When Lutron isn’t available -Smart Hubspace Outdoor 6-Outlet Power Stake
I’m working on my outdoor Christmas decorations this week and went to go an order a new Lutron Outdoor Smart Plug, sadly those weren’t available anywhere so I ended up going with this WiFi based smart home device from Defiant over at the Home Depot called the Smart Hubspace Outdoor 6-Outlet Power Stake. Showing this to a friend that lives in non California climate “that’s fine for California but I wouldn’t use it in a place that has real weather” and honestly I can see that being a problem something snow and rain climate folks should worry about. The doors on the 6 outlets on this thing are doors but aren’t gasketed. It sits above the ground using 1 or 2 stakes, the second one is optional and just makes it a bit higher above ground. It doesn’t snow here, barely rains here so I should be fine.
Why not Lutron?
I usually buy the Lutron Outdoor Smart Plug but none of them are in stock and Home Depot has a pallet of these Smart Hubspace available so i went with that. Before buying I did some research to see if I could get my HomeKit powered Smart Home to work with it. If you use Alexa or Google Home then you are done but for folks like me here is how to add this thing to HomeKit.
Home Bridge
I’m a big fan of Home Bridge and Scrypted both are software bridges that allow non-HomeKit stuff to talk HomeKit so I did some searching and looks like Zenion made a plugin called Hubspace plugin for homebridge (Home depot things) that provides support for this device. Perfect.
Setting up
I installed the plugin in Home Bridge and noticed it needed the username and password I need to create on their app. I downloaded the Hubspace app and created an account then added a device and installed it, connected to WiFi and assigned the room which I doubt matters since Home Bridge is going to do all the stuff for me. I then went back to Home Bridge and configured the plugin.
HomeKit
Once that was setup I went and added the device from Home Bridge to the iOS Home App by pressing the + sign and Add Accessory using the QR code provided in Home Bridge. Since this device is wifi enabled and requires a username and password this means its cloud dependant, not something I’m a fan of but better than nothing.
Automating with Home app
I have a Lutron Outdoor Smart Plug for my Christmas lights already and I have it added to HomeKit with an automation to turn on the lights 1 hours before sundown so I added this new device to that scene. You can create a HomeKit scene in the Home app with a bunch of different restrictions pretty easy. Now my christmas lights outside and inside will all turn on at the same time.
Boom, done!
What have you automated in your house for Christmas? Let me know in the comments below.
