Best Edison-style filament smart bulbs to make your home glow - The Ambient
Vintage-style filament bulbs from Hue, Bulbrite, Ikea and more tested and rated.
Read the full story here.
August halts shipping of View doorbell camera, offers customers refunds - The Ambient
Smart doorbell and lock maker August has announced it is halting shipping of its new August View doorbell camera, due to problems related to Wi-Fi connectivity.
As we noted in our review, the doorbell camera frequently disconnected from the Wi-Fi network, rendering it useless as a doorbell camera. August told us that it was using a new Wi-Fi chip in the View, specifically designed to run the battery-powered doorbell on low power until an event wakes it up.
Read the full story here.
Google kills Works with Nest as it prepares for a Google Assistant future
Works with Nest, the platform built to get smart home devices talking to Nest products, is shutting down, Google has announced. The service will close on 31 August and will be replaced by Works with Google Assistant, Google’s services-based developer platform that the search giant is evolving into a smart home ecosystem. As of the end of August, all Works with Nest integrations will stop operating and developers must either transition their products to the new platform or end their compatibility with Nest’s suite of smart home products.
Read the full post here.
We turned our Alexa house into a Google home for a month – here's what happened - The Ambient
For almost five years now, my family has had a fifth member: Alexa. It's my kids’ buddy, telling them terrible jokes, sharing fart skills, playing Would You Rather and other games. Alexa has become something of a third parent, announcing every night at 7:15pm that there are 15 minutes of screen time left, dimming three lights during story time, and switching them off when the kids are asleep.
It's there in the morning, telling us the weather forecast, what’s on our jam-packed calendar for the day, and occasionally providing the kids with a fun fact to wow their classmates with. It was the only AI my children had ever known. And then it was gone.
Read the full article here.
August View Doorbell Camera review
The front door is a coveted spot for smart home companies these days, with seemingly everyone developing their own video doorbell to provide 'visual voicemail' for your home, as well as an always-watching smart security camera.
The convenience and security these devices offer is hard to quibble with, assuming you have an existing wired doorbell to replace. If you don’t, your battery-powered options have been limited. But now there’s a new kid on the block. August’s View is a completely wire-free doorbell camera that lets you know what’s happening at your front door wherever you are by streaming video to your smartphone.
Read the full review here.
How I trained my smart home to be a third parent
My tips for using the connected home with children
“Why would I want a smart home?” It’s a common question as connected devices become more ubiquitous and pressure on “normal people” to start buying internet-enabled products mounts. My answer is always, “Do you have a problem you’d like to solve?” Or, “Do you have kids?”
The smart home is manna from heaven for parents. It is literally the third parent (or second) we’ve been asking for since these tiny bundles of joy burst into our lives. As early as 2016, 70% of parents in the U.S. owned at least one IoT device, and more than a third wanted to buy another one because they believe smart devices make them better parents.
Read the full article here.
Smart home companies are turning us all into crime fighters - will it actually work? - The Ambinet
Why turning to social media might not make us safer
In 2015 Ring installed video doorbells in 10% of homes in the Wilshire Park neighborhood as part of a pilot program with the Los Angeles Police Department. According to the company, the LAPD saw a 55% decrease in home break-ins over the following six months. It made for a nice flashy number for Ring to point at, and undoubtedly helped it in its journey to getting snapped up by Amazon, even if there's some debate over the evidence.
It gave Ring a reason to hone in on the community angle, and now it's venturing into a new crime fighting space – social media. Will sharing what our smart home sees with our neighbors make us safer? Or will it redefine the term nosey neighbor?
Read the full article here.
Casper’s New $89 Lamp Promises to Help You Get a Better Night's Sleep - Dwell.com
Mattress startup Casper introduces a smart lamp designed to promote healthier sleep.
Casper, the company that reinvented how we buy mattresses, now wants to transform our sleep habits with Casper Glow—a new connected bedtime light. The small, cord-free lamp is designed to address a common culprit that can get in the way of a good night’s rest: light.
Read the full story here.
INSPIRATION Smart home tours: Lennar's ready-to-go South Carolina smart home - The Ambient
Do most people really want a smart home, they just don’t know it yet? That’s what Lennar, one of America’s largest homebuilders believes, and that is why the 65-year-old company announced last year that it would outfit all its new homes with home automation tech as standard.
Those new homes – equipped with Wi-Fi Certified home design, Alexa voice control, and a starter kit of smart home tech – have now started to roll on to the market. We went to check one out in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
Read the full story here.
How I Prepare My Smart Home for a Hurricane - Mother Earth News
As a resident of South Carolina, my fall pastime these last few years has become evacuating for hurricanes. In 2016, it was Matthew, then came Irma, and this year, as the wrath of Hurricane Florence barreled towards the Carolinas, I packed up my family once again and headed for safety.
Read the full post here.
6 Ways to Keep Tabs on Your Family Using Smart Home Technology - Digitized House
One of the many benefits of smart home technology is the ability to keep tabs on your home when you can’t be there. Forgot to turn off the lights? Do it remotely. Not sure if you shut the garage door? Check on your smartphone and close it. But did you realize you can also use smart home devices to monitor the people in your home? More specifically and most importantly, you can use smart home devices to keep tabs on your children.
Read the full article here.
Smart home wiring 101: A beginner's guide - The Ambient
The beauty of today’s smart home is that it’s mostly wire-free. Wireless protocols such as Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE have done away with the need to install complex and expensive whole-home electrical systems just to control your smart lights remotely.
In the modern smart home, all you need is a smartphone and a Wi-Fi router to unlock the power of connected devices. Most of the time.
There are still some key devices you are going to have to hardwire though. This is not so they can work with wireless smart home systems, but because they need to communicate with your “dumb” appliances, such as heating and air conditioning systems, irrigation pumps and the electrical wires running through your ceilings and walls.
Read the whole article here.
Will Your First Smart Home Arrive on a Flatbed? - Dwell
My essay on prefab homes and their advantages when it comes to automation was published in Dwell's August/September issue.
Read it online here.
The Things a Smart-Tech Reviewer Actually Uses - Dwell
My article on my favorite smart home gadgets that I use in my home was published in Dwell's August/September print edition.
Read it online here.
An Unboxing of the Nest Protect Smart Smoke and CO Alarm - YouTube
Me chatting about the Nest Protect - one of the smartest smart home products you can buy. Watch the video here.