Philips Hue’s range of smart bulbs is set apart from many other smart bulbs because Hue requires a separate Hub (also called a Bridge), and the bulbs communicate over something called ‘ZigBee’ to the Hue Hub. Equally some newer Hue bulbs can work over Bluetooth, linking with the Hue Bluetooth app on your smartphone. But … Read more
LIFX bulbs are at the more premium end of the market (just like Philips Hue), both in terms of build quality and also their price. However whilst Philips Hue bulbs usually require a separate Hue Bridge, LIFX bulbs don’t require any extra devices: they work out the box, via WiFi. This is great because you … Read more
I recently bought a Ring Indoor Cam for £15 as part of an Amazon bundle deal, and I wanted to wall mount this in my garage to detect would-be burglars. However there’s one big flaw in my plan: I don’t have any internet in my garage. As a result, I wanted to shoot this full, … Read more
The Google Home range – which includes various Nest smart speakers and hubs including the ‘Mini’ devices – is a line of products known as ‘smart voice assistants’, and they rival Amazon’s Echo line-up. One of the features from Amazon Echo is the ability to ‘drop in’ on an Echo from anywhere in the world … Read more
I recently purchased a Ring Indoor Cam for around $20 in an Amazon bundle, far cheaper than the outdoor Ring Stick Up Cam which is $99 when not in a sale, or still $40+ as part of a bundle/sale. The same is true of Nest: their indoor camera costs $129, compared to $199 for the … Read more
When it was first released, 5 GHz WiFi was advertised as being faster and sometimes ‘more reliable’ than 2.4 GHz WiFi. Whilst this is broadly true, many Ring and Nest devices still seem to only support 2.4 GHz WiFi. This got me wondering whether this can lead to worse connections for your smart devices, and … Read more
“Digital wellbeing” is an idea that appeared a few years ago, and it aims to address addiction to digital technology – such as social media and computer games – by limiting how much time can be spent on them. Smartphones increasingly offer this feature too, and it was recently rolled out to the Google Home … Read more
When you’re looking at Nest’s smart doorbells and cameras, you may see a symbol (indicating a footnote) whenever “familiar face detection” is mentioned: So what does this suspicious footnote mention? Scrolling down to the bottom of the page says: (1) Nest’s familiar face detection feature is not available on Nest Hub Max used in the … Read more
I’m soon going to be adding some under-cabinet kitchen lighting into my kitchen, and as a recent smart lighting fan, I was checking out Philip Hue’s Lightstrip range. These are designed to be plugged into a wall socket, but since I don’t have any sockets under my kitchen cabinets, I was wondering whether they can … Read more
If you’re looking to put smart devices (or any other WiFi based device) in an outbuilding, you’ll almost certainly need internet access. I’ve recently needed to do the same for my Ring Indoor Cam (which I put in my garage), which got me thinking of the various ways you can get internet in an outbuilding … Read more