For my family, smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home are an essential part of how we interact with the home automation (HA) system, intercom between rooms, and casually listen to music. The privacy implications of this aren’t that concerning for us as I don’t think we’re interesting enough for Amazon, Google, the NSA, or really anyone else […]
Read moreWelcome to the new Missing Remote website. It has been a long time coming, with quite a bit of work to do still left. Hopefully we’ve covered all the important things, but it’s quite likely that there are gaps. If you find one, please let us know; either in the comments below or via another mechanism. One important thing to […]
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I would love to be able to listen to music while cycling, but I don’t think it’s safe to wear headphones. There are too many potential hazards out on the road to have that level of sonic isolation. This is one of the use cases that the Coros OMNI “Smart Cycling Helmet” addresses. The OMNI addresses this via bone […]
Read moreHumon: “Are you an athlete?” Me: “I pretend to be…” was how our conversation started about the Humon Hex, a fitness wearable intended mainly for runners and cyclists. As an aging someone who fits neatly into both of those categories, anything that promises to help me get more out of a workout and minimize injury is an item of interest. […]
Read moreNot ashamed to admit that I ended up in the RHA suite mostly due to some clever marketing, so even if I hadn’t had a chance to listen to some amazing headphones it still would have been worth it. Funny thing, is that the main focus of the evening were the MA650 & MA750 Bluetooth wireless headphones with 12 hours […]
Read moreI love the concept behind MySmartBlinds { https://www.mysmartblinds.com/products/automation-kit} solar powered $99 2.5” automation retrofit kit. I would love to have automated blinds, but the cost of a complete replacement is prohibitive. Especially considering that the blinds we have are in great shape. If rollers are more your thing, a kit should be available in a few months for $149. […]
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Installation cost is one of the major barriers to home automation. In addition to the cost of your switches, bulbs, etc. you also need to purchase a home automation controller (HAC) in most cases. The other major issue is complexity, which is where the development budget of large companies like Amazon and Google help immensely. They have the $ to […]
Read moreNear the end of the last day of CES, we stumbled into the Guardian kiosk in the Z-Wave pavilion. Having seen quite a few leak detection/water control devices over the previous week I wasn’t holding out much hope. As it turns out, what they have to offer is a really neat approach to solving this problem. Unlike the other […]
Read moreInteroperability is one of, if not the biggest, challenges to adoption of home automation (HA) in the non-geek market. In order to get to this segment, or most people, we need to solve the “how do we get devices to talk to each other” problem. The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) is trying to solve exactly this via an open source […]
Read moreIt would be impossible to tell the WiSA and Axiim stories separately for CES 2018, so we are going to have to combine the two here. From a straight technology perspective, not much seems to have changed with the WiSA standard. Aside from Axiim there have only been some minor changes to the available consumer hardware. Although some major brands […]
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