Nanoleaf Canvas - Setup & Review

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys mike here the detroit borg and i'm really excited to show you the new nanoleaf canvas now i've reviewed natalie's before when they released the nanoleaf aurora which is now known as the light panels and i've had it on my wall for a number of years as you might have seen in my previous videos so the nanoleaf canvas is sort of a follow-up to that product the canvas incorporates a lot of new features such as touch sensitivity as well as a built-in microphone which can respond to audio in the room such as music and this tile design gives you a little more design flexibility than the triangles of the light panels so for example you could wallpaper a wall edge to edge with light if you had the budget for it speaking of budget these are fairly expensive starting at 249 for the smarter kit so the smarter kit gets you nine light panels one of them is the control panel which you need you can buy four panel expansion packs which is what i have here just like other nano leaf products this also works with home kit alexa and the google voice assistant so get into the unboxing of the smarter kit first up we have some paperwork so the paperwork will explain how to set these up we also get the home kit code but we also get some suggested patterns you could use obviously i chose not to use any of these but you can see you can arrange them diagonally or just use a traditional tile-like setup in terms of these light squares they're about 5.9 inches square or 150 millimeters square and the first one we have here is the main control square so you need only one of these for an entire setup so this one square is used to control all the other light panels it has the microphone wi-fi and more this is quite a bit more integrated than the module which is used on the light panels which sticks along the side so we have dedicated buttons for enabling the rhythm scene shuffling the scenes advancing to the next color scene adjusting brightness or just turning it on and off alternately you can use your smartphone voice control through a smart speaker or you can also use touch controls on the panels themselves using gestures we'll get into that a bit later the back of the control square is slightly different than the standard panels just because you'll see the module sort of in the center of it along with the setup codes in terms of our accessories first up we have the power supply so unlike the light panels the power supply does not have the controller built into it so that means the connector is quite a bit more lower profile so it can basically hide behind the panel you connect it to now the good thing here is that you do not need to connect this directly to the control square you can connect this to any one of them as long as they're all daisy chained together now to connect all of the squares we get eight links so you only need one of them between each tile so each square has four individual connectors and they're off-center which means you do have to be cognizant of where each one is located when setting this up also included with the canvas is a set of adhesive strips for mounting these to a wall so these are non-permanent adhesive strips so basically they're like command strips so you can use three of them on each tile and there's spots on the back of each tile specifically for those adhesive strips the great thing about these squares is that there's a lip all around them so you can basically hide the tabs behind them so you don't have to see them but they're still easily accessible if you want to remove these obviously once you remove those strips you have to buy new ones so you don't want to do this too often so the great thing about the canvas is that it works right out of the box all i have to do is connect up the tiles and start playing with the configuration you might want to put on the wall it comes preloaded with a bunch of color scenes which you can cycle through and we have all of the controls we need for cycling between our different color scenes enabling the rhythm feature changing the brightness or just turning it on and off but for wireless control you'll need to set this up with a smartphone either on ios or android running the nanoleaf app so in the case of an iphone you'll set this up using homekit so with homekit you're prompted to pair either through nfc or you can scan the code on the back of the tile and this code is also in the paperwork or on the power supply once you're set up the canvas is connected to wi-fi so you can remotely control and configure it from your phone or from one of your smart assistants next up you just need to establish the orientation of your canvas setup it can detect all of the tiles and their arrangement automatically but it doesn't know whether it's vertical horizontal or diagonal another thing we can do is assign five distinct touch gestures for the canvas so we have double tap swipe left swipe right swipe up and swipe down so in my case i've double tap to power them on and off swipe up or down to adjust the brightness swipe left or right to advance between the different color scenes one of the things i really like about the canvas is that they're lit edge to edge that's because the leds are actually at the center and diffuse across the entire surface so there's no blank spaces to hide the led sources that diffuser also adds kind of a clever looking 3d special effect to the light it looks especially neat as the light fades in and out now initially it can be a little