There are a lot of important features to consider when shopping for a new security camera, like power source (battery or hardwired) and installation location. (Good indoor security cameras generally don't need as much reinforcement as outdoor ones.) As far as great outdoor security cameras go, Philips Hue has made a contribution to the home security space.
Google is finally giving us another Nest Learning Thermostat. It's a long-overdue update, with the current generation now nine years old. Rumors say the 4th version of Google's smart thermostat will cost nearly $300, a price that, only a few years ago, I'd only dream of paying for a thermostat if it crooned me lullabies at night or offered a J.A.R.V.I.S-level administrative assistance.
Theft is one of my main fears about using security cameras. Whether it's to disable the device or profit from the camera itself, it's a legitimate, costly concern. And many outdoor security cameras make removal quite easy, attaching to their mounts via a magnet, a simple clip-in mechanism, or one measly screw all methods that could be undone in the blink of an eye.
Smart lights are an essential part of anyone’s smart home ecosystem. They illuminate on demand and fill your abode with ambiance and color. More importantly, they can lean on your existing smart home ecosystem and devices, making them infinitely useful as a part of larger routines.
Perhaps the biggest problem with smart lighting is choosing a brand. There are a dizzying array of options across the segment. While choice is great for a consumer, making the right choice also becomes more important.
That said, if you use smart lights in your home, which brand do you use? We also want to know how you made your decision, so be sure to vote in our poll below and let us know your reasons in the comments.
Some more common brands include Philips Hue, LIFX, and Nanoleaf, but there are a slew of other options that produce great results. Notably, many brands’ products now support Matter, so if you have a product that includes that particular protocol, be sure to cast your vote in that particular poll, too.
Personally, I have one smart light in my entire apartment, which is used mainly as an accent light, although I really should consider grabbing smart grow lights for my indoor plants. In this case, I wouldn’t need to remember to switch them on.
Of course, remember to mention details relating to your setup in the comments section, too; we’re intrigued by your particular arrangement.
Google and Yale announced the Nest x Yale smart door lock back in 2017, with the smart features of the lock controlled through the Nest app. However, the company sunset the Nest app in favor of the Google Home app in 2021. Despite “transitioning” to the Google Home app, Google never really managed to get full feature parity with the Nest app. An upcoming Google Home app update could help bridge some of the gaps, finally giving Nest x Yale smart door lock users the ability to use passcodes through it.
In the latest Google Home app v3.19.1.3 update, we found the following strings that reference passcode functionality:
Přihlásit se<string name="choose_a_lock_header_description">A guest passcode will be created for this lock</string>
<string name="create_label_header_description">Labels help you identify and organize passcodes</string>
<string name="choose_a_lock_header_title">Choose lock</string>
<string name="create_passcode_label_hint">Passcode label</string>
<string name="edit_label_header_description">Tap label to change. Labels help you identify and organize passcodes.</string>
<string name="create_label_header_text">Create label</string>The strings reveal that the Google Home app will get passcode-related features. These features will extend to labeling and creating guest passcodes, though there is always room for adding more features in the future.
Now, the strings do not directly reference the Nest x Yale locks. So, there is a chance that Google is building functionality for some future hardware products. However, there’s also a chance that this feature is finally an attempt at bringing feature parity to Nest x Yale lock users, and we believe that to be more likely the case.
Google’s support documentation on Nest x Yale Lock passcodes continues to reference the Nest app for creating and changing the passcodes used to lock and unlock the Google Nest x Yale Lock. We’ve also spotted exasperated Nest x Yale lock users on Reddit trying to figure out how to manage passcodes for their lock in the confused mishmash between the Nest app and the Google Home app. The Nest app redirects them to the Google Home app, but the Google Home app seems to lack functionality around passcodes. So it’s likely that Google could be looking to finally bridge the gap here for existing users. However, this remains speculation on our end.
We’ve reached out to Google for a statement on this finding. We’ll update this article when we hear back from them.
Smart displays have evolved quite a bit since the initial debut of Amazon’s first Echo Show back in 2017. In fact, the category didn’t really come into its own until Google joined the fray with its own line of hardware about a year later. Now, both of these companies are essentially dominating the smart display landscape, with each offering their own take on a smart assistant with a screen.
It’s that screen that can make smart displays much more useful than smart speakers. Rather than just having a voice assistant recite the current weather report, for example, you can see a five-day forecast as well. The same goes for when you ask about your shopping list or calendar; it's simply easier to read the whole list or your day's appointments at a glance. Plus, touchsreens offer other benefits that speakers can't, like watching videos or checking your webcam to see who's at your front door. We've tested and used many smart displays over the years and below are a list of our top picks for the best smart displays you can get today.
