Smart home

     In part two of the smart home series, I share my experiences with the third generation Nest Thermostat. You will find out why I believe it is a central device to own when building out a connected home.

Google Home and Alexa can help stream music and control your smart home, but did you know they can also help you stick to healthy resolutions?

Have a Merrier Christmas and a Happier Holiday this year by decorating your home—both inside and out, with smart lights that enhance the season for all.

Google didn’t just unveil its two new Pixel smartphones and the Chromecast Ultra this week, it also intimated its focus on the home, and how different devices can factor into that vision. One of these was the Daydream View VR headset, designed to work with the Pixel (and other Android phones), and the other was the Google Home, a hub that uses the Google Assistant artificial intelligence platform to help with various tasks on command.

As the undisputed multiple time defending winner of the “hardest person to buy gifts for” award, I know the difficulty I put my family through every year around the holidays. I guess it runs in the family. My dad has always been the hardest person for me to buy for. I can never read what he’s interested in and when I do, he’s already gone out and bought it for himself. I can usually rely on cool gadgets to do the trick though. This year, he’s right at the doorstep of retirement and has taken a shining to many of the smarthome things I have around the house. I’m going to start the gift search with stocking-sized gifts. From a possible smartwatch to a light bulb, here are a few ideas to mull around for that difficult-to-buy-for man in your life.  

Post-CES 2015, we have a lot to absorb about what we can do to our homes. Smarthome gadgets are coming out at a rapid pace, and with many manufacturers now working together to allow you run their devices on the same apps, it’s good to get in tune with just how you can turn your every day home into a smart one.

 The original Dropcam (later branded as the Nest Cam) was one of the crucial pillars of growing IP Camera technology in the world of Home Automation. With its wide angle filming, cloud storage capabilities and communication and alerting abilities, it was one of the class leading standards for which all competing IP Cameras would have to meet. Now Nest is back with those same philosophies in a waterproof outdoor camera, coming soon to Best Buy. Read on to find out more.

A power outage doesn’t have to mean an end to all of the high-tech fun. Check out some cool gadget ideas for keeping entertained, and connected, during an unfortunate blackout.  

For over 100 years now, Honeywell has stood as one of the industry gold standards in Thermostat technology. In fact, it’s how the company got started. Now, Honeywell’s Smart Thermostats are available at Best Buy in two different varieties, featuring an assortment of different helpful features that you wouldn’t expect out of something that controls the temperature in your house. Come check them out!

We've arrived at the third instalment of our 12 months of smart home improvements series, and this time we're looking at smart lights, plugs, and switches.