This is the second video of my smart home for beginners series and I'll be walking through "scenes" in this one. Over the course of the series I’ll be covering some of the essentials like scenes & modes, automations, geofencing, voice assistants, and how to secure your smart home devices.
Are smart home devices worth it? On most of my home automation videos I get questions asking why do we even need smart homes? I’ve spent years building out my smart home, adding lights, switches, locks, cameras, water sensors, motion sensors, voice assistants, and even more devices. Let's take a loo
This is the start of a series on home automation basics. I’ll be covering some of the essentials like scenes & modes, automations, geofencing, voice assistants, and how to secure your smart home devices. For this first video I’d like to set a little bit of a baseline and cover the differences betwee
I’ve been on a quest for the perfect smart home platform. A smart hub that can replace Smartthings and bridge the gap between Z-Wave, Zigbee, and WiFi smart home devices. A smart hub that’s platform agnostic and can work with Google, Amazon, and Apple. A smart hub that's easy to use and yet highly c
Sonos Google Assistant is here ... it’s finally here. The long, year and a half wait for Google Assistant on Sonos is over, so we can now link up Google Assistant to Sonos speakers like the One and the Beam. How well does it work? What features is it missing? And was it worth the wait? Let's walk th
Google IO 2019 unveiled new smart home hardware, the Google Pixel 3a, the death of Nest, and some good privacy changes to Google Home and Android. I was also able to attend a Google open house in New York City to get some face to face time with the products and Google employees.
So after my Alexa is listening to you breakup video, I thought we should look at all voice assistant privacy settings. Take control of Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri to lock down your data. Here are the top 4 things you should do.
This has been a long time coming, but I’m sorry Amazon ... it’s time for us to go our separate ways. Why? Let’s get into it.
If you’re anything like me, then you probably have dozens of things like phones, tablets, laptops, game consoles, media streaming boxes, and smart home devices all vying for a solid WiFi connection. A mesh wifi network may be the answer.
Apple Siri Shortcuts and iOS 12 immediately broke away many of the constraints that were holding Siri back. Hardcore iOS users jumped in right away, but there’s still a lot of people who aren’t familiar with what it does, or why it’s so important to the future of iOS and Apple. Or how Shortcuts and
Here's my smart home 2019 tour. I’ve touched on aspects of my smart home setup during my reviews of products like the Sonos One, Logitech Harmony Elite, and Ring Video Doorbell, but I thought it was time to take you through my full smart home setup. See what systems I’m using, how I have them integr
Our internet privacy in the age of the cloud computing and the internet of things is under seige. We need to push companies and our governments to enact laws to protect or right to remain private and the right to be forgotten. Let’s take a look at the current state of internet privacy in 2019.