The first question you should ask when looking for the best smart display for you is whether you prefer Amazon’s or Google’s ecosystem. If you have a lot of Google smart devices in your home, like Nest thermostats and security cameras, or even if you use a Google Pixel smartphone as your daily driver, then a Google-powered model may make more sense. If you have Amazon products, like a Fire TV Stick or a Ring cam, Amazon would obviously be a better choice from a compatibility standpoint. Of course, it's perfectly acceptable to have products from competing companies in the same home, but just realize they might not work seamlessly with each other from the start.
Aside from that, the two systems also offer some unique features. Google, for example, works best if you have an existing Google account and use services like Calendar and Photos. We especially love Google smart displays because they work well as digital photo frames. You can set it up to automatically pull in pictures of friends and family from your Google Photos library, and the algorithm is smart enough to use what it thinks are the best shots — so less chance of blurry photos or images of your eyes half-closed showing up, for example. But although you can use Amazon's displays as digital photo frames, the process is not quite as intuitive as Google’s, and Amazon doesn’t have anything comparable to Google’s photo-sorting algorithm.
It might seem like a minor point, but seeing as the display is on standby 90 percent of the time, its secondary function as a digital picture frame is very welcome. All Google smart displays also support YouTube and YouTube TV, step-by-step cooking instructions and all of the usual benefits of Google Assistant, like weather reports. As with Assistant on the phone, it also has voice recognition, so only you can see your calendar appointments and not others.
Amazon's smart displays, on the other hand, are slightly different. Instead of YouTube, they offer some alternative video streaming options, including Amazon Prime, NBC and Hulu. They also come with two browsers (Silk and Firefox), which you can use to search the web or watch YouTube videos – a handy enough workaround given the lack of a dedicated app. Amazon devices also offer step-by-step cooking instructions as well, thanks to collaborations with sources like SideChef and AllRecipes. The cooking instructions sometimes include short video clips, too.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/best-smart-display-202448797.html?src=rss
© Photo by Cherlynn Low / Engadget
My household has far too many Google products in it, among them several Home Hub, Nest, and original Home speakers. There are very few commands we actually use on a regular basis but turning off a light near the bed, setting the temperature, and turning on an array of lights to make my basement look less like a death trap are things we use all the time.
For the past few months a rather regular event has been my wife attempting to turn off a device, being greeted by a male voice saying that the TP-Link Kasa service is unreachable and to try again later. No matter how many times she asks once it’s told her it’s down Google Assistant will have the male voice, and all her requests will somehow not work.
Now, I know the voice options for Assistant, it’s one of the male voices… but none of us have chosen one of the male voices. Both her and my Google Assistant voices are stock and neither of the kids have chosen that voice. Once the man’s voice is heard, nothing works for her. I ask Assistant to turn out the light and bam.
It’s become a running joke that it just hates her. The later it is in the night the less chance she has of it turning off the light she’s reading by.
Light is wired in such a way that to turn it off manually you need to crawl under a desk six feet away, using voice commands is preferable.
We’ve never been able to narrow down anything other than that it’s on one of the original Google Homes, and it’s usually after 11pm. Works fine any other times. If I’m not mistaken the volume is also slightly louder, although that might just be the voice.
Google Assistant/Home: A strange man’s voice answers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
Google has announced seven new useful features coming or here for your devices today. It’s more like 4 features, but whatever.
The feature I find the promise of the neatest, although it unfortunately is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro as of this writing, is the ability to use your favorite devices in Google Home straight from a widget on your home screen. If you’re like me you have a bunch of devices but generally only need to control a few of them not by voice. A quiet time widget would do wonders for me for when I don’t want to wake someone by yelling “set temperature to 68 degrees”.
The post on the Google Blog indicates it’s here, my phone says it’s not. Probably will be here later as they seem to love to get to me last. I am very much looking forward to this particular widget. It’s been on my wishlist for a while now.
They also are rolling out the same ability it appears to Wear OS watches, and I could have sworn I did this already on a watch in the past.
RCS messages can now be edited. During a brief window of time (15 minutes) you can tap and change the text.
This I assume will lead to kids pulling the rug out from under people in text threads by asking a simple yes/no question and then editing it, taking a screenshot, and otherwise doing what kids used to do on Facebook to make it look like everyone was supporting a hate group…
Will have to fire up an RCS thread at some point… my text message threads are so old even the RCS capable people are showing plain text.
