Back about a decade ago we had a Roomba I had received while doing the payperpost . The wife and I liked it and it did a pretty good job. It eventually died as electronics do and I wasn’t able to resurrect it. Eventually it went to the dump. Rather than replace it we just…Read more
Homeseer
Home Automation Hubs and How to Pick One
As far as home automation hubs go, the sky is the limit… as far as cost anyway. There’s a pretty large range in what they can do and it all depends on what you want to do and how technical you are as well. If all you want to do is control a few items…Read more
Ten Things You Can Do With HomeSeer Home Automation
I’ve been a pretty loyal HomeSeer user for the last 17 years or so, ever since I got into Home Automation. While there are plenty of pros and cons about it, mainly because it’s paid and everyone wants free beer, that’s not what this is about. I’ll touch on that later. One of the things…Read more
Alexa Can Now Control Wink-Compatible Smart Locks
Recently Amazon has added smart lock capability to it’s Alexa smart home API. I’ve been patiently waiting for the fine folks at Homeseer to update their skill so that I can start doing the same without having to say “Alexa, tell Homeseer to lock the front door” etc…. Anyway, Wink has beaten them to the…Read more
IFTTT Integration Coming to Apps (Already Live in Some)
IFTTT has been working with developers over the last few months to directly add integration into apps so that you can unlock and potentially activate recipes from the apps rather than the web site or the IFTTT app itself. Integrations with Abode, Awair, BloomSky, Foobot,Garageio, LIFX, Qapital, Roger, Skybell, and Stack Lighting are live today…Read more
Occupancy and Presence
One of my projects within my smart home is to be able to monitor home occupancy as well as specific room presence. While the two are similar they end up being very different things. Occupancy is pretty basic. For the house itself I currently have three modes. Home, Out and Away. Away means we are…Read more
Aeon Labs Aeotec Zwave LED Light Bulb
Recently I picked up an Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave LED Light Bulb, Gen5 on sale from Amazon just to check out and compare to my Hue bulbs. I like Zwave as it’s generally easier to control from my HS system and I don’t have to kludge it or control from a 3rd party plugin or through…Read more
DreamScreen TV
Browsing around Reddit this afternoon I ran across a relatively new product that looks to be pretty neat. It’s called DreamScreen. Basically it’s a series of LEDs that you stick on the back of your TV like you would with a Hue strip. The main difference is that with DreamScreen they include an HDMI splitter….Read more
Wink Hub Updates
I think I may have posted elsewhere that I have a Wink Connected Home Hub. Apparently they are currently beta testing a Vacation mode subscription that’s going to cost $9.99 a month. What the holy hell? If the Wink hub weren’t only using half it’s sensors, that only work half the time, on a hub…Read more
GoControl Security Essentials – Updated
So Home Depot has been carrying GoControl Z-Wave “security” kits for a while now. They are compatible with Wink which is why I guess they decided to carry these products as Home Depot sadly decided to back Wink in their Home Automation stuff. I have exactly ONE product linked to my Wink hub only because…Read more