I have a setup with Hue lights in each window and an old speaker, it uses the kids ipad and an app called Hue Halloween, it randomly turns lights to various colours and flashing etc with screeches and all sorts. Looks great from outside. Biggest pain is having to move 6 lights around
I had to set this up a few weeks ago for my 'fake halloween' to make the video, but all I'll need to do for Thursday is tape my light strip up in the lounge window again and turn on halloween mode in HA. My kids are a bit old to enjoy this now so I'm going to scare the s*** out of everyone else's instead :)
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech where we live is a bit of a time warp, we will have 120-140 kids come round over the night. Probably 40-50% of houses here will have decorations and give out sweets. It's always a good night
I really enjoy a lot of the videos that you produce, but I feel that the number of them that are now centered around unpaid promotion is too high, maybe a second channel for all of the promotional stuff would be an option? It might just be me, but the minute I hear "such and such have sent me this item" I instantly feel I'm watching advertising and stop the video
Thanks for the feedback. That's a shame - I rely on products being sent to me and the companies obviously have a motivation of promotion. I attempted to frame it differently in this video - yes, I am showing off the Reolink doorbell (which I do think is great so far btw) as one option of kicking off an automation and the doorbell fits within my current series of "ditching my Ring subscription" which I think is a valid aim regardless of who sends me free stuff. I do talk about other ways of triggering the automation using cheaper / alternative components too to try and bring some balance and avoid that feeling amongst my audience. A second channel is not an option really, this is a hobby for me and one that takes up a huge amount of my spare time just making one video per week. Some will feature sponsored products entirely, some are guides, some are vlogs - hopefully a varied amount. This one was intended to be topical for this time of year, hopefully a useful demonstration of Halloween-themed automations, and also demonstrate how a smart doorbell (yes, in this case the Reolink one they sent me) can fit well within that automation.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech yes I do notice that you go to a lot of effort to integrate the promoted products into the theme of the video and that certainly helps. It might just be that I'm an edge case grumpy git but I pay for TH-cam premium and certain creator's patreon, so when I feel like I'm fed an ad it's a turnoff. I appreciate that TH-cam doesn't pay what it used to so creators are probably having to diversify Keep up the good work anyway!
Word of warning - next week's video is pure product review on the theme of an option to replace Ring! But then the week after I'm back to a product-free tutorial. Hopefully there will be a one off/one on approach to product placement if I'm able to maintain that balance - you've had two weeks just gone without any product reviews already!
I have a setup with Hue lights in each window and an old speaker, it uses the kids ipad and an app called Hue Halloween, it randomly turns lights to various colours and flashing etc with screeches and all sorts. Looks great from outside. Biggest pain is having to move 6 lights around
I had to set this up a few weeks ago for my 'fake halloween' to make the video, but all I'll need to do for Thursday is tape my light strip up in the lounge window again and turn on halloween mode in HA. My kids are a bit old to enjoy this now so I'm going to scare the s*** out of everyone else's instead :)
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech where we live is a bit of a time warp, we will have 120-140 kids come round over the night. Probably 40-50% of houses here will have decorations and give out sweets. It's always a good night
You are going to get a lot of callers 😅
Depends how many fake spiders I stick around the doorbell :)
🎃👻👻🎃
I get to try it out for real on Thursday!
I really enjoy a lot of the videos that you produce, but I feel that the number of them that are now centered around unpaid promotion is too high, maybe a second channel for all of the promotional stuff would be an option?
It might just be me, but the minute I hear "such and such have sent me this item" I instantly feel I'm watching advertising and stop the video
Thanks for the feedback. That's a shame - I rely on products being sent to me and the companies obviously have a motivation of promotion. I attempted to frame it differently in this video - yes, I am showing off the Reolink doorbell (which I do think is great so far btw) as one option of kicking off an automation and the doorbell fits within my current series of "ditching my Ring subscription" which I think is a valid aim regardless of who sends me free stuff. I do talk about other ways of triggering the automation using cheaper / alternative components too to try and bring some balance and avoid that feeling amongst my audience. A second channel is not an option really, this is a hobby for me and one that takes up a huge amount of my spare time just making one video per week. Some will feature sponsored products entirely, some are guides, some are vlogs - hopefully a varied amount. This one was intended to be topical for this time of year, hopefully a useful demonstration of Halloween-themed automations, and also demonstrate how a smart doorbell (yes, in this case the Reolink one they sent me) can fit well within that automation.
@@SpeakToTheGeekTech yes I do notice that you go to a lot of effort to integrate the promoted products into the theme of the video and that certainly helps.
It might just be that I'm an edge case grumpy git but I pay for TH-cam premium and certain creator's patreon, so when I feel like I'm fed an ad it's a turnoff.
I appreciate that TH-cam doesn't pay what it used to so creators are probably having to diversify
Keep up the good work anyway!
Word of warning - next week's video is pure product review on the theme of an option to replace Ring! But then the week after I'm back to a product-free tutorial. Hopefully there will be a one off/one on approach to product placement if I'm able to maintain that balance - you've had two weeks just gone without any product reviews already!
I thought you had a good balance of showing the product but in a novel way and it's ease of automation. As you say, in a topical way