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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I recently upgraded my Comcast internet service to gigabit speed, with that upgrade I was told that I would need their new modem/router to support that speed. Unfortunately the new router only had two ethernet ports whereas the old one had four. This posed a bit of a problem for me as I had my computer, Arlo hun and Tesla solar panel communication module connected to the router. Not sure why their new router has less ethernet ports than the old model, but luckily the simple solution was to get a switch.
Luckily switches are relatively inexpensive and very simple to use and install. A switch is basically a way to extend the number of ethernet ports that you have access to. They come in sizes from 5 to 48 for home and small office use and even larger for larger business. The switch I purchased is unmanaged meaning there is no software to install and it provides no functionality for managing network traffic or security. Which is fine for my home use.
Setup was extremely easy. It is a powered switch so you need an outlet to plug it into. Then you run an ethernet cable from your router to any port of the switch. Then just connect any wired device to the switch via ethernet cable. The switch is fan-less so it doesn't make any noise which is nice if you need to put it in a room where you need quiet. It does have lights on it for each port but I have my switch behind a cabinet so the lights don't bother me.
The only aggravation with the switch was the instructions told me to download an app to register the switch but the app provided no functionality to register. Pretty useful device for short money that most smart home enthusiasts probably have or will need to have as you build out your smart home.
My home is around 30 years old so this means some of the original components are at or close to their end of life. The good news is many of the new replacement products are much more efficient and now have smart controls making them much easier to operate. I have 10 skylights in my home, luckily none of them leak but I know with a 30 year old skylight it is just a matter of time. One of the skylights in my master bedroom had a broken seal between the panes so I knew at least it's efficiency was compromised. Most of my skylights also did not have blinds, this made sleeping in difficult with the bright morning sun shining in on us.
We did a pretty major master bathroom remodel over the summer but did not touch the skylights. After the remodel was done our 30 year old skylights just didn't fit with our new modern bathroom. We became aware of a soon to be expiring 30% federal tax credit on the purchase of solar skylights and blinds. 30% savings is pretty significant and we knew we would need to replace the skylights eventually so we had a local company out for estimates. Total before the tax credit was around $15,000 and after the credit our cost will be around $10,000. I opted for two fixed skylights and solar blinds in my bedroom, a fresh air solar skylight and two fixed skylights in my master bath. The fresh air skylight is near the shower to allow for ventilation when necessary. Below is a promo video from Velux showing some of the smart features
The skylights and blinds have been installed for a couple months now but I just recently got all of the smart controls and app working. The guys that installed the skylights did a great job but they are roofers and knew nothing about the smart features or setting things up. They didn't really even know what components were needed. They left me just the hub and none of the sensors, I had to talk to one of the managers about it the next day and it took over a month for them to ship every thing to me.
Components
There are a lot of components that come with these skylights and blinds. Each powered skylight and blind has its own remote control. This is kind of unnecessary if you are using the app once you get them setup. Now I have a bunch of remote controls laying around that I don't use. So they sit in a drawer.
The kit also comes with a hub which is necessary for the smart controls and to tie the components together. Velux recommends one hub for each room which to me should not be that case. I am using one for my bedroom and master bath which seems to be working fine. Then there is the climate sensor which monitors the temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide levels and will open the skylights when the room needs to be aired out or will close the blinds when the room is getting too hot. This is pretty much the selling point of the smart features of this product, The last component is the departure switch which you can activate to close and lock the skylights when you leave the house.
Hub
Remotes
Climate Sensor
Smart Features
I have to admit that one of my reasons for investing in these skylights and blinds is for the smart features. Velux's marketing team says that the smart features will provide energy savings as well as improve indoor air quality, I doubt that any energy savings will even pay for a fraction of the cost of the skylights but every penny counts I guess. In the summer time I do notice that my rooms with skylights get really hot so having the blinds close automatically will definitely help. I am not sure I am sold on the air quality functionality but I will be able to better judge that in the summer when it gets more hot and humid out. Opening up the skylights a couple times a day automatically to air out the room doesn't seem like a bad idea. I think the best feature is the scheduling. I can set the blinds to open and close at a certain time of day. One issue we had with the skylights in our bedroom was if we wanted to sleep in on the weekend we couldn't as it was so bright. Now we set the skylights to close in the evening and open at 10:00 am. Velux also has Apple Home Kit integration so you can ask Siri to open or close your blinds and skylights. Unfortunately no Alexa or Google Home integration yet but apparently it is in the pipeline.
Setup
I think product setup is one of the areas lacking with this product. The online documentation isn't great, the paper manual that comes with the app wasn't very intuitive either. I will talk about the app later but it leaves a lot to be desired. I wish the documentation was all in the app and it just stepped you through setup. I eventually got it all setup and figured out. Part of my issue was that I missed the step that you need to pair the remotes with the hub to set up smart controls. You need to first set up rooms and then add the hubs, remotes and sensors to each room. This takes a while and gets confusing if you have 6 remotes. I had to go through the process a couple times to get it setup properly and I am pretty tech savvy. Once I figured it all out the it works just fine. Probably something that the installers should have helped out with but they are roofers and did not seem to know anything about or were interested in smart product technology.
App
The app is just ok. The main screen shows your rooms you have setup and there are buttons on the bottom for locking the skylights, Good Moring - opens all blinds and Good night - closes all blinds. If I click on my master bathroom, where I have the climate sensor installed, I get an additional screen with Temperature, Humidity and C02 levels. The setup menu is where I have the biggest issue with the usability of the app. There are too may menus and it is just not intuitive on where to change settings. I usually have to fumble around for a few minutes before I can find the setting I am looking for. The Settings include:
Home management - Lists Rooms, Hubs and details of each
Active Control - Lets you set schedule and room comfort levels
Quick Actions - These are settings for the three buttons on the main screen
Notifications
Guest Management - Give guest access to control your skylights and blinds
Install New Products
Create a new Home
Help
My Account
Rate Us
Some screenshots of some of the screens are below. One thing that kind of concerns me is that the solar blinds and skylights run on a battery. What happened when the battery wears out? Hopefully I can just replace the battery and don't need a whole new unit. Also since the battery is charges by solar what happens when we have a few days with no sun or the solar collectors are covered by snow. The documentation did say there would be days in the winter where the blinds may not work if they do not have a sufficient charge. If that is teh case there should be a battery indicator within the app that shows the battery level. I have many other smart products that use batteries and all have some sort of battery indicator.
Pros
Energy Savings
Smart \ Convenience Features
Clean looks
Tax Credits
Potential indoor air quality improvement
Cons
Price - These products are not cheap
Lack of some features - Solar Battery monitoring
Odd behavior - Blinds randomly close to cool the room in the winter
Blinds are a bit loud when opening and closing.
No Alexa integration
Fixed Skylights in our Master with Solar Blinds
Overall
I am glad a replaced my skylights when I did and was able to take advantage of the solar tax credit. The jury is still out for me on the smart features of this product. The scheduling has been the most beneficial, kind of a set it and forget it type of thing. The issues I have with the app are fixable but even if they stay as is it is usable. I really wish there was something in the app that gave me a battery level indicator but maybe that will come in the future. One last upcoming feature that I am looking forward to is integration with Amazon Alexa. I have my skylights integrated with Apple Homekit but all my other smart products use Alexa so that can't come soon enough. I think I will learn more about the product over the upcoming months as the weather warms up.
I still have 5 skylights in my home that need to be replaced. Unfortunately I won't be able to take advantage of the 30% tax credit. There is a 26% tax credit in 2020 and then it drops to 22% in 2021 so I need to make a decision soon.
