[Music] Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I'm your host as always Stan McCune realtor right here in the Greenville area of South Carolina you can find all of my contact information as always in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs and please you enjoy the show Please Subscribe leave a rating leave a review most of you have that capability because most of you are using either Spotify or iTunes slapple podcast and those both allow for you to do all of those things so please subscribe leave a festar rating leave a short little review so that we can get this podcast out to the entire world the entire world needs to know about selling Greenville because Greenville is relevant to the entire world you know we've got people moving here from all over the place I get contacted as a result of this podcast by people moving here from all over the place we've got people investing in Greenville from all over the world and so I want to get this podcast out to as many people as possible and you guys can play a a honestly a big role in doing that by just taking a moment just to leave a rating and a review so I'd appreciate if you guys could do that I'm going to try to avoid as much background noise as possible unfortunately there is directly above my ceiling a television being played by my father-in-law and unfortunately I can't control my in-laws or the timing of their visits but I need to record this podcast otherwise I will not get this podcast out so I apologize in advance if you hear I believe it's the show Heartland playing above me I've tried to turn down the volume on my mic so it won't be quite as sensitive but there you go I'm I'm giving you that preface in advance because I record this from the my home office and sometimes these these little things get picked up in the background but today I want to talk to you guys about smart home systems specifically when it comes to well what I've been doing with smart home systems which specifically has to do with the Apple home kit and home app now there are a lot of different smart home systems this this is not something that is new I mean there's been smart thermostats and just all sorts of things like that for a very long time at this point I mean I'm now on my third straight home that has a smart thermostat that I've installed So Smart Systems have been around for a while but the techn ology behind them has really Advanced quite a bit in recent years and now we've got all of this voice control voice control with Siri voice control with Alexa voice control with I guess Google has their own thing I don't think anyone uses that really at the end of the day Siri and Alexa dominate the market and for the purposes of this podcast I know it's technically apple homekit as I've already said but I'm just going to call it Siri that is is a lot simpler than me just saying homekit homekit or apple home you know constantly and I'm sure that Amazon calls it something different than Alexa when it comes to their smart home type of stuff but I'm just going to call it Alexa okay guys don't don't kill me for this those of you that are really into this I'm I'm sorry I'm just going to keep it simple Siri and Alexa now I had to when I was deciding that I wanted to do this so I I decided I moved the past six months and I decided you know what I want to really start to get into this you know basically making my entire Home Smart from the standpoint of just having all these different Smart Systems and being able to do a lot more voice control like that just seemed like an interesting next step for me that was something that I wanted to do and I had to decide am I going to go the Alexa the Amazon route or am I going to go the Siri Apple route and there's a very there are very clear pros and cons in either direction when it comes to the Amazon route first off we already had those Echo and Echo dot little speakers and my kids love them they're very useful they can actually like call friends that they're connected with on there which they get a little kick out of you know we can all hear it's just a speaker phone type of thing they can play music on there and so it it's and we use I should clarify we use Amazon music that's like our primary music source that we've used over the years and it obviously ties in very well with the Amazon Echo and so we we're already in with that but then almost everything else we have is Apple what well I say that there's one other key Amazon thing for us and that is the Amazon Fire stick that is what we have on all of our TVs in you know in order to keep our Smart TVs coherent so we have the fire stick for them that's Amazon we have the echo that's Amazon but then beyond that and there's reasons for that I'm I'm not a big Apple TV F Fanboy I'm not into that I've tried Apple TV I've tried Roku I've tried fire stick trying to think if I've tried anything else but there was a reason why I went in the fire stick Direction and overall I'm pretty happy with it when I've done Apple TV I've not been happy so some of you guys are going to disagree with me on that that's fine go Apple TV your life away I do not care but for me the fire stick is what has worked for us so when it comes to Apple we have all of our major devices on Apple iPhone you know Max things of that nature and so it was and and you know airpods all of those things we we've got a lot of Apple devices floating around here and so it was kind of a tricky decision because our we are