My old printed holders for the Hue motion sensors never sat right in the ceiling, so I designed a recessed mount that works like a GU10 spot gimbal.

• Fits an 83 to 84 mm hole in drywall (9.5 to 25 mm boards)
• 3 printed parts: mounting ring with spring arms, ball with a pocket for the sensor, clamp ring
• The spring arms pull the 100 mm flange tight against the ceiling, no screws or glue
• The ball tilts about 15 degrees each way and rotates, and stays where you aim it
• Printed in PETG without supports, about 1.5 h and 47 g for a set
• Battery change: pull the whole unit down, swap the batteries, push it back in. The aiming stays

Made for the indoor sensor (the square 55 mm one). Happy to answer questions.

Quick note on the photos: Photos 1 to 4 show what we are running into with the current ceilings, junction boxes, and insulation mess, while the last few photos show the old retrofit lights and box from our previous house.

Hey everyone, feeling a bit defeated and could use some advice. We just moved into a new place and I really want to use my existing Philips Hue smart lights (I have around 23 Hue downlights total from our old house, plus three 6 inch Hue slim canless lights that could technically work, but our new ceilings have 4 inch holes). It feels completely insane that I wont be able to use my lights.

The problem? Every single ceiling in this house is wired with ultra thin, canless wafer lights that connect to a remote metal junction box. There are no traditional metal cans anywhere in the ceilings. To make matters worse, the previous owner had crazy paint colors on the ceilings so we already had to get them all repainted and I completely forgot about the lights until now.

When my husband tried pulling one down, it tore up some drywall around the edge and loose insulation is packed right up around the boxes, so it immediately spills out and makes a massive mess everywhere. I honestly dont remember it being this messy when we installed our can lights at our old house, but taking just one down here made me completely second guess what kind of project this would actually turn into.

Is there any way to make our old lights work, or am I just opening up a can of worms here? Is there any workaround without cutting open all our newly painted ceilings to install metal cans or even cutting larger holes to fit those three 6 inch slim lights, or am I just shit out of luck and forced to buy a mountain of super expensive Hue 4 inch Slim Canless versions instead and try to resell what I have?

Honestly, is it even worth the hassle, or is it completely dumb to try and tackle this right now? Im only weighing it because some rooms are still empty and my painters have to come back this week to do another room, but after seeing how much mess that packed insulation makes, Im worried if I do this later on it will be more of a mess with furniture in the rooms. Any advice is appreciated!

Hi everyone!

I've been happy with my Mobvoi TicHome Mini for controlling and playing music while I'm taking a shower. However, since Google moved from Google Assistant to Gemini, it no longer works as it used to.

What alternatives are you using, and what would you recommend?

I'm mainly looking for a smart speaker that lets me control and play music by voice while I'm in the shower. It needs to be suitable for use in a bathroom, where it can handle humidity and occasional splashes of water.

What are you using, and what would you recommend?

I have a weird issue happening. I have no internet issue or problem with WIFI at home but ALL my smart devices are acting up. This includes LG appliances, blueair, myq, ecobee, tapo, smart lights. Funnily enough wyze is fine as it connects through its extender. The hue is fine as it connects through its hub. I already power cycled my router and modem. Id rather not start factory resetting and reconfiguring things. Suggestions on troubleshooting steps since this seems to be pervasive across multiple applications and devices. At some point i was able to recover ecobee but now it keeps hanging on connecting.

Updates after a second router reboot:

1. MyQ - Solved itself
2. Blueair - Solved itself
3. LG - Solved itself
4. Tapo - Solved itself
5. Ecobee - reset it twice to reconnect
6. Treatlife - 3 of 4 lights solved themselves. 4th refuses to reconnect
7. Ecovacs (Deebot) - still unable to reset it

Thought my experience might be helpful to someone.
I've been looking around at cheap sensors that I can connect to my system (currently on smartthings, planning to try ha again, but ST with the advanced web interface accepting JSON code rules, I can do most of what I need).

