Tristan Perry 
You can use your Echo (and Fire TV) devices as a doorbell for your Ring devices. There are currently 26 different doorbell sounds you can play via Alexa when someone presses your Ring doorbell. Some are standard doorbell sounds, whilst others are seasonal ones: The timestamps for each Alexa doorbell sound are: 0:52 – Default … Read more
Google’s range of smart speakers – the Google Home range – are a rival to Amazon’s Echo range. Google Home devices (including the Google Mini and Nest Mini) give weather updates, play music, supports timers and gives reminders, and a whole lot more. But does this cost money? Also the devices can be controlled by … Read more
Ring doorbells and cameras record in full HD (1080p), apart from the original Doorbell 1 (which is 720p). Whilst this captures a good level of detail, they don’t contain a telephoto ‘zoom’ lens, however, so you’re always going to be a bit limited in terms of what detail you can pull out of small, far … Read more
During the setup process for a new Amazon Echo smart speaker, you’ll have to link it to your Amazon account via the Alexa app. However sometimes this fails for unclear reasons, and you need to speak to Amazon customer services. In rare cases, the failure will be caused by someone else having already registered your … Read more
When you have dozens (or even hundreds) of smart home devices – from smart speakers to smart bulbs, and smart plugs to cameras – you might be struggling to manage them all. After all, they’re probably all from different brands – meaning that you’ll probably have 10 different mobile apps! And even if the devices … Read more
Ring’s devices can be linked together to provide closer integration, and it’d be nice if motion detected on a Ring camera (especially an outdoor one) could trigger the Ring alarm to sound. But is this possible? I’ve always been curious about this so I wrote this article to find out. It’s not currently possible for … Read more
The Ring Doorbell can work with a separate Chime device which plugs into your wall socket and works over WiFi, playing a doorbell sound whenever someone presses your Ring Doorbell. What some people don’t know, however, is that you can customize the sound that gets played on your Chime so I wanted to shoot this … Read more
I purchased my first Echo device back in 2016, and I’ve always found it quite useful, although my wife wasn’t convinced at first. But over time, as we’ve discovered more Echo features – and also purchased new smart home devices – we’ve both come to appreciate smart home technology a lot more. At the same … Read more
Google’s smart voice assistant – the ‘Home’ range – is great. It can play music, search (and read back) the internet, read your calendar entries, and a whole lot more. So logically, since Google also produce email (via Gmail) and mobile phones (via the Google Pixel range), Google Home can also read emails and text … Read more
Ring’s cameras and doorbells tend to film in full HD (1920x1080p) with a few exceptions. Whilst this is good, Ring cameras also use a wide angle lens that pick up a lot of footage – at the sacrifice of overall detail quality, that is. Whilst you can zoom in on Ring recordings by doing a … Read more