Author Profile
Andrew Williams
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Article History:
- inspirationJanuary 30, 2019
Seven smart hotels around the world
Going to a hotel used to be about getting the things you didn’t get at home. Like fresh towels every day, fancy little pots of shampoo and, best of all, room service. Now we have connected tech in our homes, we're beginning to expect the same when we travel and your average hotel seems a…
- How-ToOctober 11, 2018
How to set up and use Home Assistant: For Dummies edition
Alexa and Google Assistant are moving further and further into automating your smart home gadgets. That means Google and Amazon will know just when you dim your lights, when you leave the house and what kind of coffee you like from your Nespresso 2049 PodMax machine. Scary stuff, right? Enter Home Assistant: an open source,…
- smart homeMay 10, 2018
Home Assistant lets you automate your smart home without giving up privacy
The vision of the smart home currently sold by Google and Amazon is quite simple. You talk to a smart speaker, like an Echo Dot, to control your smart lights, wireless speakers or thermostat. Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are only just starting to experiment with “routines”, where multiple controls are linked to a single…
- smart homeFebruary 28, 2018
How much power does your smart home tech really use?
Over the last few decade we've seen a few major pushes around lowering our energy consumption. We got rid of our old incandescent lightbulbs, so inefficient you could give yourself a burn just changing one. Washing machines now get marked on their power use. And the power-sucking standby modes of TVs and kitchen appliances are…
- speakersFebruary 15, 2018
How Amazon, Google and Apple use your smart speaker data
When you first get your smart speaker home you probably want to hear how it sounds. See if you can get it to control your lights. See what happens when you ask it something silly. Once that’s out of the way, it’s worth spending a little time learning exactly what happens with the data these…
- speakersJanuary 4, 2018
What's really stopping Amazon and Google from recording us 24/7?
There’s no stopping the smart home. The UK government has put its weight behind smart meters. Tech giants Amazon and Google are at war over smart control of our gadgets. Apple may be behind, but its HomePod smart speaker is due out this year. Many of us are worried about packing our homes full of…