overwhelming to look at the customization options for your canvas you can customize the color for each individual tile you can customize the brightness the time and duration in which they flash or change color and much more but typically what i do is download the color scenes which are available from the discover tab at the bottom of the app so when you go to discover you can see all of these recipes that people have already made and published on the store which you can download free now you can find scenes that fit virtually any mood whether you want blue colors green colors nature themes sunset themes holiday theme so if you want a christmas theme halloween theme you can find it personally i prefer the fall themes or the night themes just because they have a more ambient quality to them instead of flashing these bright vivid colors so i like the themes that sort of fade the colors in and out gradually and leave a lot of blank spaces between the different tiles so that way there's not too much light filling up the room and this is more of an ambient art piece and not just a bright light source as i mentioned these work with google home alexa and home kit so you can use siri alexa or the google assistant to control these lights so you can change the color the brightness and you can even specify the color scene these light panels are also fantastic light sources so if you really want to fill up your room with a lot of white light you can certainly do that in fact i use it all the time for filming in my studio also built in is the rhythm feature so again this responds to music or any noise in a room and visualizes that audio now there's quite a few different rhythm scenes some will keep the lights on all the time and just change the color according to the sound and some of the scenes will only flash lights on with sound so after two years of the nanoleaf aurora on my wall i've grown to be a huge fan of these products i love the flexibility in terms of how you can paint your room with light whether you just want a nice ambient light or you just want to fill your room with bright technicolor light or even just bright white light there's a lot of flexibility here especially in terms of its design but the only drawback is they're not really that easy to take on and off the walls you can certainly do it but it's definitely a hassle so you really want to plan ahead of time in terms of your installation and how long you want it to stay up there and ultimately you can have a lot of fun with these lights especially with the canvas and all of its new features alright guys hope you enjoyed this look at the nanoleaf canvas if you want to check them out i'll leave a link in the description below if you guys enjoyed this video please leave a like to let me know and i'll see you again in my next videowhat's up guys mike here the detroit borg and i'm really excited to show you the new nanoleaf canvas now i've reviewed natalie's before when they released the nanoleaf aurora which is now known as the light panels and i've had it on my wall for a number of years as you might have seen in my previous videos so the nanoleaf canvas is sort of a follow-up to that product the canvas incorporates a lot of new features such as touch sensitivity as well as a built-in microphone which can respond to audio in the room such as music and this tile design gives you a little more design flexibility than the triangles of the light panels so for example you could wallpaper a wall edge to edge with light if you had the budget for it speaking of budget these are fairly expensive starting at 249 for the smarter kit so the smarter kit gets you nine light panels one of them is the control panel which you need you can buy four panel expansion packs which is what i have here just like other nano leaf products this also works with home kit alexa and the google voice assistant so get into the unboxing of the smarter kit first up we have some paperwork so the paperwork will explain how to set these up we also get the home kit code but we also get some suggested patterns you could use obviously i chose not to use any of these but you can see you can arrange them diagonally or just use a traditional tile-like setup in terms of these light squares they're about 5.9 inches square or 150 millimeters square and the first one we have here is the main control square so you need only one of these for an entire setup so this one square is used to control all the other light panels it has the microphone wi-fi and more this is quite a bit more integrated than the module which is used on the light panels which sticks along the side so we have dedicated buttons for enabling the rhythm scene shuffling the scenes advancing to the next color scene adjusting brightness or just turning it on and off alternately you can use your smartphone voice control through a smart speaker or you can also use touch controls on the panels themselves using gestures we'll get into that a bit later the back of the control square is slightly different than the standard panels just because you'll see the module sort of in the center of it along with the setup codes in terms of our accessories first up we have the power supply so unlike the light panels the power supply does not have the controller built into it so that means the connector is quite a bit more lower profile so it can basically hide behind the panel you connect it to now the good thing here is that you do not need to connect this directly to the control square you can connect this to any one of them as long