For quick blog posts telling you about any new videos that I have posted on the Smart Home Point YouTube channel.
Ring have come a long way since their appearance on Shark Tank back in 2013. Heck, they now offer 10 different smart doorbells (and over 10 smart cameras). Whilst this is good in terms of choice, it can also be pretty confusing. As as a result, I shot this video to talk you through all … Read more
I was recently on YouTube and Ring’s Floodlight Cam Wired Plus announcement video popped up for me to watch. This confused me, because Ring already announced this product – a month ago! As it turns out, that was actually a completely different product (the Ring Floodlight Cam Wired Pro). Ring’s product line-up seems quite confusing … Read more
If you’re new to the world of smart lighting, you might be baffled by all the different choices out there. Whether it’s Philips Hue, LIFX or a budget make on Amazon, it’s not often clear what company to go with. Plus is there a difference between Wi-Fi and Zigbee based lighting? Finally, should you care … Read more
People quite rightly think that when a company advertises “full HD” quality… the image quality matches expected full HD (1080p) quality. Seems obvious, right?! Well unfortunately this isn’t really the case. Whilst Ring’s cameras and doorbells tend to have a 1920x1080p resolution, the all-important bit rate is a measly 2.5 Mbps – which is closer … Read more
Amazon Echo is a useful smart speaker: it has multiple microphones to listen to external sounds, and it can also play music. So… y’know… surely it can listen to playing music and tell you what song is playing, right? After all, Shazam can do this fine? Well as it turns out… NO, no it can’t. … Read more
The three Philips Hue color types (White, White Ambiance, and full Color) might seem confusing at first – especially if you are new to smart lighting. Thankfully the differences aren’t all that difficult to understand, as this video covers. I also cover which of the three color types I prefer. 0:00 Intro 1:11 Philips Hue … Read more
Ring cameras and doorbells are great… when they have a strong Wi-Fi signal strength, that is. When they have a weak signal, you may experience a range of issues from missing recordings to poor quality video. Thankfully the Ring app makes it easy to see whether a weak Wi-Fi signal is at fault due to … Read more
Smart homes are great. They give a range of benefits to home owners and lodgers. BUT they have some big downsides too: they can be really creepy. Whether it’s listening to your household’s conversations by mistake, running facial recognition on people walking by or various data privacy issues, it’s important to know the risks so … Read more
In 2021, GLEDOPTO released their latest product – a smart triac AC dimmer, which is Zigbee based and can introduce smart (on/off and dimming) functionality to standard ‘dumb’ bulbs – such as dimmable LEDs, halogen and incandescent lights. This is wired into the lighting circuit and sits inside the light switch, and it worked really … Read more
Whilst it’s not obvious from the Philips Hue app, it IS possible to automatically cycle between different colors with your Hue lights and light strips. This is possible via the “Hue Labs” feature, which I show step-by-step in this guide. I also cover this topic in much more detail on my blog here. However please … Read more