Looks like they’re adding NFC relayed hotspot sharing so you don’t have to type in a password, just tap your hotspot phone to the device you want to share it to. Useful, but sharing hotspots has not generally been a difficult thing.
The feature was so meh, that’s interesting that they combined it with the announcement block of being able to switch Google Meet devices mid-meeting, which I guess also shows how well Google Meet must be doing at the moment.
More digital wallet payment options on watches (appears Paypal is an option in the US or Germany.)
More digital car key support.
[Google Blog or Explore What’s New]
Google adds some useful Android features today by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
It’s Saturday Night, for reasons unknow I’m sleepier than normal and decide to go to bed early. At 11:13 I hear two very close and very loud gunshots… my wife asks me if that was the cat and I tell her I doubt he’s learned to fire a 9mm, let along in such rapid succession.
Being the action hero that I am I check the camera and rewind just to verify that I did in fact hear gunfire and not that guy with the supposedly specially tuned car.. I say specially tuned because he shows up on neighborhood forums anytime someone calls it a gunshot muffler. Nope, it’s not him and I am about to call police when I hear the police.
With my street swarmed by police I wander out to offer the audio of my cameras. The shooter did not go by my house and I don’t have cameras aimed up the road, although I suspect I should at this point.
In the Google Home app I view the clip, attempt to download it so I can email it so they have the bang bang click (third shot jammed,) and no. I got nothing but “download failed” and an option to retry. I’ll save the next 20 minutes of attempting to download any clip from any Home-controlled camera using the Home app and skip to that I remembered one of my cameras is one of the old Nest cameras and can be accessed via the Nest App, which while it’s the same company, the Nest app actually works and isn’t a half assembled attempt at moving a working app into Google’s One App Solution.
I get the audio from the old nest app, create a clip, share it to YouTube and forward it to the police.
Completely failed by the Google Home implementation again.
A new Google Nest Camera fail over the weekend by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
© Ben Wilson | Windows Central
If you're shopping for a new home security camera, you won't be stressed by a lack of options. Actually, there would be a surplus of products to choose from that gives you a headache, and just when you think you've done the necessary buying, monthly subscriptions, smart bases, and battery packs peek sheepishly around the corner.
Cy Tymony is well known as the author of “Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things” and “Sneaky Math” and he’s written for Make Magazine as well. However, I didn’t know much about him and his life story. Cy has a wonderful DIY worldview that he shares through his many books and it comes across in the interview. […]
The post The Sneaky DIY of Cy Tymony appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
My household has far too many Google products in it, among them several Home Hub, Nest, and original Home speakers. There are very few commands we actually use on a regular basis but turning off a light near the bed, setting the temperature, and turning on an array of lights to make my basement look less like a death trap are things we use all the time.
For the past few months a rather regular event has been my wife attempting to turn off a device, being greeted by a male voice saying that the TP-Link Kasa service is unreachable and to try again later. No matter how many times she asks once it’s told her it’s down Google Assistant will have the male voice, and all her requests will somehow not work.
Now, I know the voice options for Assistant, it’s one of the male voices… but none of us have chosen one of the male voices. Both her and my Google Assistant voices are stock and neither of the kids have chosen that voice. Once the man’s voice is heard, nothing works for her. I ask Assistant to turn out the light and bam.
It’s become a running joke that it just hates her. The later it is in the night the less chance she has of it turning off the light she’s reading by.
Light is wired in such a way that to turn it off manually you need to crawl under a desk six feet away, using voice commands is preferable.
We’ve never been able to narrow down anything other than that it’s on one of the original Google Homes, and it’s usually after 11pm. Works fine any other times. If I’m not mistaken the volume is also slightly louder, although that might just be the voice.
Google Assistant/Home: A strange man’s voice answers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
Google has announced seven new useful features coming or here for your devices today. It’s more like 4 features, but whatever.
The feature I find the promise of the neatest, although it unfortunately is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro as of this writing, is the ability to use your favorite devices in Google Home straight from a widget on your home screen. If you’re like me you have a bunch of devices but generally only need to control a few of them not by voice. A quiet time widget would do wonders for me for when I don’t want to wake someone by yelling “set temperature to 68 degrees”.
The post on the Google Blog indicates it’s here, my phone says it’s not. Probably will be here later as they seem to love to get to me last. I am very much looking forward to this particular widget. It’s been on my wishlist for a while now.
They also are rolling out the same ability it appears to Wear OS watches, and I could have sworn I did this already on a watch in the past.