as they're all daisy chained together now to connect all of the squares we get eight links so you only need one of them between each tile so each square has four individual connectors and they're off-center which means you do have to be cognizant of where each one is located when setting this up also included with the canvas is a set of adhesive strips for mounting these to a wall so these are non-permanent adhesive strips so basically they're like command strips so you can use three of them on each tile and there's spots on the back of each tile specifically for those adhesive strips the great thing about these squares is that there's a lip all around them so you can basically hide the tabs behind them so you don't have to see them but they're still easily accessible if you want to remove these obviously once you remove those strips you have to buy new ones so you don't want to do this too often so the great thing about the canvas is that it works right out of the box all i have to do is connect up the tiles and start playing with the configuration you might want to put on the wall it comes preloaded with a bunch of color scenes which you can cycle through and we have all of the controls we need for cycling between our different color scenes enabling the rhythm feature changing the brightness or just turning it on and off but for wireless control you'll need to set this up with a smartphone either on ios or android running the nanoleaf app so in the case of an iphone you'll set this up using homekit so with homekit you're prompted to pair either through nfc or you can scan the code on the back of the tile and this code is also in the paperwork or on the power supply once you're set up the canvas is connected to wi-fi so you can remotely control and configure it from your phone or from one of your smart assistants next up you just need to establish the orientation of your canvas setup it can detect all of the tiles and their arrangement automatically but it doesn't know whether it's vertical horizontal or diagonal another thing we can do is assign five distinct touch gestures for the canvas so we have double tap swipe left swipe right swipe up and swipe down so in my case i've double tap to power them on and off swipe up or down to adjust the brightness swipe left or right to advance between the different color scenes one of the things i really like about the canvas is that they're lit edge to edge that's because the leds are actually at the center and diffuse across the entire surface so there's no blank spaces to hide the led sources that diffuser also adds kind of a clever looking 3d special effect to the light it looks especially neat as the light fades in and out now initially it can be a little overwhelming to look at the customization options for your canvas you can customize the color for each individual tile you can customize the brightness the time and duration in which they flash or change color and much more but typically what i do is download the color scenes which are available from the discover tab at the bottom of the app so when you go to discover you can see all of these recipes that people have already made and published on the store which you can download free now you can find scenes that fit virtually any mood whether you want blue colors green colors nature themes sunset themes holiday theme so if you want a christmas theme halloween theme you can find it personally i prefer the fall themes or the night themes just because they have a more ambient quality to them instead of flashing these bright vivid colors so i like the themes that sort of fade the colors in and out gradually and leave a lot of blank spaces between the different tiles so that way there's not too much light filling up the room and this is more of an ambient art piece and not just a bright light source as i mentioned these work with google home alexa and home kit so you can use siri alexa or the google assistant to control these lights so you can change the color the brightness and you can even specify the color scene these light panels are also fantastic light sources so if you really want to fill up your room with a lot of white light you can certainly do that in fact i use it all the time for filming in my studio also built in is the rhythm feature so again this responds to music or any noise in a room and visualizes that audio now there's quite a few different rhythm scenes some will keep the lights on all the time and just change the color according to the sound and some of the scenes will only flash lights on with sound so after two years of the nanoleaf aurora on my wall i've grown to be a huge fan of these products i love the flexibility in terms of how you can paint your room with light whether you just want a nice ambient light or you just want to fill your room with bright technicolor light or even just bright white light there's a lot of flexibility here especially in terms of its design but the only drawback is they're not really that easy to take on and off the walls you can certainly do it but it's definitely a hassle so you really want to plan ahead of time in terms of your installation and how long you want it to stay up there and ultimately you can have a lot of fun with these lights especially with the canvas and all of its new features alright guys hope you enjoyed this look at the nanoleaf canvas if you want to check them out i'll leave a link in the description below if you guys enjoyed this video please leave a like to let me know and i'll see you again in my next video\n"