kind of like split between these two different systems whether to go the route of getting things that are Amazon Alexa compatible or things that are more Siri compatible and unfortunately there's not a whole lot of overlap between the two there are a few things that overlap like for instance I believe that the ecobe thermostat which is my thermostat of choice I've tried the ecobe and I've tried the nest I do not like the nest for a time it was like oh this is cool I've had them both and and originally I had the ecobe my first house then I went to the nest with my second house and it just I just stopped liking it for a variety of reasons it did not the the whole learning aspect of it did not work super well the the app was actually very underwhelming I just wasn't thrilled with it so with my current house I went back to the EAB very happy about that decision much more stable The Nest was constantly it would have Wi-Fi issues it would have connectivity issues it would have power issues just all sorts of different issues the ecobe it just works and it does all of the things that the nest does but does them better it's does its own it has its own like system of learning I don't even understand how it works but it works really really well and you can obviously set it up on schedules and do all these different things you know work it remotely from your phone but anyway I believe that if I'm not mistaken that the ecoe thermostat Works whether you're using Alexa whether you're using Siri but a lot of the other things you kind of have to pick one versus the other and the the main difference between the two at least and I'm no expert on this this is just from me figuring this out myself some of you listening to this are probably smarter than this than me and you can just skip this episode if you want okay or you can listen to it and then you know text me and make fun of me for something that I didn't know as well as you I'm totally fine with that I will take any engagement from the show that you'll give me but as far as the the main pros and cons the Amazon compatible products are it's a massive list huge list of products that are compatible with Amazon in terms of smart home systems whereas with apple and Siri it's a much smaller list however pretty much everyone agrees that the Apple system and their ecosystem and and just everything about their the smart home systems that are compatible with Siri and with dare I say apple home Apple home kit there we go I broke my rule I went ahead and said it everyone agrees that the SEC security element is better with apple than it is with Amazon now I don't know all of the the backend tech details on that I'm just having to take other people's word for it in general Apple tends to be more secure than other platforms anyway and so it was kind of like okay variety versus security right that was kind of what it came down to and the other aspect as well of course is the ability to I've got you know Apple watch I've got my iPhone and the ability to just use Siri on one of those devices to be able to control these different things and I'm realizing now I'm thinking you know what I need to set this device on do not disturb I apologize for that I don't want there to be interruptions during this and I forgot to do that but the the there's something to be said for being able to just simply use Siri without having to open any apps or or do anything like that to be able to control all these different smart home things so in the end that and the security angle that won me over to Apple and their compatible Smart Home Products versus Amazon's compatible Smart Home Products and so here's what I did I kind of approached it and and I'm still in the process of doing this so this this might be like a part one and we might do like a part two like I don't know like the end of this year like next year it's not going to be for a while before we do a part two but I first approached it from okay what are kind of the the pressure points what what are the the most important places where like I personally feel the need for having smart home systems the most obvious one is the Smart thermostats I cannot recommend enough a good smart thermostat don't get those ones that Duke Energy is like trying to sell you for cheap don't do that get a real one get I I would say get an eae cuz again I'm not big on the nest I don't feel like they're I I don't feel like that's a a great thermostat personally and and so that's what I did one of the first things I did after we moved in I changed our thermostats and went that direction and the EOB is great it's it's so simple it's very reliable it just does what it's supposed to do and it does it better than any of the others in my opinion so then it was like okay what are some of the other things I need to consider well if I want to control my ecobe from from my iPhone or from my Apple watch then it needs to be Siri compatible well there's a quirky thing about this with apple and that is that you have to have an apple homepod in order to be able to to do this and I think that this is probably the dumbest thing out of all but basically they have the I believe it's the homepod and then the homepod mini if I'm not mistaken and it's basically their version of the the Amazon Echo and then you know the the main hod is like a very premium version of it so I had to go get one of those even though I already had an echo and even though I already had iPhones and mac and apple watches