Bunnings can be a store of wonder and surprise, as well as a steady source of onion on the bottom sausages and bread. If like some of us you’ve been preparing for a hot and unpleasant Australian summer, you may have been searching for the perfect pedestal or tower fan with a little Google compatibility. Well, Bunnings has silently launched exactly what you’re looking for.
The $149 Arlec 102 cm Smart Tower fan and the $99 Arlec Smart Pedestal Fan are both in-store now and offer a plethora of control options including tradition buttons, IR remote, WiFi-enabled app and of course Google Assistant and Alexa integration. They are both part of Bunnings’ new Grid Connect platform, which we have to admit we didn’t know about.
Grid Connect seems to be Bunnings play for a curated Smart Home ecosystem, and I have to admit, they may just have Australia’s largest range of products under one umbrella. The Grid Connect system is hubless and thus relies on WiFi. While this is okay for the beginner smart home, WiFi starts acting funny the more devices you add, so if you’re looking to smart your whole house, this may not be the system for you.
For whole-home automation, you’re still looking at something like a Z-Wave set up and the guys over at SmartHome have you covered there.
Grid connect.is essentially just TuyaSmart (Chinese brand) products rebadged. I also.think Arlec is behind the re-badge and distribution, not Bunnings. Certainly the support line is serviced by Arlec.
I use the Orion doorbell purchased from Bunnings, support line is Arlec, and switched to the Tuya smart android app as it was a bit more stable.
we are coming to the same conclusion, the app manifests also liss Arlec. We have experimented with pairing other TUYA devices with the Grid Connect app and vice versa and confirm that it’s interoperable.
mesh networks solve all your problems, z hub etc is on its last legs and just a filler.
Be informed and aware with silly uninformed comments in the article.
Bunnings Grid Connect seemed to arrive as a soft launch around about July/August 2019.
It’s a bold move for an Australian hardware store to launch its own IoT platform.
All Grid Connect products operate on 2.4GHz WiFi. Unfortunately there is no IFTTT integration. It’s possible Bunnings is working on that.
If you use WiFi-6 (802.11 ax) it won’t go “funny” when you add more devices.