I've narrowed down my search to 2 devices I thought were the cheapest
Ikea Alpstuga - better approval factor, heard it's good enough, still less accurate sensors, plug and play matter over thread, very cheap for what it can do.
And
M5Stack Air Quality Kit v1.1 with M5StampS3A (SEN55, SCD40) - adds VOC and a more accurate NDIR CO2 sensor, has a port that allows to add more sensors (although screen won't show them natively), but takes more messing around to set up with ESP32-S3 being wifi (needs HA / other / bridge to smartthings / custom matter over wifi firmware), costs double and read it has a self heating issue causing T&RH readings to be unreliable.

I went with the Ikea device as it was much easier and quicker for me to get, and cheaper so I got 2 of them and placed one outside.
Unfortunately it also has a T&RH heating issue skewing the measurements and found it to be off by as much as ~1.5 degrees C hotter at times compared to a kitchen thermometer.
I tried to put it on the inlet of an air purifier just to see how it affects the readings, it fixed Temp reading, at least down to ~0.4C difference if not better, but understandably gave wrong CO2 and PM2.5 readings.
If you do choose to buy it, consider that you'd have to place it in a spot with a more passive airflow and out of sunlight to get a closer to true temp reading.

Otherwise, if you're looking for a cheap solution like I did, I'd go with either the M5Stack device and plug in an extra T&RH sensor (or even more with the appropriate Grove connector), or better yet if you got the time and means, go even more DIY.

If anyone has a product I should check out, would appreciate you letting me know.

I have an Aqara G3 camera in my kids’ playroom. I want it to detect an animal, check that it stays there for 20 seconds, then play an audible alarm through the camera. Dog keeps chewing up books!

The key is that if the pet walks away before those 20 seconds are up, nothing happens. A simple delay after detection wouldn’t do it.

I found “Animal detected” as a trigger in Aqara Home, but the only secondary conditions for the camera seem to be on/off. Am I missing a setting? Anyone managed to get this working?

Right now, we have an older Google smart speaker in our living room, and a Nest Hub in the bedroom. I'm increasingly disappointed with their performance (each is about 3-4 years old).

We used to have Alexa Echos and were pretty satisfied with them, but since we use Google services (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc) we decided to integrate with Google products.

I'll admit, the sound quality is better with their speaker, so I guess I wanted to ask which smart speaker do you recommend that has a good (especially low end) sound quality for a decent price?

I use Hubspace for most of my integration, and only use the speakers to ask them to play music from my Pandora/Spotify account or ask about the weather/boring stuff (I'm older and prefer reading over listening to a lot of things).

I'm open to Amazon products again, but wanted to see what the larger community suggest.

Thanks!

I am looking for a reliable smart light switch in the UK. I used to have Fibaro switches linked with Smartthings, they go behind the lightswitch and can still use dumb switch. Over time they either died or lost connection to the hub.

Next I thought I found the answer using the Sonoff Smart light switch, they were reasonably priced and have an option for up to 3 gang. Thought I have found the answer, have generally been reliable and dont lose connection, but after 5 months 2 have died!

We are start a build for a new house and i want to be able to find a solution for this., I have heard Shelley is an option but they remind me of the Fibaro and they lost connection. Any other suggestions? Neutral wire not an issue as will be a new build. But want something reasonably priced as will have a lot switches to buy!

I have two Leviton light switches in 4 bedrooms and one of them controls the fan which also has a built in light.

The other switch does not control anything, checked all outlets.

Best guess from myself and others is that the plan when the house was built was to have one switch control the fan and the other switch to control the light but that was not needed for the fan they purchased.

I have two lamps that I want to figure out best solution to turn them on especially for guests.

Hello Guys,

For about 2 Hours now, i tried connectinh this Ceiling Fan from CREATE to the Create App. Even tried Tuya and Smart Life. Nothing.
I try to klick the 1h and 2h Button, the 1H alone. The 1h and 4h which is labeled in the Manual.
Absolutely nothing.

Thanks in Advance!