I have recently covered several smart home products, and many of these use the Zigbee communication protocol. There is also the Z-Wave which I have covered extensively in the past, and then you have Thread which is an up-and-coming protocol. It can get confusing what the difference is between these technologies and which is best,…
The Homey smart hubs have been around for years now, and I covered the launch of the original Homey Pro back in 2019. Homey has been trying to be the panacea of smart home fragmentation long before the Matter was a thing. They are arguably the best solution for anyone using a mixture of smart…
Following my review of the Aqara Camera Hub G2H, I have been checking out the Aqara M2 Smart Hub and the new Aqara Smart Wall Switch H1. The Aqara Smart Wall Switch H1 model I have used is the no neutral, double rocker EU variant. It is exactly the same as the standard H1, but…
Aqara has been a popular, affordable smart home ecosystem for a few years now. They recently launched their official Amazon UK store, so there is no more waiting around for imports with most of the devices available via Amazon Prime. I have been checking out the Aqara Camera Hub G2H hub with some of the…
I have covered smart locks quite a lot in the past, it is an area of smart home technology I have always loved the thought of but it has never seemed to gain much traction in the mainstream market, unlike lighting or home heating. I have already reviewed the Yale Conexis L1 Smart Door Lock…
Buttons and switches are a superb addition to any smart home system allowing you to carry commands without reaching for your phone or shouting at Alexa. When I started this post, I knew there were a lot of options, but it turns out there are way more products that I realised. I have been looking…
The smart home industry is booming, and with no doubt, smart home installation is transforming many homes as it allows you to simplify everyday tasks and automate many existing appliances at a touch of a button, and you can find Alexa in almost everything nowadays. For UK users, two things that don’t have a lot…
Originally posted in March 2018, I have now updated the post for 2019 to reflect some of the new tech and suggestions. This includes some reader recommendations too In the past couple of years, the home automation industry has boomed, and the traditional Z-wave based systems have lost ground to the new wave of AI-based…
I have covered several Z-Wave home controllers over the past few years, with the Samsung Smartthings being the most recent and my current favourite. However the problem with Z-Wave is that it often doesn’t work with other smart devices using more accessible standards such as bluetooth and WiFi. This is a problem the Athom Homey…
I have previously reviewed the Lightwave Generation 2, but Lightwave has been kind enough to send me one of the radiator valves to review so I thought it would be worth redoing the review of the system and see how it has improved since its first launch. For UK users Lightwave is one of the…
SmartThings launched all the way back in 2012 following a successful Kickstarter campaign where they raised $1.2 million with products becoming commercially available in 2013. In late 2014 it was acquired by Samsung for $200-million and at the time it looked like this would be the first home automation product to go mainstream. While the…
With the dominance of Alexa and Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings seems to have fallen on the wayside past couple of years. During Smart Home Week the SmartThings indicated they would be making a new push to promote the product and one of the reasons why it had not been more aggressively pushed was them waiting it out…