Hi, fellow smart homers! Just back from dropping my son out at a local hotel 🏨, where he is doing some summer work in the kitchen. And it’s bucketing rain out there, hopefully, the day will clear later. Here are some smart home stories to check out:
1,100 Lumens 🔆
Hue gets brighter; with a recent announcement to launch lamps that offer brightness levels up to 1,100 lumens. To put the story into context, current Hue bulbs can only expel brightness levels of 806 lumens. Not sure how many people want really bright bulbs but at least they have the choice now. As expected these new super-duper bulbs will cost a little more but are a welcome addition to the Philips Hue line of smart lighting products. All the details about the new bulbs can be found at Hueblog.
Energy levels 🔋
Energy management can be one of the more techy elements of the smart home. And there are lots going on with energy in smart homes for many years. This little story caught my attention and its to do with a real niche piece of software called Home Assitant. For those of you who haven’t heard about this product, it’s open-source software that often gets used to interconnect Apple homekit devices with non-homekit smart home products. They are always adding new features, and this week added official support for home energy management.
If you’re looking to dig in deeper, perhaps in one of the energy enhancement features, head over to the home assistant blog right here.
This Weeks Blog Post
With the smart home industry growing rapidly, many brands are entering the market to create a name for themselves while also providing automation solutions for users. SwichBot is among the fastest-growing companies in the smart home industry. The company has won many homeowners’ hearts since it launched its Kickstarter campaign back in 2016. If you’re searching for smart products that come with an easy installation process and even better functionalities, look no further because SwitchBot has all that. SwitchBot provides some of the most basic and yet essential smart home technologies to increase your home’s comfort. With SwitchBot smart products, you’ll require to follow a few setup guidelines to begin. If you’re looking to build your ideal SwichBot smart home, you’re in the right place. This article will provide you with all the details you might need to know about a SwitchBot smart home. >> Read the complete article on the blog
Smart Environment stuff
I wanted to shed some light on two stories from this week’s smart home environmental data. To start with the Eve has announced thread support for their weather station – used for tracking temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure. Some interesting use cases of these smart devices are available here.
The other snippet of news in this space was a new google home air quality feature. When released a new air quality widget will appear just underneath the weather condition icon. Not only will this air quality information get displayed on nest hubs, but of course you can also use voice commands like Hey Google, what’s the air quality today in town?’Click here to check feature details out in more detail.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command! 🎤
Hey Google, remove my smart bulbs schedule.
This is it for today, See you next Sunday 😉. If you have colleagues, friends, or neighbors that would benefit from knowing about smart home devices, please consider sharing them.
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– Gerard