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
“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
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