all these things I had to go out and get one of the Apple speak ERS I got the Mini version and I listen we don't use it very much it the the S sound quality wow I don't know what I just almost said there sound sound quality the sound quality is definitely better than the echo absolutely better than the echo but it just does not work very well when if we're trying to stream from Amazon music I mean it is not intuitive it all it's definitely designed to be used with podcast or like the Apple podcast app or with iTunes or the music app anything that's like native Apple it works great anything that's not native Apple I I will have all sorts of issues getting it it'll play and then it'll stop playing and you're probably like oh you don't know what you're doing no actually I'm pretty knowledgeable about this it's just glitchy when it comes to it it just doesn't want to play nice with non-apple apps so it's a little bit frustrating it we basically only use it just to have our smart home systems connected to Siri but that's fine it cost it was like a 100 bucks for the speaker and you know I thought maybe I could get like get them for like 80 bucks on Black Friday nope there were no discounts at all on them and any well there were like a few but they all sold out right away so obviously apple is doing something right but anyway B you basically have to plan to pay 100 bucks for it so there were a few other things that I was thinking about okay so what do I want to connect on my on my Smart Home systems what I want to be able to operate from my phone my garage Overhead Door all of my entry doors I already mentioned thermostats and a security system now I have a little bit of experience with all of these things in different capacities I have I've had this schag I believe is how it's pronounced locks where you have like codes and they can be connected in different ways I hate those things those I mean I think they're very secure but like those things are really annoying to install if you lose like a certain code you like can't like the the original entry code then you can't like reprogram it that's like really annoying it's like all sorts of of problematic things for for the schag locks really weird word I've used the August smart home lock I got that originally for my Airbnb property because they have some cool Airbnb functionality the only problem is it's super duper glitchy and that lock is fine otherwise like I definitely would not rely on it for for their Airbnb functionality now that I've seen how glitchy that is but simply in terms of of its every daytoday type of type of functionality outside of the fact that it disconnects from the Wi-Fi more often than I would like it to it works pretty well but I decided Well the the August lock I'm pretty sure does not work with Siri there's actually not very many of these door locks that actually work with Siri and so I went with the one that has probably the best reviews out of all of them and it is called level now level is interesting and and pretty much all of these locks only work with a dead bolt so you just have to be prepared for that level is interesting because you don't actually you actually keep the original lock you're not replacing the entire lock set you're just replacing the inside part of your dead bolt and if that sounds complicated for the most part it's not like it's not technically complicated the only thing that becomes complicated is you don't realize all the time when you're locking and unlock talking if your deadbolt is like scrubbing on the actual door frame like if if you've ever had to lock a deadbolt or unlock it and it just has the slightest bit of friction it doesn't just smoothly without hitting anything without scrubbing anything just lock and unlock guess what this system the level system it does not have enough power to be able to handle that there can be basic ially no friction if there is any friction it will not lock and unlock correctly another problem I've had is issues with just delays with Wi-Fi with it that I'm still trying to figure that out I do have a Wi-Fi extender I'm probably going to look into I believe they're called mesh systems to to try to just kind of improve WiFi throughout my my home that's been a problem the level lock not not super thrilled with it up to this point it's been okay but my wife doesn't trust it I do trust it for the most part but probably about 20% of the time it doesn't operate in the way that I would that I would like it to so not super happy with that but I'm hoping that if I improve the Wi-Fi connectivity throughout my house that that will fix the issue there or at least improve it make that 20% maybe go down to like 5% % something like that with the garage overhead door I have put in the I believe it's pronounced meos meos miros probably miros it's a smart door a smart garage door opener and one thing that you'll see with all of these if if you're if you're looking for these types of things if you're looking for something that's compatible Siri it has to say on it works with apple home or works with apple home kit that's very important and and again there's not a whole lot of garage door openers that do this was one of them now installation for this thing was not as simple as I wish it would have been and there's this isn't necessarily the fault of the miros as much as it is that I have a Genie garage door opener and the genie motor opener Genie is like the most incompatible with like everything else