RCS messages can now be edited. During a brief window of time (15 minutes) you can tap and change the text.
This I assume will lead to kids pulling the rug out from under people in text threads by asking a simple yes/no question and then editing it, taking a screenshot, and otherwise doing what kids used to do on Facebook to make it look like everyone was supporting a hate group…
Will have to fire up an RCS thread at some point… my text message threads are so old even the RCS capable people are showing plain text.
Looks like they’re adding NFC relayed hotspot sharing so you don’t have to type in a password, just tap your hotspot phone to the device you want to share it to. Useful, but sharing hotspots has not generally been a difficult thing.
The feature was so meh, that’s interesting that they combined it with the announcement block of being able to switch Google Meet devices mid-meeting, which I guess also shows how well Google Meet must be doing at the moment.
More digital wallet payment options on watches (appears Paypal is an option in the US or Germany.)
More digital car key support.
[Google Blog or Explore What’s New]
Google adds some useful Android features today by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
It’s Saturday Night, for reasons unknow I’m sleepier than normal and decide to go to bed early. At 11:13 I hear two very close and very loud gunshots… my wife asks me if that was the cat and I tell her I doubt he’s learned to fire a 9mm, let along in such rapid succession.
Being the action hero that I am I check the camera and rewind just to verify that I did in fact hear gunfire and not that guy with the supposedly specially tuned car.. I say specially tuned because he shows up on neighborhood forums anytime someone calls it a gunshot muffler. Nope, it’s not him and I am about to call police when I hear the police.
With my street swarmed by police I wander out to offer the audio of my cameras. The shooter did not go by my house and I don’t have cameras aimed up the road, although I suspect I should at this point.
In the Google Home app I view the clip, attempt to download it so I can email it so they have the bang bang click (third shot jammed,) and no. I got nothing but “download failed” and an option to retry. I’ll save the next 20 minutes of attempting to download any clip from any Home-controlled camera using the Home app and skip to that I remembered one of my cameras is one of the old Nest cameras and can be accessed via the Nest App, which while it’s the same company, the Nest app actually works and isn’t a half assembled attempt at moving a working app into Google’s One App Solution.
I get the audio from the old nest app, create a clip, share it to YouTube and forward it to the police.
Completely failed by the Google Home implementation again.
A new Google Nest Camera fail over the weekend by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
Enlarge / RTO mandates can boost workers' professional networks, but in-office employees may also spend more time socializing than remote ones. (credit: Getty)
A new survey suggests that some US companies implemented return-to-office (RTO) policies in the hopes of getting workers to quit. And despite the belief that such policies could boost productivity compared to letting employees work from home, the survey from HR software provider BambooHR points to remote and in-office employees spending an equal amount of time working.
BambooHR surveyed 1,504 full-time US employees, including 504 human resources (HR) workers who are a manager or higher, from March 9 to March 22. According to the firm, the sample group used for its report "The New Surveillance Era: Visibility Beats Productivity for RTO & Remote" is equally split across genders and includes "a spread of age groups, race groups, and geographies." Method Research, the research arm of technology PR and marketing firm Method, prepared the survey, and data collection firm Rep Data distributed it.
Among those surveyed, 52 percent said they prefer working remotely compared to 39 percent who prefer working in an office.
We live in an era of digital transformation, and the concept of a "smart home" is becoming popular due to its convenience and efficiency. From security to lights and temperature, these technologically advanced homes are equipped with interconnected smart devices to make our lives comfortable and easier. Like other electronics, they can have issues.
Nanoleaf is no stranger to RGB lighting in unique form factors. Its line of light panels basically defined the category, and it has since expanded to everything from traditional lightbulbs to ceiling-mounted skylights, making it a go-to brand for smart home goods. While Nanoleaf has made lightstrips in the past, its newest strip offers a slew of new features that Nanoleaf — and most of its competitors — has never offered before. I’ve been using it in my home for about a week and, I gotta say, I’m in love with it.
Unfortunately, this new lightstrip has a doozy of a name: the Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Smart Multicolor HD Lightstrip. For the sake of convenience, I’ll be trimming that down to just HD Lightstrip throughout most of this review!
As part of the May 2024 Android Feature Drop, Google is officially rolling out some much-awaited features for Google Home users. Those who have built their smart home centered around Google Home will now have more ways to control their favorite or most accessed smart home devices.
Android users can now add a Google Home widget to their home screen, featuring their favorite smart home device controls. This is incredibly useful, especially if you have devices that you constantly toggle or access throughout the day. The widget is also surprisingly flexible, letting you resize to your desired configuration to suit your home screen.
