[VIDEO] Hello, Smart Home: James

Welcome to our latest installment of “Hello, Smart Home,” a video series where we head inside customers’ houses and apartments to see how they’re using SmartThings to secure their homes, gain peace of mind, and complement their preferences and patterns.

Today, we meet James, a busy professional who wakes up incredibly early and uses SmartThings to help make his mornings easier.

Check out the other videos in the Hello, Smart Home series.

Want to recreate James’ smart home setup in your crib? Here’s how:

Items:
• 1 SmartThings Hub
• Free SmartThings app
• 2 SmartSense Motion sensors
• 3 SmartPower Outlets
• 2 SmartSense Multi sensors
• 3 TCP light bulbs
• 1 Sonos speaker

Optional:
• Sleeping mask

How to:

James keeps his SmartThings Hub in his living room. From this central location, it can easily reach the all of the connected devices throughout his apartment.

He keeps a SmartSense Motion sensor on his windowsill facing the living room and his it set to turn on his living room lamp each morning when he wakes up. To do this, he’s plugged his lamp in to a SmartPower Outlet. To keep the lamp from turning on automatically at other times of the day, James has this triggered to only turn on during the week when his apartment is in “Home” mode, like this…

James keeps another SmartSense Motion sensor in his kitchen. Whenever there’s motion detected by the doorway and in his kitchen, the overhead lights automatically turn on. After motion has stopped being detected for five minutes, the lights automatically turn off.

Since James wasn’t interested in hard-wiring his light switches, he simply purchased a few TCP light bulbs, screwed them in, and then connected them to SmartThings using the SmartThings Labs integration. To set your TCP or Philips hue lights to automatically turn on when there’s motion, simply follow the above video tutorial, and select the smart LED lights you’d like to control.

James has placed a SmartSense Multi sensor on his desk and on his front door. Whenever he opens his desk, the vintage Edison light bulb on top of his desk that’s plugged into a SmartPower Outlet automatically turns on. And whenever his front door opens and closes, the TCP light above his door automatically turns on/off. Here’s how to set a light to turn on or off when a Multi senses that a door, window, or drawer opens or closes:

James has also plugged in his dumb coffee machine into a SmartPower Outlet and has set his coffee to start brewing when he wakes up during the week. This way, by the time he barrel-rolls out of bed and stumbles into the kitchen, his coffee is ready! Here’s how you can do this:

Finally, whenever James closes his desk drawer, the SmartSense Multi sensor triggers his Sonos to read him the current forecast and the day’s weather forecast. To set this up, James is using the “Sonos Weather Forecast” feature found in SmartThings Labs. Since he only wants this to play once per day, and only during weekdays, he has selected those options in the SmartThings app. Here’s how to set this up: