Tristan Perry 
“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
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
The Ring Stick Up Cam was first released at the end of 2015, and it has undergone various redesigns since then, along with being released as Solar Powered and ‘Elite’ (power over Ethernet) versions. But the Ring Indoor Cam – released towards the end of 2019 – seems to offer the same or more features, … Read more
While I was waiting for my Ring Indoor Cam to be shipped (a whole 24 hours!), I was Googling around to get some answers to questions I had about it. Whilst some questions were answered, others weren’t – plus I also ended up with more questions! So now that I have the device, I wanted … Read more
The “Communicate” tab on the Alexa app shows various options, including ‘Call’ and ‘Message’. This allows you to contact your Echo devices, but also people in your contact list. So are these calls and messages free, or do they cost money? The communication options within Alexa and Echo (including calls and messaging) are completely free, … Read more
The Ring Indoor Cam was released towards the end of 2019, and whilst it’s been out for a little while now, there’s still quite a few questions being asked about it. So I wanted to write this ‘frequently asked question’ guide to answer some of the 10 most commonly asked questions about it. Read on … Read more
Even though I’m only 31, I always feel old when I start a sentence with “Back in my day, things were so much better”. However you can’t blame me for thinking this when Ring used to only charge $10/month for Professional Monitoring, right? Actually, let’s back up a bit. Ring released their smart alarm system … Read more
When you find out that you’re going to be a parent, thinking about smart technology around you home probably isn’t top of your priority list. However smart devices can be really helpful, so I wanted to cover my favorite 8 features that I’ve found useful since becoming a dad. Feel free to jump to specific … Read more
Google’s range of smart speakers – the Google Home range – are great: they provide a large number of benefits and features for free, and you can also play loads of music through Spotify, YouTube music and more. But I seem to remember that Google sells an item that improves WiFi coverage throughout the house … Read more