Google has reinstated a popular feature in the Google Home app: the ability to adjust the volume of multiple speakers simultaneously. This functionality, which Google had to remove in the wake of a legal dispute with Sonos, is now back, surely to the relief of many users.
The original removal stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Sonos, accusing Google of infringing on various technological patents. Sonos claimed that Google’s entire Nest and Chromecast product lines were utilizing proprietary Sonos technology, including features like phone-based music streaming control, speaker group management, and automatic equalization.
For the past few years, users had to adjust the volume for each speaker individually. However, with the reinstatement of multi-speaker volume control, it seems Google has found a way to address Sonos’s concerns while restoring a much-loved feature for its users.
To use the restored feature on an Android device, users should follow these steps:
Additionally, users can now use Google Assistant voice commands to manage group volumes. Commands such as “Hey Google, turn it up” (which increases the volume by 10%) or “Hey Google, set volume to X%” will seamlessly adjust the audio output across all connected devices.
Google has also hinted at further enhancements to group volume control, with plans to integrate it directly into Android smartphone lock screens and smart displays like the Nest Hub.
Cy Tymony is well known as the author of “Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things” and “Sneaky Math” and he’s written for Make Magazine as well. However, I didn’t know much about him and his life story. Cy has a wonderful DIY worldview that he shares through his many books and it comes across in the interview. […]
The post The Sneaky DIY of Cy Tymony appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
Google has announced seven new useful features coming or here for your devices today. It’s more like 4 features, but whatever.
The feature I find the promise of the neatest, although it unfortunately is not available on my Pixel 8 Pro as of this writing, is the ability to use your favorite devices in Google Home straight from a widget on your home screen. If you’re like me you have a bunch of devices but generally only need to control a few of them not by voice. A quiet time widget would do wonders for me for when I don’t want to wake someone by yelling “set temperature to 68 degrees”.
The post on the Google Blog indicates it’s here, my phone says it’s not. Probably will be here later as they seem to love to get to me last. I am very much looking forward to this particular widget. It’s been on my wishlist for a while now.
They also are rolling out the same ability it appears to Wear OS watches, and I could have sworn I did this already on a watch in the past.
RCS messages can now be edited. During a brief window of time (15 minutes) you can tap and change the text.
This I assume will lead to kids pulling the rug out from under people in text threads by asking a simple yes/no question and then editing it, taking a screenshot, and otherwise doing what kids used to do on Facebook to make it look like everyone was supporting a hate group…
Will have to fire up an RCS thread at some point… my text message threads are so old even the RCS capable people are showing plain text.
Looks like they’re adding NFC relayed hotspot sharing so you don’t have to type in a password, just tap your hotspot phone to the device you want to share it to. Useful, but sharing hotspots has not generally been a difficult thing.
The feature was so meh, that’s interesting that they combined it with the announcement block of being able to switch Google Meet devices mid-meeting, which I guess also shows how well Google Meet must be doing at the moment.
More digital wallet payment options on watches (appears Paypal is an option in the US or Germany.)
More digital car key support.
[Google Blog or Explore What’s New]
Google adds some useful Android features today by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
It’s Saturday Night, for reasons unknow I’m sleepier than normal and decide to go to bed early. At 11:13 I hear two very close and very loud gunshots… my wife asks me if that was the cat and I tell her I doubt he’s learned to fire a 9mm, let along in such rapid succession.
Being the action hero that I am I check the camera and rewind just to verify that I did in fact hear gunfire and not that guy with the supposedly specially tuned car.. I say specially tuned because he shows up on neighborhood forums anytime someone calls it a gunshot muffler. Nope, it’s not him and I am about to call police when I hear the police.
With my street swarmed by police I wander out to offer the audio of my cameras. The shooter did not go by my house and I don’t have cameras aimed up the road, although I suspect I should at this point.
In the Google Home app I view the clip, attempt to download it so I can email it so they have the bang bang click (third shot jammed,) and no. I got nothing but “download failed” and an option to retry. I’ll save the next 20 minutes of attempting to download any clip from any Home-controlled camera using the Home app and skip to that I remembered one of my cameras is one of the old Nest cameras and can be accessed via the Nest App, which while it’s the same company, the Nest app actually works and isn’t a half assembled attempt at moving a working app into Google’s One App Solution.
I get the audio from the old nest app, create a clip, share it to YouTube and forward it to the police.
Completely failed by the Google Home implementation again.