I don't care if I ever have another Genie garage door opener it's frustrating I've had to be on support with them multiple times now thankfully their support's pretty good shockingly so but I shouldn't have to go on support for anything for for my garage door opener like that's that's such a a silly thing now this the miros has worked pretty well it's probably worked the best of just about anything with one exception and that's that it just like went down the other week and just stopped working like it was just showing that my garage door was closed even when it wasn't wasn't responding to Siri or anything else and this was confusing to me and I I've been busy I've been very busy didn't have a chance to really look into it well the other day I had to reset my Wi-Fi for something and after I reset it all of the sudden the garage door opener the miros started connecting again so there was something weird with the Wi-Fi that it just wasn't communicating with the the door opener so anyway I'm glad that I didn't spend a bunch more time trying to work on it when all I need to do was reset the Wi-Fi so note to self if any of these systems stop working in the future start with resetting the Wi-Fi anyway I've been mostly happy with that I think I would do the the miros again given the choice now the security system was the one that was kind of the most interesting to me really the the best option from what I understand if you're trying to incorporate this with Siri is the system that's called Abode now I've I want to divert for a section and say that I've used two other systems before in addition to now the Abode system I've used Simply Safe And I've used Vivant I will say this Simply Safe I had an earlier ver version than what's available now I do not like Simply Safe now I have not used them the most recent version but the earlier version very inconsistent very unreliable I would not entrust my home security to that system under any circumstances I am not in favor of Simply Safe Vivant was fantastic Vivant I have nothing bad to say about them they're the the system self was good reliable support fantastic I mean there were times where I couldn't figure something out and I would talk to support and they'd be like okay we're going to text you a link you're going to click on that link and that's going to allow you to share video or photos or whatever with us and they could just tell me in real time what exactly it was the issue that I was experiencing they replaced Parts free of charge it was just it was a really good really good system so I purchased the Abode system for my house and I'll say this for the most part it is a very good system but there are a few quirks that really really drive me crazy and the main one is the doorbell cameras they can't be just like wired in like a normal doorbell camera like you can't just place the doorbell camera where your old door was and then connect the wiring you can't do that it's literally battery operated and the battery has to be on on every doorbell camera has to be recharged every several days and that just doesn't make sense I mean it's great from the standpoint of just being able to install it anywhere like not having to worry about wiring or any of that sort of thing but from every other standpoint it's terrible like right now I've got one of my doorbell cameras just you know just charging right now I'm I'm going to put it down there later on tonight but like why why should I have to do this now originally I feel like I read somewhere that it doesn't show video or it doesn't function properly while it's charging now maybe that's the doorbell functionality but the camera functionality definitely still works while it's charging so I am seriously considering basically drilling through a part of my doorf frame SL wall towards where my bracket is for the doorbell cameras to allow to to feed the USBC through there so I can just keep them permanently charged I really don't want to do that super annoying but and of course I need to explore whether that would mess up anything but that is by far my most frustrating thing with the Abode system so far I am not happy with that everything else I'm pretty happy with now what's interesting is because it's a security system it doesn't operate with Siri in quite the same ways as these other things that I've mentioned to so these other things just out of the box are very simple like when I set up my EOB thermostat I set up a basement one I set up a main floor one so I can just say like right before I started this podcast because if I had the heat running down here cuz I'm in the basement if I had the heat running you guys that would pick up you know in the background of this podcast so I simply went to Siri and just said turn the heat off in the basement and within a few seconds the heat was off in the basement so that's pretty cool with a security system you have to create what Apple calls a scene which is kind of funny but you have to create a scene in order to do these types of things so what I had to do in order to arm or disarm my security system was to create a scene when I say A Certain phrase that then it arms or disarms and it that doesn't work with the homepod so all of the other things you can do on the homepod so for instance if my daughter wanted to change the heat in the house she could go to the homepod and say probably my this is probably going to trigger my watch we'll see but she could say hey Siri do this yeah hold