access to some of the data that you can see now for free.  I don't think I would pay for this data even if it was only a couple bucks a month.  I do get a bit concerned about devices like this that are only making money on the price of the hardware.  If they go under I am left with a useless device but it was pretty cheap so a risk I am willing to take.       

A couple minor aggravations with the product.  First, I get a notification every night that Flume has detected a leak in my system, not a huge deal just a bit of an annoyance.  Second, when my sprinkler runs I get a notification of a high flow rate.  My Rachio notifies me when the sprinkler is running I don't need Flume to do it as well.  Would be nice if there was some integration between Flume and Rachio but none that I can see at this point.  Lastly, there is nowhere in Flume that I could find where I could enter my water rate.  Would be nice to see how much it is costing to run my sprinkler or take a shower.  I did forward this suggestion to Flume for future functionality so we will see,  

Overall, for the price I paid, I think Flume is a pretty cool product.  It immediately detected a leak in my sprinkler system which I can now continuously monitor in case it gets worse.  I also now can see if any major leaks or issues are occurring before they cause major damage to my home.

Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor

 

This was another Prime Day pick up.  I have been using it for a couple months now and it seems to do a pretty good job monitoring my air quality.  I do have a couple other air quality monitors in my kitchen and bathroom but they do not measure as many factors as this product does.  I originally installed this in my kitchen alongside my other monitors for accuracy and the temperature and humidity reading were the same.  This monitor measures 5 air quality factors:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Carbon Monoxide
• Volatile Organic Compounds - Used in the manufacture of paint, carpets, cleaning products
• Particulate Matter - Dust, smoke, pollen

You can pretty easily find monitors for temperature, humidity and even carbon monoxide but at the price point of this device it is hard to find a monitor that measures VOC's and Particulate Matter.  I will discuss the price point later in this post.

I ended up moving this air quality monitor to my in-law apartment in the basement where there is more potential for air quality issues.  The basement can get a bit humid as we run a dehumidifier throughout the spring and summer and there is a gas heating stove that is run during the winter.  We do have a Nest Protect down there as a carbon monoxide monitor but not a bad idea to be double protected.

The interesting thing about this device is it is useless if you don't have an Echo device or the Alexa app.  There is no display on the device itself, the only way to determine your air quality is to ask the Alexa device or use the Alexa app.  The monitor will give you an overall score, 100 being the best.

 

Above is the screen within the Alexa app where I can monitor my air quality.  As you can see you can also see an hourly, daily and weekly history.

If you ask your Alexa device "what's the indoor air quality", this is what you will see.

If you tap see history, you can see an hourly daily or weekly breakdown.  I would love to also see a monthly and yearly breakdown so I can see if my air quality is improving or getting worse from year to year.

The app will also send you alerts if any of the air quality factors get too high. I found this out first-hand when I was having my kitchen painted and I was alerted that the VOCs were high.  You can also set up routines so if for example the humidity gets too high the smart switch for the dehumidifier turn on.  That is a bit redundant for me though as my dehumidifier has this functionality built in.  I may have a use case for this when winter rolls around for the fan on my basement gas heating stove.

This product retails for about $70 which I thought was a little expensive given I already have a couple air quality monitors.  With the Prime Day sales I was able to pick this up for under $40.  That was a price point I was much more comfortable paying but even at full price it is not a bad deal.

Some additions I would love to see with this device would be a widget for the Echo Show 15  so I could always see the air quality.  One of my big complaints about the Alexa device is the User Interface, I know Alexa is a voice-first device but having to remember to say the commands correctly can be frustrating.  My daughter reuses to use her Alexa dot and has unplugged it and my wife gets really frustrated when the Alexa doesn't understand her which happens pretty frequently.   A better UI/UX would go a long way on the Show devices.   I have been playing around a bit with the Apple Home App and what a beautiful app that is.  Amazon should really take a close look at what Apple is doing with their Smart Home ecosystem.  Something to post about in the future..... 

