Gadgetory

I'm here at the scene at smart home upstairs in the reading nook where we've decided to install some smart shades while there are quite a few options out there we decided to go with Lutron's sarena shades while they're a little bit pricey they have some really cool integration features first off they're homekit compatible which means that you can use Siri to control them with your voice Siri lower the upstairs shades okay I said all of the upstairs shades to zero but unlike some home compatible devices these will also work with Android phones so if you get the app you can actually set it up with IFFT to work with Alexa so with Amazon echo you can also get good voice control the LexA trigger bed time sending that to lift the smart shades that I have set up now are basically able to double as smart lighting and smart temperature control I can issue voice commands with Siri or Alexa but my upstairs nest thermostat will also track the temperature so if it gets too hot the shades will automatically close to keep out some of the sunlight Plus aside from some of the basic offerings like being able to schedule the blinds or set up very simple triggers you can also take advantage of geofencing so if I decide to run out to the store for example the shades will automatically close to keep out some of the sunlight and keep the temperature normal but when I get back they open back up and the room lights up again I really like setting up these shades in this reading nook up here because it's one of the spaces that I use the most of the smart home but I really won't be willing to commit to one type of shade for the whole CNET smart home until I see some progress in a couple of areas in particular I'd like to see some of the prices drop for some basic shades like these there are about $350 a pop that's just too much I'd also like to see some deeper in app interoperability right now you can do some pretty cool integration but that's only possible via third-party apps like IFFT for instance homekit scenes are not the same thing as Lutron app scenes so you can't actually activate scenes in the Lutron app using Siri which is also a major problem now I'm not totally committed the idea of having homekit enabled shades in particular but until another company or Lutron really decides to make these three big changes then the upstairs reading nook of the CNET smart home is going to be the only area that has smart shades