Smart home

As the heating season approaches, it’s time to look forward to the snow falling outside, curling up by the fire to open the mail and staring at a ridiculous heating bill. This winter, help manage those ridiculous bills with a couple Smarthome Helpers. Inside, you’ll find an option for both Baseboard heating and Forced Air systems.

IP cameras are best known for home security, or for installation in a baby’s nursery. I recently found another use for the connected cameras we have as part of our security system: I repurposed them to monitor our injured dog. Because of the real-time feed from the cameras, we are able to leave her for short periods of time, the vet has video proof of her recovery process and our household is much closer to normal than it would have been otherwise. In fact, I’m not sure how we could have pulled this off without remote camera access.

Home monitoring and surveillance is not just for the rich or nefarious.  Sure, we all have that house on our block that’s tricked out with half a dozen cameras and tripwires (despite their being an aging Datsun in the driveway), but find out why real people have a real need for home monitoring.

Universal remotes can be the saving grace of your home theatre. They eliminate clutter and confusion and make all your devices work together seamlessly. Check out the new universal remote control Logitech calls, “the most powerful and intuitive remote for home entertainment and home control.”

Adding wireless coloured light to your home is a relatively new concept, with a lot of new players out there. There are the established brands like Philips Hue, which have commanded a premium on the market, partially because they have brand recognition for being first, and partially because they’ve made a great product. MIPOW PLAYBULB is an entrant into the market that offers a lower cost way to put wireless coloured lighting into your space. I have three products that we’re looking at today, read on to see how they fared in my home.

If you have electric baseboard heating you’re probably feeling left out of the smart thermostat revolution. Popular models like the Nest Thermostat and Ecobee aren’t focused on customers like me with baseboard heaters, so I jumped at the chance to review this – it’s the Sinope 3000W Wireless Smart Thermostat starter kit. Read on to see it installed and learn how it works.

A smart home is only as smart as the products within it, so let’s take a look at some smart lights, smart plugs, and smart switches.

A home without a sense of security isn’t much of a home, and with the latest smarthome gadgets you can have enhanced security, with the added bonus of increased efficiency, monitoring, and the flexibility that comes with modern electronics, no matter where you are. 

When it comes to basic home renovations, I was always told to hope for the best but expect the worst. That may be true when it comes to renovating a kitchen in a 10-year-old house or even doing a major overhaul on a house that’s 20 or 30 years old, but when you decide to crack open a house that’s 100 years old, all you can do is hope for OK and expect a lot of trouble.

These days, it seems as though there is a smart version of almost every electronic device imaginable. There are smart watches, smart phones, smart TVs, smart appliances, smart fitness trackers, smart cars; the list goes on. But one category that really seems to be gaining momentum is smart products for the home, especially smart products that don’t necessarily require professional installation, like the Lutron Caséta Wireless Smart Home Lighting product line.   I was sent two Lutron Caséta products to review: The Lutron Caséta Wireless Plug-in Lamp Dimmer With Remote, and the Lutron Caséta Wireless Smart Lighting Dimmer Kit. I started with what I knew would be the easiest to install of the two, the plug-in dimmer kit.