Sonos Move Portable Speaker

 

With our kitchen remodel complete we got rid of our 1st generation Echo Show and replaced it with an Echo Show 15.  I knew from reviews I read that the speakers on the Echo Show 15 were not great for music.  The speakers on the 1st Gen actually sounded a bit better than the Show 15 and that was my wife's primary device for listening to music while working in the kitchen.  So this gave me the perfect opportunity to upgrade our kitchen speaker.  I considered getting another Sonos One speaker but a little more power and the ability to move the speaker around my home was really appealing.  

The Sonos Move falls between the One and the Five as far as sound quality goes.  But the Move has a couple advantages:

• Battery Powered / Rechargeable
• Wifi and Bluetooth
• Alexa and Sonos Voice Control
• Indoor / Outdoor (IP56)
• Durable

I bought the Move for primary use in the the kitchen as I expect that is where it will live 90% of the time.  But the option to bring it with me in another room or outside where I am working is a nice option.  Sonos claims 11 hour battery life, I have not had a chance to test this out yet.  It does come with a charging cradle but you can also charge it using a USB-C charger. 

The wifi range on the Move seems pretty good, I have an acre and a half yard with a firepit quite a ways away from the house and the Move works fine there which is the furthest away I would probably be using it.  I did do some range testing walking the perimeter of my yard and I did have one drop out at the far end of my yard but the speaker reconnected quickly when I got back in range.

This speaker is a tank, it weighs about 6.5 pounds, it does have a carrying handle built into the back of the speaker but you are going to get a workout if you are carrying it any significant distance.  I like the rubberized base which will protect it from drops, although I have no plans to test the drop rating of a $400 speaker.  It also has a IP56 moisture rating so getting caught in a rainstorm isn't going to ruin the speaker.

I have owned cheaper BlueTooth speakers which is a nice option when on vacation.  Switching to Bluetooth mode is as easy as pressing the Bluetooth button on the back of the speaker and then connecting your device.  You switch back to wifi mode by pressing the Bluetooth button again.

The Move come in black and white, I opted for the white version to blend in a bit more with my white/grey kitchen.  Setup was very easy as it is with all Sonos products, I was up and running within a couple minutes.  Sound quality is excellent, it fills my kitchen up nicely with sound and the larger speaker has plenty of bass.  

Overall I am pretty happy with my Move, I have only been using it for a month though so I will update this post as I put it through its paces over the next few months.

  

   

Echo Show 15

 

When the Echo Show 15 was released about 8 months ago I knew I had to get one to upgrade my first generation Show which is really slow to bring up my cameras or do anything really.  The product is really at the end of life as far as functionality goes.  It was basically just serving as a kitchen clock and occasionally for viewing cameras, but that was getting unreliable and slow.  $250 is pretty expensive so I decided to wait until Prime Day and see if it would go on sale.  I was really lucky as it did go on sale and I was able to trade in my First Gen show, and got a gift card for the trade-in so the final cost was under $100, which was a no brainer for me.

This summer we were undergoing a kitchen renovation so it was a good time to rethink how we use technology and hopefully simplify things a bit.  One thing we really wanted to do is clean up the messy bulletin board we had on the wall with the dry erase calendar that we used for managing our family's appointments and schedules.  The echo show 15 has a sticky note widget as well as a calendar widget that would solve those use cases for us.  I also liked the idea of being able to manage all of my smart home products from the smart home widget but that leaves a lot to be desired at this point, more on that later.

My major use cases for the Echo Show 15 are as follows.

• Organization
• Calendar Functionality
• Smart Home Functionality

As far as organization goes I am really happy with how much cleaner the area looks now.  The Show 15 looks like a picture frame hanging on the wall and definitely has a cool factor.  See below:

I am most impressed with the calendar functionality.  We were able to connect our iPhone calendars with Alexa so now all of our and our kids appointments show up right of the Show 15.  This is really a game changer for my not having to remember when I have to pick up the kids from sports or whatever they have going on.

Unfortunately the smart home functionality / widget leaves a lot to be desired.  The widget only diplays six of my favorite smart devices and there is no functionality to go into a full screen to see all my devices / rooms like you can in the Alexa app.  Hopefully this functionality will be imporoved upon in the future.

