Gadgetory

hey I'm seeing that's right Crist and today we're taking a look at the Staples connect hub now it's a very simple looking device but it's actually pretty powerful it plugs into your router and it's got z-wave ZigBee Wi-Fi Lutron clear connect all these different types of protocols that smart home devices use to talk to each other built into it so we can talk to all of them and it can integrate them all under one app and have them work with each other to help you automate your home let me walk you through an example I've got this lamp here with a Philips color changing hue bulb inside of it and then here I've got a Yale smart deadbolt now these products can't work together because they don't speak the same language but the staples connect hub speaks both languages so it can be the translator so what I've done is I've set up this deadbolt to turn the light green when i unlock it and red when I lock it so if I turn the knob here and unlock the lock the light turns green if I turn it back the other way light turns red and you see that happens really fast what's happening is a z-wave signal is going out from the lock into the staples hub the staples hub is sending it back over ZigBee to the philips bulb that's all happening within this course of just about a second that's a really quick easy seamless interaction now getting up and running with staples connect is very quick it's a very easy installation getting that lamp and that lock set up took me about 10 minutes it really wasn't difficult at all so if you are new to home automation or you're just looking for something pain-free staples Connect is a good way to go the iPhone app is very clear and very easy to use and if you have an iPad and want to use that instead they have a dedicated iPad app it's not just the scaled up iPhone app that's very nice Android users you've got your app as well so your bases are probably covered no matter what device you're using there's also a web interface that works quite well and you get all of that for $99 and that's a really great price compared to another option like revolve this costs $2.99 and does basically the same stuff as staples connect still it's not a perfect system if you look at the products you add to it like Philips hue bulbs for instance you're not always getting full functionality within that staples app you can change the color turn them on and off and dim them a lot of the basic functions but there's more out there music sync all those third-party apps that exist you're gonna want all of those you're still gonna want the Philips he so staples won't replace all of that and that's sort of the dream plus you're still going to need to plug in the Philips hue bridge to use your lights so we're just not quite there yet in terms of total unification but I do think staples Connect makes sense if you want to start automating your home in a more unified way it doesn't get you all the way to that dreamland but it's a nice step forward for seeing it I'm right Chris