Updates and new gadgets!

Smart Home HQ is a proud member of the Geeks Network! Find out more information at TheGeeksNetwork.com

[Notes]

WCPO visited our Smart Home Demo, and did an interview with me. It was very exciting and took much longer than I thought for what amounted to a few seconds of TV time. My kids are very happy with their TV-Star-Daddy.

Cincinnati Bell invited us out to their booth at the Home and Garden Show which was really fun. It was nice to see how many people came to the show and said they were looking for booths that showed off smart home gadgets, this means we are moving on in the right direction and it’s finally becoming more mainstream.

Smart Home HQ is now partnering with Cincinnati Bell to provide their Smart Home consultation and install services. If you are in the Cincinnati Tri-State area you can schedule a consultation inside any Cincinnati Bell store and receive a discount on the consultation through that partnership. Otherwise you can schedule online at smarthomehq.net.

Blog and Podcast site separated from the main website to help keep thing stable and secure.

Picking the right home automation controller is very important, I have used a lot of different controllers along my journey and I feel it’s safe to say they all have their pro’s and con’s at this point in time. Manufactures are constantly working to find the sweet spot between feature set, stability, and profitability.  I struggle to find which hub to recommend a lot of the time and as a Smart Home Pro it’s up to me to talk to my clients and interpret what will work best for them. Are you an extreme tinkerer and want to control every bit of the experience or perhaps code your own ideas into the system? Then I might recommend Smartthings, if you have zero tolerance for cloud outages then perhaps Homeseer is a better fit. For most non-tech-savvy individuals that want some basic connectivity then my go-to will be Zipato for now. Cloud/web programing combined with local processing and a nice module approach to adding additional functionality makes it a very attractive system.

The new Alexa/Echo Look $199

This product will have the paranoid up in arms, the new device looks like something from the game Portal and sports a blue light and Camera in addition to a built in speaker and microphone that we are used to already. There is a privacy button that turns off the microphone and camera.

Currently this is a high-tech selfie-camera that also has all of the Alexa features we are used to, but it takes the selfie to the next level by offering fashion tips on what you are wearing. This is going to be huge for them, think of all the selfies that will be sent in to their machine learning data centers to compile all the current trend and demographic information that advertisers and product manufactures can use to stay up with whatever generation they are looking to target. It won’t be too long before Amazon will start offering a prime service to send me clothes every month as a service, the only difference will be that they will be age and profession appropriate and also fit unlike the off the rack/shelf clothes that I wear now. With software updates it won’t take much to allow the camera to map my body type and ‘proportions’ in order to size everything appropriately. This is all my opinion on the direction of course but it would make the most sense. The last few times I tried to order closes from Amazon they were all sent back because they showed up too small or too large for me.

Please click here to rate on iTunes!

Please click here to rate on Stitcher!

Send Feedback

Email
Send an E-Mail

Social/Subscribe