[VIDEO] Hello, Smart Home: Jordan

Grab some quarters, take off your shoes, and check out how Jordan and his girlfriend Tracy are using SmartThings to turn their home into a gamer’s dream.

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


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

Items:
• 1 SmartThings Hub
• Free SmartThings app
• 2 SmartSense Motion sensors
• 3 SmartPower Outlets
• 1 SmartSense Multi sensor
TCP bulbs (or any SmartThings-compatible bulb)

Optional:
15 vintage arcade games, which you can probably find and install in an afternoon, right?


How to: Get Notifications When There’s Motion

Jordan keeps a SmartSense Motion sensor by his front door and receives notifications whenever it detects movement. This can be useful if you’d like to know when the mail comes each day, if a scheduled serviceman or woman arrives, or if a guest is about to ring your doorbell. Here’s how you can set this up:


Tip: While the SmartSense Motion sensor works fine for Jordan outside, it’s intended to only be used indoors. If you’re looking to place a motion sensor outdoors, we’d recommend either placing the Aeon Multi Sensor outside, or placing a SmartSense Motion sensor inside by a window facing out.


How to: Trigger Lights to Turn On When Something Opens

Jordan keeps a SmartSense Multi sensor on the inside of his front door. Whenever it opens, he’s set it up to turn on the living room lamp (which is plugged in to a SmartPower Outlet). Here’s a quick video tutorial showing you how you can set this up: 


How to: Trigger Lights to Come On When There’s Motion

Jordan can trigger his kitchen lights to automatically turn on simply by walking into the room. There are several ways you can set this up, but they all start with the SmartSense Motion sensor.

Just place one (or two, if your room is large) of these facing the room, and then use the SmartSetup section of the SmartThings app to connect it to a lamp, smart bulb, or in-wall switch. Here’s a video showing you how you can do this:


How to: Control Pluggable Lamps, Electronics, or Vintage Arcade Games

Instead of having to haul each of his 100-pound arcade games out from the wall, reach around to the back, and plug them in to power them on, Jordan is able to control his game room setup with just a few taps in the SmartThings app.

To do so, plugged in several SmartPower Outlets into a power strip, and then he just plugged in the power cord from the arcade into the outlet, like this:
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And then, just as you can turn on a lamp or toaster, or coffee machine, he can then turn on the arcade games with a simple tap of a button using his wall-mounted tablet (or smartphone), like this:

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How to: Create a wall-mounted dashboard:

We’ve seen lots of creative ways that SmartThings customers have created wall-mounted dashboards. Here’s how Jordan created his:

“I just used a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite and mounted it to my entertainment center using outdoor tape. Similar to the action-based dashboard detailed on the Community forum, my tablet is set to stay on while plugged in. There’s a male-to-male audio cable connecting it to my receiver so it can be used as a Internet-music controller. My next project is hooking it up to Sonos.”

 

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Join the conversation! 12 Comments

  1. That’s an awesome way to combine old and new technology

    Reply
  2. This video is absolute BS!
    ST should replace it’s marketing staff with some good developers to fix the crap they’ve already sold, instead of fooling more people into buying their junk.
    The guy in this video would be extremely lucky if his ST setup works reliably even 50% of the time. I only have 3 z-wave devices at my house, a door lock, garage door relay, and tilt sensor. None of these work reliably even 30% of the time. In fact, I am totally shocked when my devices respond to manual commands or my automation event work the when and how they are supposed to work.
    This is not only my experience, take look at the endless posts about all these problems on ST’s Community forums.
    My advice, DON’T BUY SMARTTHIGNS!!!!

    Reply
    • Hey Misa…

      Reliability is definitely not 100%, but I think “30%” is far worse than the typical customer experience. I have over 40 devices (mostly Z-Wave, some ZigBee) and “at worst” **everything** functions well 80% of the time, and most outages or problems are short or isolated, so I’m inclined to claim at least 95% reliability for my setup.

