Re: About to Break Ground...
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2022 3:08 pm
The experimentation with home automation technologies continues. Here's what I recently acquired:
- Three of nanoleaf's a19 essentials smart bulbs. I bought these as a way to experiment with smart lighting. I've always been an advocate of the "smart switch" but being able to set a light to different colors and color temperatures is attractive. These lights are also Thread routers, and I'm keen about getting Thread devices wherever I can.
- The Lilygo T-Relay. This is an ESP32 board with four relays built-in. It works great and replaces quite a bit of the home-brew ESP32 garage door controller system I posted earlier.
- The Lumary Smart Canless Recessed LIghting 6 inch 4 piece set. These are Wi-Fi lights that you control from your phone. They change colors and color temperatures, which I am growing to love. Wall colors can look completely different based on the color temperature of light, and being able to adjust this right from the phone is very cool, not to mention the smorgasbord of other colors these lights can do. These are also "thin" lights. They don't need a can and come with a box containing the LED driver electronics that just sits up in the ceiling.
This foray into smart lights has gotten me rethinking switches for the new construction project. At first I thought I would go with traditional white recessed pot lights and a smart dimmer, but the more I think about it, the more I'm inclined to focus on the lights themselves. What I really want are Thread-based switches, but those don't exist yet. I looked at Inovelli, but they are still out of stock. I still have a couple of months to decide, but I don't expect things will change much by then. I may just get plain dumb switches and focus on finding a better switch solution down the road.