Voice Assistants
Setting Up a Voice Assistant for Elderly Parents
You bought your mum a smart speaker for her birthday, set it up in twenty minutes, and three weeks later it sits unplugged...
Your heating switches to away mode while you are asleep upstairs, or the hall lights stay on for an empty house all afternoon.
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Voice Assistants
You bought your mum a smart speaker for her birthday, set it up in twenty minutes, and three weeks later it sits unplugged...
Smart Lighting
Your smart bulb shows "Device unresponsive" in the app, ignores voice commands, and still lights up when you flip the wall...
Plugs and Switches
You want a lamp, a fan or a coffee maker on a schedule, and the store shelf offers two answers that look almost the same: a...
Home Security
You bought a camera, mounted it over the driveway, and the first time something actually happened the clip started three...
Buying Guides
You want a robot vacuum that cleans the floor while you are out, but the price range runs from $150 to $1,800 and every box...
Voice Assistants
Most people set up an Echo, ask it for the weather for a fortnight and then forget about everything except timers.
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Three people who actually live with the gear they write about: a reviewer who buys new devices the day they launch and keeps a running list of what has failed him, a former security systems installer who now writes about what cameras and sensors actually protect against, and someone who builds absurdly complex home automations for fun and then writes the simpler version everyone else actually needs. Every article carries a byline, and nothing runs that the writer has not set up themselves.