Installation was pretty easy, they provided a sturdy bracket to mount the Show.  My wife weng back and forth a bit regarding where to put the device but decided to mount it to tge side of the wood enclosure for my refirgerator.  The issue with mounting ot there was the power outlet was on the other side ofteh wall.  I was ablr to pick up some plastic raceway and run the cable down the corner of teh wall which looks pretty clean.

One major issue that I am experiencing is that I am no longer able to drop in on my Alexa devices.  I was able to do this a couple months ago without issue but now it just attemps to connect but never does.  I don't think it has anything to do with the Echo Show 15 and I am unable to drop in on my Echo show 5 either.  I think it is some setting in my Alexa account that is preventing drop in but I have been unable to figure it out so far.  I even posted on some of the Alexa support message boards but they were not much help/

Another think I am a bit dissapointed with is the number of widgets available in the widget gallery.  I would hope as time goes by smart device manufacturers will create widgets for theor devices.  It would be great to have a widget that shows my sense status real time.    

I think overall this device has a lot of potentail.  I am looking forward to using it more once the school year starts and my familie's schedule starts getting crazy again.

Philips Hue Spotlight and Outdoor Motion Detector

 

I have an old spotlight above my drive way that we never use because the switch is in the garage and it is not on a motion sensor.  I have always planned to replace it with a motion sensor light but it is about 25 feet above the ground and I really don't like working on ladders that high anymore.  It also uses 100 watt incandescent bulbs which are extremely inefficient so I was hoping to switch to LED technology.

As I was looking through Philips Hue product lines I found that they have some outdoor rated LED spotlights that are only 13 Watts so that solves the efficiency issue.  I was hoping I could build an Amazon Alexa routine that triggered off motion on my Arlo security cameras which is possible but I could not find a way to have the lights trigger only at night.

Fortunately Philips Hue sells an outdoor motion sensor that does exactly what I need.  Setup was fairly easy as it is with all hue products.  The only confusing thing is I needed to setup the scene for turning the light on and off based on motion through the motion detector itself, not the lights.  Once I had that figured out it was pretty easy.  The only thing I am not sure about is I needed to set a time for nighttime behavior but I want the light to come on only when it is dark and that will change throughout the year I am not sure if that will need adjusting.  The motion sensor is set to only trigger when it is actually dark out so the time range seems to be redundant.  Just something to keep an eye on throughout the year.  So far they have been working flawlessly.

The only complaint I have heard about the motion sensor is that you cannot or it is very difficult to replace that battery.  That is pretty unfortunate for a $50 product, hopefully it lasts at least a couple years and by then they may have a new motion sensor with additional features.   The sensor does have a thermostat built in which I am not too sure what to do with.   I guess you could run some automations based on temperature but I can't think of a good use case for it.  The weird thing is I can't find the temperature anywhere in the Hue app.  It only shows in Apple Home, which I rarely use.  Apple Home may be something I need to dig in and learn about at some point as it seems some smart products only integrate there.

Overall I am pretty happy with this solution.  It is a bit pricey but that is what you get when you go with Hue products

 

Yolink Water Sensor

This past winter I had a couple issues with water leaks in my basement.  First my hot water heater pressure relief valve was intermittently releasing water, then a sink had a loose connection that was leaking water and during an ice storm water was backing up against my foundation and coming into the house.  My basement also serves and an in-law apartment and is finished so any floods would be costly and extremely inconvenient.

So I decided it was time to invest in some type of leak detector.  As I did my research I found that I had a choice of smart leak detectors or dumb leak detectors.  The dumb detectors basically just sound an alarm when they detect water.  This wouldn't do me any good if I am away from home or the leak is in some corner of the basement where I couldn't hear it.

I decide to look at the smart leak detectors and was surprised by the lack of products in this category.  Moen makes a leak detector that is meant to be paired with their water monitor but its cost was about double what the other options were.  I found a coupe online reviews for the Yolink water sensor.  It was reviewed really well, expandable and fairly inexpensive.  The only drawback that I could see was it needed its own hub and I was really not that excited to add yet another hub to my smart home but having a seemingly sharp increase in leak issues in my home I needed a solution so I pulled the trigger.

