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 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 cable … Read more
The Nest Hello Video Doorbell was released in 2018, and whilst it’s sold decently well, Ring still rules the smart doorbell market. This means that whilst people have lots of questions about the Nest Hello doorbell, some of these questions go unanswered. Other answers are incomplete. Hence I wanted to create this FAQ which answers … Read more
I have posted a new video on YouTube covering 11 reasons why I think that smart thermostats are pointless and can potentially be a waste of money, which is the video version of my ‘11 Reasons Why Smart Thermostats Are Pointless‘ article: Video Transcript Hey YouTube, it’s Tristan from Smart Home Point here. As you … Read more
I live in a new build development, and due to a few initial teething issues with the property developer, we all setup a Facebook group to keep each-other informed. A year ago, one of my neighbors reported that someone was trying their door handle at 3am – i.e. an opportunistic thief. Other neighbors said this … Read more
Smart plugs are plugged into your wall sockets, and then you plug devices into them. The smart plug’s power can then be controlled with your smartphone app (or Amazon Echo/Google Home), meaning that you can turn the plugged-in device on/off with ease. But these smart plugs typically control just a single device, and often don’t … Read more
The Nest Learning Thermostat proudly talks of supporting 95% of heating systems, whilst Ecobee also says that it supports “most” systems including geothermal. But do they work properly with geothermal, the green heat pump-based alternative? A properly sized geothermal heating system shouldn’t need frequent changes to its thermostat. Smart thermostats make constant changes to the … 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
If you are travelling or you bought a cheap Google Mini from abroad, you might be wondering whether you are safe to use your Google Home device in another country. Yes, the Google Mini is dual voltage – it supports input electricity from 100V/120V (depending on model) up to 240V. Therefore you should be fine … Read more
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