      With only 3 Z-Wave Devices, I hope some folks on the Community Forum and/or SmartThings Support can narrow down the issues you are experiencing. Z-Wave radio technology, for example, can be affected by little things like the SmartThings hub being placed too close to your WiFi router — just one thing that is outside of ST’s control but that can possibly improve your functionality considerably.

      Reply
      • As I said, reliability is 30% at best for me, and I am being generous.

        If ST was indeed 95% reliable then who are all these crazy people that are complaining about things not working, and why is ST issuing apologies and taking misdirected action to try to fix these nonexistent problems? Why are they redesigning their hub to maintain local control over devices?

        Talking about local factors, this ad (yes this video is and ad) should be used to illustrate what causes interference. Just count the number of old steel case analog video games in that tiny room.

        I have spent weeks and gone to extremes to isolate any local factors that could possibly cause problems. This includes placing the hub literally 3ft way from my devices, and verifying the speed of my 300Mbps downstream/20Mbps upstream Internet connection as problems are occurring. I have also watched the live logs and confirmed that activities are not being registered in ST’s cloud.

        If supporters of ST want to put their money where there mouth is, then start a well publicized campaign to take back hubs for a refund to anyone that’s dissatisfied with the product/service. Tracking and publishing data about the percentage of people that abandon ST will put an end to the reliability and viability question.
        The only hope I had was for ST to redesign the hub to maintain local control of all Z-Wave and ZigBee related control. However, based the slow progress and ST’s poor track record, there is no way that I am willing to waste my money on another product from this crappy company.

        Reply
        • What this Bozo Misa isn’t telling you, or is avoiding intentionally, is that those 3 “smart things” he/she/it mentions are probably ALL setup to make a garage door open and close, which is one of the trickiest setups.

          I also doubt he’s even using Smart Things branded products and is probably using some crap older Zwave devices that are known to have issues.

          Misa I call your story what it is, BS, and your own personal lack of skills and tendancy to overreact are your issues, not Smart Things. If you are incapable of being reasonable then you should stick with brainless technologies like pen and paper. Oh wait those require some expertise to use properly as well, might want to avoid those too.

          Reply
          • Hey Dorco (not a typo),

            You’re the one pulling facts out of thin air. First of all, how the hell do you use a Z-Wave door lock on a garage door? Are you really that stupid? Secondarily, all of my Z-Wave devices are new and on ST’s approved devices list.

            You’re clearly an imbecile so please, do everyone a favor and crawl back under the rock you came from.

      • I think 80% is my fair share. I use a proximity fob so that my wife doesn’t come home to a dark house. I have 5 GE ZWave switch to turn on the recessed lights I have and certain ones like the doorway turn off after 10 minutes of entry. Then I have a motion detector which is on the other side of the house which turns on the light after sunset for my dog in case he walks around.

        Everything then is wired into my Harmony Ultimate Home which when I go into watching movies instead of TV on the remote, it dims lights like a movie theater. In my room there is a motion / temp sensor there, when someone walks into the room and the temp is hot, it turns on my ceiling fan…

        Its not 100%, but I am ok with 80%. I think that is the threshold, but 30% then you have to reassess where you place your hub.

        Reply
    • I have 18 items including garage door sensors and switches, door locks motion sensors and more. In the 3 months since I started I’d bet my up time has been 95%+. The biggest issue I had was momentary outages that were fixed when I replaced my home router. Seems one of dual bands was going out so it wasn’t really a ST issue.

      I was alerted once to water on a floor and the fact that I was going to bed but saw on my dashboard that a door was still open.

      It’s a good system and I expect to build on it further.

      Reply
  3. The “How To” Videos are very helpful, thanks, as some of the best product features are not obvious in the mobile app and easy to overlook.

    Reply
  4. Hmmm… the tip for “…placing a SmartSense Motion sensor inside by a window facing out.” is misleading. That would only work if the window were open. The SmartSense Motion sensor will not work through even the clearest of glass.

    Reply
  5. There’s a male-to-male audio cable connecting it to my receiver so it can be used as a Internet-music controller.Casquette Superman

    Reply

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