We have been testing the new kit from smoke alarms and cameras from Nest, Philips Hue smart lightbulbs and Logitech's new universal remote system..... and how they all work together
Remember the time when mobile phones first came out and people called friends' landlines from outside their front door to see their faces when they opened it.
Or the first thrill of Sky+ that let you pause live TV and then skip through the adverts.
It was all very novel and us made us feel like we were living in the future. But then within weeks we got used to it and moved on - it became run of the mill.
This is the process you will through as the automated home becomes the norm. First wonder and amusement, then a feeling of how did we live without this, then acceptance and moving onto the next big thing.
We came to this conclusion after testing the latest tech and saying ‘Turn light blue’ and watching a light bulb change to the desired colour. Then trying all the colours of the rainbow until we were satisfied it worked.
The next big thing is here as you more and more companies are teaming up to make that science fiction house of the future the home of today.
We have been testing the new kit from Nest, best known for their thermostats, but this time it is smart smoke alarms and internal video cameras.
Along with partners from Philips with the Hue intelligent lightbulb (who knew there was such a thing) and a new universal remote control system from Logitech.
The ways in which all this simple tech can be made to work together is mind-boggling, but here's a few scenarios.
It's the middle of the night and your Nest cam sends you a message and a picture of something in the back garden. After that your bedroom light, then hall light followed by a downstairs light turn on in a delayed sequence mimicking you coming down to investigate.
Or you are away from the house, you get a text message to say your smoke alarm has gone off, warch real time video from the affected room to check what is happening and if you need to call the fire brigade.
Or a common use would be to get home from work, and press one button on your remote to turn on the lights to a predetermined scene, shut the blinds, lock the doors and turn the TV onto your favourite channel.
You could also place the Nest camera in a spot to record memorable moments like kids birthday parties.
Not so long ago the tech required to do the above would have involved a lot of wiring, technical expertise and money. But now it is available to anyone who is tech-savvy to work a smartphone.
So let’s have a look at the kit required to make this happen.
Nest Cam £159
First up is Nest Cam that lets you listen in and see your home on your phone or tablet. It is a stand alone 1080p camera with built in microphone and camera that you place anywhere in your home and plug into the mains.
The black gloss plastic unit has an stylish design and at 11cm tall it is unobtrusive. It has a heavy well-made metal rotating base with a strong magnetic base so there are a wide-variety of options when placing it.
It connects wirelessly via Wifi to your home internet meaning you can access via the Nest app in or out of the home.
Set-up was hassle free as just follow the instructions on the app and it found all three of our cameras easily and quickly and brings up a thumbnail of each room on your phone screen.
You then choose if you want to get notifications pop up on your phone when it detects motion or hears a noise.
We put one in our garage for security with alerts turned on. The picture was good and the night vision worked very well in the pitch black. The alerts though were hit and miss, it would send them when someone went in but also several times in the middle of the night when nothing was there.
The two other cameras we put one on each on top of wardrobes in our young children’s rooms with the alerts turned off.
The idea of spying on them seemed a bit creepy at first but they didn’t know they were there. It let us keep a discreet eye on them at bedtime to see if they had really gone to sleep.
I know other users who keep an eye on their pets when they are at work and even talk to them through it.
Nest says it has ‘Bank-level security’ for the footage which can be record continuously and be held for 30 days in a Cloud so you can go back and review it, But for this you will need to the £10 a month Nest Aware subscription.
Nest Protect £89
This is a smart smoke alarm that connects to the internet to talk to other Nest products and your phone.
It uses a Split-Spectrum Sensor to look for both fast and slow burning fires and detect deadly carbon monoxide.
Available in either battery powered or main-wired it can be replace like-for-like with existing smoke alarms. You will have to removed the old smoke alarm and screw the Nest backing plate to the ceiling and clip it on.
Once up it, they are again managed through the same Nest App, which also controls Nest room thermostats and the Cams. This makes using the products much easier as you can check on everything in one glace.
On the Nest Protect a central ring briefly glows different colours to show you if it working correctly and a woman’s voice speaks to you before an alarm goes off.
False alarms when you burn the toast can be turned off by touching the unit or with your phone so there is no more flapping around with a tea-towel.
It will send you a message when the batteries are running low and if one does go off it will tell you which room, which would help in a panicked situation in the middle of the night.
Another feature we liked was the Pathlight feature. When the unit sensed you were underneath at night and briefly turned on a low white light.
This really is a top of the range smoke alarm, and at this price it ought to be. It seems like a lot to spend, especially if you have to buy a few, but once you start linking it up with the other Nest products it starts to make sense.