A new Google Nest Camera fail over the weekend by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
It has been a busy week with a ton of announcements, as expected for any Google I/O event. The company unveiled tons of new AI stuff, as well as news on Android 15, Wear OS 5, and more. If you were following the event closely, you may have even noticed a couple of things that seemed like sneakily quiet announcements, such as a potential widget for Google Home.
During the Build beautiful Android widgets with Jetpack Glance session, which is meant more for developers than consumers, Google discussed the importance of widgets. The company explained that great widgets are helpful, simple, adaptive, cohesive, and discoverable. However, it was a slide that showed up near the end of the session that was particularly interesting.
Smart home gadgets offer many advantages, including safety, comfort, convenience, and automation. The most popular devices include cameras, light bulbs, and speakers, but almost anything can become smart, including curtains. Indeed, the Aqara Curtain Driver E1 allows you to motorize your curtains while adding plenty of smart features and connectivity.
The best smart doorbell camera combines convenience and an advanced feature series to provide a clear view of target areas at all times. These devices include companion apps to track what is happening at your front door, regardless of where you are, for complete peace of mind (especially when you're away). Additionally, a good number of smart doorbell cameras support Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, with others offering more integration options to choose from.
This week, Google is holding its I/O event where it has announced a plethora of AI features coming to its ecosystem. But the announcements haven’t been limited to just AI. Today, the company announced that you’ll be able to use your Google TV services as a smart home hub and that it is opening up its Google Home platform with the launch of Home APIs.
In a blog post, Google announced that it will be upgrading its hubs so that other devices can become smart home hubs for Google Home later this year. This includes Google TV services like Chromecast with Google TV and select panel TVs with Google TV running Android 14 or higher. Some LG TVs will be eligible as well.
This is thanks in part to the fact that Google is launching Home APIs, which allow apps and other experiences to access your smart home. This means that any app — whether it is a smart home app or not — can take advantage of Google Home’s automation engine by accessing the over 600 million devices the platform supports.
One such example Google provides is potentially giving a food delivery app the ability to access your porch lights. The app would be able to turn those lights on automatically when the delivery driver is nearby.
Home APIs will be used for a range of other functions as well. For example, smart home device maker Eve will use the API to bring its experience to Android for the first time, allowing users to do things like building automations for “lowering the blinds when the temperature drops at night.” Meanwhile, ADT will use Home API for features like “Trusted Neighbor,” which lets users grant temporary access to their homes to neighbors, friends, or helpers.
There is currently no date for when Google will roll these features out.
Enlarge / This is essentially the kind of water heater the author has hooked up, minus the Wi-Fi module that led him down a rabbit hole. Also, not 140-degrees F—yikes. (credit: Getty Images)
The hot water took too long to come out of the tap. That is what I was trying to solve. I did not intend to discover that, for a while there, water heaters like mine may have been open to anybody. That, with some API tinkering and an email address, a bad actor could possibly set its temperature or make it run constantly. That’s just how it happened.
Let’s take a step back. My wife and I moved into a new home last year. It had a Rinnai tankless water heater tucked into a utility closet in the garage. The builder and home inspector didn't say much about it, just to run a yearly cleaning cycle on it.
Because it doesn’t keep a big tank of water heated and ready to be delivered to any house tap, tankless water heaters save energy—up to 34 percent, according to the Department of Energy. But they're also, by default, slower. Opening a tap triggers the exchanger, heats up the water (with natural gas, in my case), and the device has to push it through the line to where it's needed.
It was Digital Foundry's John Linneman who first made me see the truth. The truth, in this case, being that Crackdown, the deliriously great open-world blaster, is not a platform game so much as it's a climbing game. Crackdown casts you as a supercop in a city in which you can race up skyscrapers as easily as if you're tooling down the street in a sportscar. Crackdown is all about the window-ledge grip, followed by the boost, followed by the grip and so on until you hit the troposphere. When you scan the side of a building in Crackdown's Pacific City, you're not really looking for platforms, but handholds.
Funny it should take me so long to realise this. I've always been a fan of climbing - not doing it, although I have dabbled, skill-lessly, in my youth, but following it, reading about it, dreaming about it. I have friends who are climbers and I am always full of questions. I've read the complete works of people like Alex Honnold and Chris Bonington. Bonington was my mum's childhood - and adulthood - hero, incidentally. I'm named after him, and on my desk at home I have a postcard of him as a young man, wearing a dark, surprisingly formal jacket, up somewhere high, and with a thick cord of ropes over his shoulder. It's a picture of pure adventure. What a disappointment to him I must be.
