I thought it was just me

When Amazon announced their new Echo Plus, I was immediately intrigued, and then a bit put off by the decision to use Zigbee instead of Z-Wave (although both radios would have been better). Afterall, Z-Wave has the biggest pool of devices and [near] guarenteed compatiblity. Aparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t get the choice – CEPro just does […]

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Wirecutter picks a “Best 4K Blu-ray Player”

Little disappointed to find my Xbox One S excluded from the top Ultra HD Blu-ray picks due to it’s gameyness and Netflix HDR performance (does anyone sell a 4K TV without Netflix built in?). So feel free to completely disregard Chris’s picks :). After researching every currently available 4K Blu-ray player, and spending more than 20 hours testing the features […]

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What is Fingbox

The other day while I was troubleshooting a network issue I stumbled upon an interesting device called “Fingbox“. The device connects via Ethernet to your network and makes some interesting claims around network monitoring and device blocking. Intrigued I reached out to the company to get a better understanding of how it works. As it turns out, it’s mostly messing […]

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Neato Robotics Botvac D80 Robot Vacuum

Neato Robotics Botvac D80 Robot Vacuum

I’ve been debating about whether I wanted to put the time into doing a proper review of our Neato Robotics Botvac D80 Robot Vacuum. Afterall, it kind of is a smart home device, and it’s really nice to not have to vacuum the house during the week… But on the other hand, it’s a vacuum cleaner. This will not be […]

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Wisdom of the Crowd

Wisdom of the Crowd Banner

When I finished watching Person of Interest, I was on the prowl for a replacement. Lo’ and behold, someone mentioned that a new show might be able to fill that void called Wisdom of the Crowd. Skeptically optimistic, I scheduled and watched the premier this past Sunday and was simultaneously intrigued and let down with the results. Wisdom of the […]

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Sonos Voice Control – FINALLY! …soon

Sonos One

Today, Sonos finally let us know that voice control in on its way. It was originally announced almost a year ago and the company has been extremely quiet on their progress. People got excited when they updated their terms of service to include wording which seemed indicative of the requirements for voice control. So, what are we getting? A beta. […]

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NETGEAR adds Circle support to select routers

Circle’s ARP spoofing based Internet monitoring and control scheme is an interesting way to keep tabs on what your kids are doing with their devices. Previously, to make it work you had to add their $100 hardware device inside your network. Now, if you have one of the R7000 routers that NETGEAR is supporting you can play with the tech […]

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Axiim announces “WM Series” WiSA speakers

If the idea of a wireless AVR+speaker system from Axiim sounds interesting to you, but were waiting for something a bit grander/larger/towery than what they’ve had on offer so far… The wait is over, for pre-order anyway with the just announced WM Series. The spec’s look interesting and I would expect performance to be a step up from the existing […]

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Ring Video Doorbell Pro

Ring Video Doorbell Pro

Ring offers a variety of different doorbell cameras, with options available for those without a doorbell ($200), power-over-Ethernet (PoE) ($500, I imagine for new builds or challenging wireless environments), and the Ring Pro for those with an existing low-voltage setup. The $250 (can be found for $190 occasionally) Ring Pro, is not quite in impulse buy territory. But, if it […]

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