It you have the Nest thermostat they all work together so if a carbon monoxide leak is detected then your boiler will be shut down. And the Nest Protect detects when you are moving around the house and feeds the info to the thermostat to say whether to leave the heating on or off.
Philips Hue White and Colour Ambiance starter kit £149
If you ever wondered what the future holds - then speaking to your light bulbs is where it is at.
In essence these are remote controlled multi-coloured bulbs, that you can make come on and off by a wall switch, your phone or by a third party app such as Nest Cam.
The starter kit provides you three bulbs (either screw fitting or GU10 for spots) and a bridge, which is a box that connects to your wifi and wireless controls the bulbs.
You then just put them into your existing ceiling light fittings or table lamps, download the Hue app, plug in the bridge to the mains, and you can be up and running in 15 minutes.
Some of our existing fittings took bayonet style bulbs but it was easy to buy cheap adapters online to make them fit.
The energy-efficient LED bulbs boast 16 million colour combinations which can be changed via preset moods on the app or moving your finger around on the screen of your smartphone or tablet.
On the app you can set up Geofencing which will use signals from your mobile phone to automatically turn on your lights at night when you get near home, and turn them off when you leave.
If you have an iPhone or iPad then the built-in Apple HomeKit tech will work with Philips Hue so you can turn lights off and on and changes colour using Siri.
It is easy to set up and the is still quite a novelty to say out loud ‘Turn living room lights purple’ and watch them change within seconds.
The Philips Hue lights also work with Nest Cam to Nest Protect in useful ways. You can set the lights to go off when you walk out of a room, switch to the best setting to see through smoke if there is an emergency.
To improve security you can set a light schedule while you are on holiday or control them remotely. You can use your Nest Cam to turn on your lights if it detects movement outside, if you put the camera by a window.
But downsides are the bulbs won’t work with all existing dimmer switches, all of ours turned on, but some would not dim. And if you turn the lights off by the switch then the colour and light level is lost and it reverts to full on white light next time you turn it on.
You can buy replacement Philips dimmers to get round this problem though.
Once you have the bridge you can add up to 50 Hue bulbs to it, but with colour Individual bulbs priced £49.95 and white ones at £14.95, doing your whole house would be very expensive.
But as with all these things, prices are coming down as the tech is more widespread.
Logitech Harmony Elite Remote £279
Now to control all of this tech on top of remotes for your tv, dvd, set top box, stereo ect… can become a bit of a headache.
To try and tame the technology we also tried out the Logitech Harmony Elite Remote, that aims to be the one remote to rule them all.
And you can use the Harmony App to turn your phone or tablet into a universal remote too.
To do this the Harmony Elite remote package consists of three main parts, a conventional remote with a digital screen, a phone app and a hub to talk to other devices. It works with remotes that take either infrared or Radio Frequency (RF) signals.
Again it was straight forward to set up and a case of reading the brief instructions, downloading the app and plugging in the charging station for the remote and positioning the hub, so it can send infrared signals to what it needs to control.
It can be made to work DVD players or set top boxes that are behind closed doors by using the two included infrared receiver that you plug into your device and then place the small fob in a discreet place outside the unit.
There are thousands of models stored in the Logitech’s data base for all the major manufacturers. Apparently the Harmony library has more that 270,000 compatible devices. So getting the right codes is a simple matter of putting the make and model number into the app and it finds the correct ones.
At our house it took less than 15 minutes to get it paired with devices from Samsung, Denon, Humax, Apple, Nest, Philips Hue and Lutron.
This means you can control all these through the Harmony app or through the remote itself.
It can control 15 entertainment devices and combine that with control popular smart home products including lights, locks, and thermostats, even when you are away from home.
The remote is the same size as a conventional unit, but unlike most it has a colour touchscreen, and vibrates when you touch it and responds to swipes.
Much like going to the gym, the more effort you put into the remote the more you will get out of it.
This will take a bit more time but you can set it up to create customizable schedules
So you can easily create one-touch control of multiple devices.
The idea is that if you get home and decide to watch a movies you can press one button to power on your TV, dim your lights, adjust the temperature and close your window shades—all at the same time.
Then at the end of the night you can push a button to switch off every item and lock the doors.
When using there a pros and cons the Harmony system. It no doubts works all the devices you want it to on a basic level, and is great if you want to check on everything in one go. And it is genuinely useful being to control everything off one remote or app.
But it can be a bit sluggish when your first start up the app each time. And in trying to be all things to all men, the controls for each device as not as natural as each one’s dedicated remote or app.
It is not as intuitive to use as dedicated remotes but with practise you learn work arounds for these quirks.
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