At that desk, though, I do quite a bit of climbing. I climbed through Crackdown, without realising it, and recently I climbed through Jusant. With the release of a new climbing game this week, I've been thinking about how it all fits together. Climbing feels, of all activities, uniquely physical to me, because it's about rock and about hands and about clasping. It's about connections, points of contact, cleaving to a part of the natural world and holding on tight. How do games do that?
It was Digital Foundry's John Linneman who first made me see the truth. The truth, in this case, being that Crackdown, the deliriously great open-world blaster, is not a platform game so much as it's a climbing game. Crackdown casts you as a supercop in a city in which you can race up skyscrapers as easily as if you're tooling down the street in a sportscar. Crackdown is all about the window-ledge grip, followed by the boost, followed by the grip and so on until you hit the troposphere. When you scan the side of a building in Crackdown's Pacific City, you're not really looking for platforms, but handholds.
Funny it should take me so long to realise this. I've always been a fan of climbing - not doing it, although I have dabbled, skill-lessly, in my youth, but following it, reading about it, dreaming about it. I have friends who are climbers and I am always full of questions. I've read the complete works of people like Alex Honnold and Chris Bonington. Bonington was my mum's childhood - and adulthood - hero, incidentally. I'm named after him, and on my desk at home I have a postcard of him as a young man, wearing a dark, surprisingly formal jacket, up somewhere high, and with a thick cord of ropes over his shoulder. It's a picture of pure adventure. What a disappointment to him I must be.
At that desk, though, I do quite a bit of climbing. I climbed through Crackdown, without realising it, and recently I climbed through Jusant. With the release of a new climbing game this week, I've been thinking about how it all fits together. Climbing feels, of all activities, uniquely physical to me, because it's about rock and about hands and about clasping. It's about connections, points of contact, cleaving to a part of the natural world and holding on tight. How do games do that?
Whether your Google Nest Thermostat is new or you recently changed your network settings, you must connect your smart thermostat to Wi-Fi to take advantage of its wireless features. It isn't hard to connect Nest smart home devices to your network with help from your phone. The easy setup is one of the reasons Google's Nest Thermostat made it onto our list of the best smart home devices.
Ultenic may not have the household recognition of Roomba or the sheer volume of products like Ecovacs or Roborock, but its T10 Pro is no slouch when it comes to automated cleaning. This midrange robovac packs a few of the modern conveniences youd expect a self-emptying dustbin, mopping mode, and smart mapping but makes a few key compromises to avoid a premium price point.
It was Digital Foundry's John Linneman who first made me see the truth. The truth, in this case, being that Crackdown, the deliriously great open-world blaster, is not a platform game so much as it's a climbing game. Crackdown casts you as a supercop in a city in which you can race up skyscrapers as easily as if you're tooling down the street in a sportscar. Crackdown is all about the window-ledge grip, followed by the boost, followed by the grip and so on until you hit the troposphere. When you scan the side of a building in Crackdown's Pacific City, you're not really looking for platforms, but handholds.
Funny it should take me so long to realise this. I've always been a fan of climbing - not doing it, although I have dabbled, skill-lessly, in my youth, but following it, reading about it, dreaming about it. I have friends who are climbers and I am always full of questions. I've read the complete works of people like Alex Honnold and Chris Bonington. Bonington was my mum's childhood - and adulthood - hero, incidentally. I'm named after him, and on my desk at home I have a postcard of him as a young man, wearing a dark, surprisingly formal jacket, up somewhere high, and with a thick cord of ropes over his shoulder. It's a picture of pure adventure. What a disappointment to him I must be.
At that desk, though, I do quite a bit of climbing. I climbed through Crackdown, without realising it, and recently I climbed through Jusant. With the release of a new climbing game this week, I've been thinking about how it all fits together. Climbing feels, of all activities, uniquely physical to me, because it's about rock and about hands and about clasping. It's about connections, points of contact, cleaving to a part of the natural world and holding on tight. How do games do that?
In an intelligent home ecosystem, smart locks add an extra layer of security and convenience. The SwitchBot Smart Lock Pro aims to bring these to your home without breaking the bank, thanks to its attractive features and price point.
If you're looking to secure your home or office, chances are, you've seen how expensive it can be to set up a security surveillance system. That's because there are generally a lot of moving parts, and getting everything to communicate with each other can be a real headache if you're trying to piece it all together yourself. That's where systems like Blink come into play, offering excellent hardware and software, making it easy to set up your own surveillance system.
Make this pocket-sized prognosticator and let cute emojis guide your future!
