Gadgetory

hi rich brown after seeing that today we're going to take a look at the wink relay smart home control panel so here's a panel right here there's a 300 dollar smart home accessory it is that you hardwire it into your wall where you have a light switch and then anything on that circuit becomes a smart device so we've got some hard buttons here they control the lights that are out of my back porch there so anything that is on the wink smart home network that I may be controlled through an app on my phone I can now control from this one place here built into my wall to install the relay you need to take over a light switch in your wall and it has to have a neutral wire that might be a problem for older homes too it's relatively straightforward you kind of have to mess with the wiring setup particular if you have a double light switch box like this one is here but the idea is you shut up the power undo the light switch tie those wires in to the relay it shouldn't be too hard to handle though if you're basically competent with home maintenance so there are a wide range of devices that work with the wink Network all kinds of lights and lock some different sensors and all kinds of things it's actually pretty broad so for that wink is useful so scroll around on the screen and you can see some of the other devices connected to this relay hub so I've got a drop cam here I've got some lights I've got a nest thermostat program down here and clicking through to those will give me access to any of those who are home components thermostat integration is pretty good and I've got direct control here of the thermostat settings I can go home away I can set it to heating mode cooling mode it's not quite as in-depth as what you get on the nest itself but for basic interactions of thermostat it's pretty useful in its resting mode you see the time weather display it also has some shortcut buttons that you programmed through your phone that show up on here and you can kind of program all different smart home behaviors into shortcuts here so overall link relay works pretty well we had a few connection issues but nothing that we couldn't circumvent there seems to be a lot of potential in the product because if you have a whole lot of different Smart Homes things that you're looking to kind of wrangle into one easy control spot the benefit of anything else in the circuit becoming smart is useful there these two switches here but that said you can get other in wall units that bring other things online for much less than this but if you're just getting started with the smart home and you only have a handful of devices this probably won't give you that much value particularly since most of the controls you'll find in the wink app for free so thanks for watching I'm rich Brown this is the wink relay smart home control panel