Yolink sells the system in a few different configurations based on your needs.  I went with the hub and four sensors.  But you can buy extra leak detectors in one or three packs.  Setup was very easy.  The app was intuitive and easy to add the hub and sensors.  A few days after installing we had another ice storm and the app notified me that water was detected in my basement.  I was able to resolve the issue before any damage was done, so the product basically paid for itself and then some.

I like that for under $20 I can add an additional sensor if I have an area I am concerned about.  If you have a large home you don't need to worry about range with this product.  It uses a wireless technology called LoRa (long range) and they claim a quarter mile range.  This would be great for a barn or detached garage.  They also claim a 2 to 10 year battery life.   I cannot confirm any of this but I have not had any range issues and all of my sensors are still showing 100%.

Yolink also sells other products to pair with their hub such as motion sensors, door sensors, temperature and humidity sensors and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.  They seem to always be adding new products as well so I am sure I will me adding more components at some point.

Philips Hue Lily Outdoor Spotlights

It has been a little while since I have purchased any new smart home products.  I am still really into building out my smart home it just seems that there have not been any new products that have tempted me to pull the trigger.

Recently my wife and I were discussing putting some Christmas lights up on the house buy I really have no desire to be up and down a ladder to install the lights so I decided to do a little research and see whet was out there for smart outdoor smart products that we could use as Christmas lights.  There are a few products out there but I kept coming back to Philips Hue.  Specifically their Lily Outdoor Spotlights.  It took me a couple months to pull the trigger on these due to the cost.  The whole setup with the bridge and 5 lights cost me close to $600 and that was with the 2 extra lights on sale.  Smart home enthusiasts seem to either love or hate Hue products, usually the hate come from the price as their products are really expensive.  But they are very high quality and the Hue app is very good and easy to use.

One factor that helped me to justify the cost was that my front yard is very dark,  we only have front door lights and a spotlight that we don't typically use as they are just dumb bulbs.  These lights will provide some nice interest to the front of my house throughout the year as well as holidays when I want to change the colors.  I can also start adding hue lights to different parts of my home as I see the need.

I do have various smart light bulbs around my home from a few different manufacturers.  Mostly from promotions from my utility that a did not pay very much for.  The downside is I have a few different apps to manage the lights and a couple times a year one of the drops off and I need to re-add it and remember which app to use.  Kind of a pain.  Now I can replace those with Hue lights as they die off.

What I was researching the Hue Lily spotlights I read a couple reviews where people were saying the lights weren't very bright for the price.  Most of the photos that I found online seemed bright enough but there weren't a lot of examples out there.  Philips also offers a larger/brighter spotlight called the Lily XL but I decided to just go with the standard version.   

Setup

The base kit comes with 3 lights, a power supply, mounting hardware, ground spikes, cables and T connectors.  I decided based on the look of the front of my home I needed 5 lights so I purchased two additional lights plus the smart hub.  The power supply that comes with the base kit can support 5 lights so I am good there.  The hub can support 50 lights so that should give me plenty of expansion in the coming years.  Setup was pretty easy.  Based on some other reviews I connected the lights together inside near the hub and then took the string of lights outside to stake in the ground.  The lights and hardware seem to be pretty high quality.  Very easy, took me about an hour and a half to unbox and setup.  Hopefully they will last through our New England winters.  Right now the cables are just laying on the ground. I will probably bury then in the spring when I mulch my harden beds. 

The App 

The app is one of the best features of the Hue system.  It is very easy to add additional lights, setup zones and schedules.  Most apps are not as intuitive as teh Hue app.  You can also setup scenes that have different lighting themes based on your mood or the season (Golden Pond, Artic Aurora, Moonlight, etc).  I setup a custom scene for Christmas with green and red lights.  My kids were having a blast trying out all of the different scenes.  There is a lot to teh app and I have not had time to fully explore it but I am looking forward to doing so in the coming months. Below is a couple examples of my setup with the Christmas and Bright scene.  The lights aren't quite as bright as the photo shows, my iPhone night mode is doing some kind of magic.  In real life they are a bit dimmer but still bright enough for me.

Overall I am pretty happy with my purchase, as expensive as it was it will be worth it to me as long as they last 5 or so years.  My only concern is that I am going to spending a lot more money on additional hue lights throughout my home and yard.