When a smart home gadget looks to: a) save me time, and/or b) simplify any aspect of my life, I take notice. Robotic vacuum cleaners have evolved rapidly over the past few years. The Roborock S5 is equipped with a laser distance sensor, a huge 5200mAh lithium polymer battery, and excellent vacuuming strength. The S5
Category: IoT
The Rachio smart sprinkler controller has been on my purchasing radar for some time. It’s always a good sign when fellow IoT enthusiasts bring up the Rachio sprinkler controller in gadget focused conversations. I’ve delayed my own Rachio installation because of the many current and upcoming projects around my home. Irrigation has taken a low
Let’s just cut to the chase: The Sonos Playbar is awesome. When the Playbar is installed and accedes audio duties from your standard TV speakers, the jump in audio quality is measurably better. The clarity of high and mid tones rockets through the roof. Although lacking low tones (it’s not a sub-woofer after all) it
I’ve had my Samsung SmartThings hub, 2 SmartThings motion sensors and 2 SmartThings arrival sensors for about 6 months now. Using routines created within the SmartThings app (and also IFTTT & Stringify) I’ve managed to achieve some very useful automation around the house: Motion sensors: Turn on the lights in the “Entry” and “Study”. Turn
8 x Suntech Power STP190S-24/Ad+ 190w solar panels The efergy engage online portal is, for a lack of a better word, spartan. It doesn’t look to have been updated since 2014, and is focused on basic power usage stats. For anyone generating electricity via a solar setup, the features are terribly lacking (no feed-in tariff
I’ve always wondered how much energy my solar panels are producing at any given time. Occasionally, I’ll look at the tiny LCD read-out on my SMA Sunny Boy SM1700 solar inverter, and wait for the PAC (power actual in watts) and daily outputs to show on the scrolling menu. Same applies to reading my current