Miscellaneous articles, news, tips and tricks relating to smart home tech and home automation devices.
I previously written about the disadvantages of smart homes, and somehow came up with a list of 19 reasons. Whilst everything I covered is valid, there’s more that’s good about smart homes than bad – so I wanted to cover 25 reasons why I think smart homes are awesome here. Whether it’s getting news and … Read more
If you search for “Nest Protect” – the Nest Protect Smoke Alarm and CO alarm – you’ll be greeted with Google’s logo and the words “Google Nest”. It’s clearly a Google smart home product: So logic would dictate that you can manage Nest Protect in your Google Home app, right? Well, for over half a … Read more
When it comes to controlling your new smart home device, you’ll probably see that most devices nowadays “support Alexa”. Some support Google Home, too. However you may also have seen people talk about their ‘SmartThings Home Hub’, or perhaps their ‘Home Assistant hub’ running from a Raspberry Pi. So what gives? Do you need a … Read more
Ceiling fans are a great invention: they make a room’s temperature feel around 5-8 degrees cooler than it otherwise might. The light is often adjustable too, allowing for the light to be dimmed to provide ‘mood lighting’ as required. But sometimes you’ll want more control over the lighting than the current fixture provides – which … Read more
Various sci-fi and futuristic TV shows and movies cover people controlling technology with their minds. This might be via brain waves being captured by a funny looking hat, or by putting a small implant (chip) near/into the person’s brain. Whilst this sounds like pure fiction, senior Intel researches predicted in 2009 that we would soon … Read more
Smart home tech has exploded in popularity over the past decade, and it’s sometimes hard to keep track of every new product which is available – especially when ‘Google Home’ rebranded to ‘Nest’, or when Amazon Echo are up to their 4th generation of certain devices! So that’s where we come in! We have spent … Read more
As you can probably guess, I am a fan of smart homes. I love the benefits they can provide to people, and how they are often easy to use – even for people who aren’t tech savvy. I mean, saying “Alexa, play classic radio” requires a little bit of initial learning, but then it’s easy … Read more
Whilst looking at smart doorbells for my house, I came across the Ring Doorbell Elite – which is powered devices by an Ethernet cable. This reduces the need for running electrical cable to power it, whilst also guaranteeing interruption-free video uploads. Power over Ethernet therefore seems like the perfect fit for smart homes… right? Ethernet … Read more
An announcement in December 2019 was welcome news to many in smart home circles: that all the major smart home manufacturers and developers were getting together to produce a standard way for smart devices to speak to each other. This is called Connected Home over IP. Connected Home over IP will see Amazon, Apple, Google, … Read more
If you want to take your smart home to the next level, learning a programming language can be a crucial next step. After all, mass-market smart devices can only do so much. If you want to do more with it, you need to extend them – or buy a more general device (like a Raspberry … Read more