The post Toy Inventor’s Notebook: Mystic Emoji Fortune Teller appeared first on Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers.
If you’ve got an Apple device like an iPhone or Apple Watch, you’ll probably want (or even need) Siri, the company’s voice assistant. Here’s how to set up Siri for the first time and activate Siri on any Apple product.
The Dumbening started last week with Home/Nest voice devices not being able to turn off either my Nest or my Cielo controlled thermostats. Today on the drive into my kid’s school we had a very fun trip where we learned Kate Bush only has one song that would play, Regina Spektor makes music that contains a total of 6-10 seconds and then ends, and attempts to play any individual song require me to unlock my device which is connected to my car, and then it plays a random TV show.
Let’s use a little smarts Google Assistant. If I am driving, connected to my car’s Bluetooth connection, don’t play movies?
This was not a good trip in. We did finally get it to play the only Kate Bush song in the entire universe in its entirety, but the goal at the outset was to play anything but that song.
The phone kept locking, requiring me to unlock it to get the wrong results. Something that was not supposed to happen for 4 hours or so because that’s how it’s set.
Attempts to play Good Times by Edie Brickell, or honestly Good Times by anyone who has recorded a song named Good Times (there are many) were greeted with that I needed to unlock my phone and what appeared to be a half-hearted effort to locate a TV show similar to, but not Good Times.
At this point my ten year old told me to stop because it was obvious that Google Assistant had the dumbs today and any and all attempts were futile. It was in response to this that Kate Bush started playing again, the only song that exists evidently, and attempts to skip it went to a song that never started playing or had an insane quiet intro, and then that one Kate Bush song… again.
While I’ve often had issues with Google Assistant while driving, this was picking up what I was saying. But man it was not returning anything useful today.
Apple PR – seriously, put a camera in my car you’ve got your next Siri advertisement.
Google Assistant reached levels of dumb today that are being mocked by my 10 year old by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
Enlarge (credit: Open Home Foundation)
Home Assistant, until recently, has been a wide-ranging and hard-to-define project.
The open smart home platform is an open source OS you can run anywhere that aims to connect all your devices together. But it's also bespoke Raspberry Pi hardware, in Yellow and Green. It's entirely free, but it also receives funding through a private cloud services company, Nabu Casa. It contains tiny board project ESPHome and other inter-connected bits. It has wide-ranging voice assistant ambitions, but it doesn't want to be Alexa or Google Assistant. Home Assistant is a lot.
After an announcement this weekend, however, Home Assistant's shape is a bit easier to draw out. All of the project's ambitions now fall under the Open Home Foundation, a non-profit organization that now contains Home Assistant and more than 240 related bits. Its mission statement is refreshing, and refreshingly honest about the state of modern open source projects.
If you’ve got an Apple device like an iPhone or Apple Watch, you’ll probably want (or even need) Siri, the company’s voice assistant. Here’s how to set up Siri for the first time and activate Siri on any Apple product.
The Dumbening started last week with Home/Nest voice devices not being able to turn off either my Nest or my Cielo controlled thermostats. Today on the drive into my kid’s school we had a very fun trip where we learned Kate Bush only has one song that would play, Regina Spektor makes music that contains a total of 6-10 seconds and then ends, and attempts to play any individual song require me to unlock my device which is connected to my car, and then it plays a random TV show.
Let’s use a little smarts Google Assistant. If I am driving, connected to my car’s Bluetooth connection, don’t play movies?
This was not a good trip in. We did finally get it to play the only Kate Bush song in the entire universe in its entirety, but the goal at the outset was to play anything but that song.
The phone kept locking, requiring me to unlock it to get the wrong results. Something that was not supposed to happen for 4 hours or so because that’s how it’s set.
Attempts to play Good Times by Edie Brickell, or honestly Good Times by anyone who has recorded a song named Good Times (there are many) were greeted with that I needed to unlock my phone and what appeared to be a half-hearted effort to locate a TV show similar to, but not Good Times.
At this point my ten year old told me to stop because it was obvious that Google Assistant had the dumbs today and any and all attempts were futile. It was in response to this that Kate Bush started playing again, the only song that exists evidently, and attempts to skip it went to a song that never started playing or had an insane quiet intro, and then that one Kate Bush song… again.
While I’ve often had issues with Google Assistant while driving, this was picking up what I was saying. But man it was not returning anything useful today.
Apple PR – seriously, put a camera in my car you’ve got your next Siri advertisement.
Google Assistant reached levels of dumb today that are being mocked by my 10 year old by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.