sorry exactly what I thought happened did happen except it happened on my computer and then it was in my in my headphones you probably didn't hear that I all of a sudden Siri was communicating with me in my headphones and I couldn't hear anything was happening oh now it's communicating with me on my phone all all the devices are going haywire here but they can control pretty much everything else with the homepod but the homep Pod for security reasons will not allow you to to disarm the security system but I can do that from my phone so that's kind of cool can't do it from the homepod that makes sense you wouldn't want someone to break into the house and then they speak to the homepod and disarm the security system not cool not not exactly what I what I want to see happen so that makes sense so I did that and that has worked pretty well now what I haven't done yet which is kind of the next phase in this is to create scenes where it's like just when I arrive when I arrive home I can just say something like hey hey I'm home to you know what SI I don't want to keep triggering her on my devices I don't know why all the other times I was saying Siri before nothing was happening and nothing happened that time all right maybe maybe we're maybe we're in the clear here I want to be able to just say the Siri you know I'm home and when it when I say that the garage overhead door opens the basement door opens and the security system gets disarmed something like that that might not be exactly the the scene that I do but like that's a possible thing that I could have done on the flip side when I'm leaving I could have something that I I say just as I'm leaving that ensures that everything is locked and that ensures that the security system goes on the garage door is closed all of those different things so I'm going to be playing around with that that's kind of phase two in this process but that's something I'm very excited about that's something I look forward to doing and then then oh you probably hear my dog in the background I apologize phase three of this is to experiment with some of these other things so I've not done anything with smart light bulbs those are are a big thing right now and so I I want to play around with things like that I haven't up to this point because it's just kind of like we have light switches but one thing that could be cool is the ability to turn on or change colors or whatever for like a couple of light bulbs versus all of turning on all of the ress lights in one room at one time I don't even exactly know how that works so I'm kind of speaking out of turn here but that is part of all of this that that I'm working towards so in the end am I happy that I went with Siri versus Alexa I think I am I think that you kind of run into these quirks no matter what you do as I said before out of all these the ones I have the strongest opinion on is that the EOB thermostat I think is the best thermostat out there and simply safe is not a security system that I would ever go back to those are my strong opinions with regard to the rest of these other things I'm not super happy with the level lock but I am hoping that some of the Wi-Fi issues will will resolve if I've resolved those Wi-Fi issues will help to make things better I'm not happy with the doorbell cameras with the Abode system needing to be charged by the way the one that is furthest from my Wi-Fi the battery drains on that very quickly which I'm assuming has to do with that it's it's working extra hard to try to find a feed and and send that feed you know to people's devices that's frustrating hopefully I'll be able to resolve that in one way or another but so far I think I I can see the appeal for doing these smart home devices for having them connected to Siri I think I'm happy that I went the Siri route I'm happy with a bode I overall besides those doorbell cameras I will say installation for the Abode system was fantastic fantastic installation I was able to set up Security on my entire house within like two hours and I was able to organize it all and and just make everything looks super clean the way it works on the Apple devices is super clean you can pull it on your computer on your on your phone on Apple carplay there's functionality in if you have apple carplay that you can control some of these things on there like when I pull into my driveway it pull it just automatically pulls up whether I want to open the garage or not right there on my display like it knows that I'm close to it so there's some really cool stuff with that that I really like and so I'm happy that that I went in this direction I don't think I could have gone wrong I don't think had i cho chose the Amazon system sorry about that moved away turned away for a second I don't think if I had had chosen like the Amazon system and their options that I would have been disappointed either but it is nice to know that there's a little bit extra layer of security that Apple has that I have been told that Apple has but that I don't have the technological skill to fully verify myself so you guys can look that up yourself and verify or you techie people can let me know what your opinions are about that and the way you can do that is by looking in the description of the show the show notes my contact information is in there please again as I always ask you guys please leave a rating a review subscribe to the show thank you guys as always for listening we will talk again next time [Music]