Having a Voice Assistant may seem like something only the younger generations use on their day to day activities, but that’s no longer the case! With accessibility being a prime focus for most Smart Home devices, you’ll find that there’s no need to call 911 directly should there be an emergency and you can’t reach the phone. The Alexa Assistant built into many devices like the Amazon Echo is a fantastic tool for the elderly and makes living alone whilst ageing the easiest it’s ever been! In this post, I’m going to cover the benefits of Alexa for Seniors and what you can do to make their life e ..read more

The average American household has eleven connected gadgets. Consider what a “smart homes” average number of linked gadgets are. According to Statista, there’ll be over seventy-five billion IoT-linked gadgets by 2025. For smart homes, you’ll need WiFi routers that are quick, safe, and dependable. High-speed routers are an absolute necessity for smart homes that have a lot of smart gadgets. These include cameras or doorbells. It will enable devices to interact successfully with one another and will allow you to operate them wirelessly via the internet. In this post, we ..read more

Smart bulbs and lights are a great way to automate your home. As technology progresses, the latest and greatest smart bulb is just around the corner at an affordable price. This post will explore some of the best smart bulbs on the market so you can find out which is right for you. We’ve tested over 50 bulbs from cheap Chinese brands all the way through to the big company brands like Philips Hue and LIFX, covering various aspects such as compatibility, range, build quality and even ease of installation. Every one of these Smart Light Bulbs is LED as they use less energy than an incandescent an ..read more

Yonomi is a virtual smart home hub that automates your life and runs directly on your Smart Phone. Using the Yonomi app, you can set up custom behaviors for your lights, locks and thermostats to control them automatically or via the push of a button on your phone. The best way to try and understand Yonomi is that it’s essentially an application that utilises various integrations via account logins etc to send commands directly from their servers to your Smart Homes applications. One of the best things about Yonomi is that it was built by developers for developers, which means it has not only a ..read more

Smart home hubs are the brain of your connected home. They connect all of your smart devices, and without one, you’re not really living in a smart space. Your hub is what connects you to all of the services that make your life easier – like controlling your lights with voice commands or using an app when you’re away from Smart Home. Before you start here, definitely check out these important guides first: How to Make a Smart Home with Amazon Alexa A Beginners guide to Smart Homes There are plenty of options out there but which ones will last? Here is our list of best Smart Home Hubs. Testing ..read more

Cheap Smart Home Technology is real! Building a cheap smart home can be daunting, there are plenty of brands on the market that charge extortionate prices for their products (Looking at you Philips Hue). But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a fully functioning Smart Home at an affordable price with a little work. Luckily, with each year that passes, Smart Home technology gets better and cheaper in general. For example, Amazon’s Echo (4th generation) is not only a fantastic sounding Smart Hub but it is also a Zigbee Hub, additionally, it’s at an affordable price and is regularly on sale. This m ..read more

Whilst we are mostly Android here, we understand plenty of people are involved in the Apple Ecosystem. As such, moving your text messages from Android to iPhone may be a necessity. Unfortunately, there’s no native way of doing so and it does require some third-party intervention. So, if you’re big on security, you may be left without an option to move these text messages over. However, if you’re not too fussed, keep on reading! Transfer your text messages from Android to iPhone using Apps As Apple devices are in a closed ecosystem, they do not have access to the Google Play Store, this means ..read more

With every TV on the market being a Smart TV, Smart Top Boxes are becoming less common. So, do you need a Roku Streaming Stick if you have a Smart TV? The answer to this question is typically, no. You do not need a Roku Streaming Stick if you have a Smart TV that offers a wide range of features. Depending on the brand of your Smart TV, you’ll have a variety of apps and functionality, some Smart TVs allow you to download applications, others allow you to bootload APKs and others don’t allow you to do anything at all. One advantage of the Roku Streaming Stick is the ability to add third-party st ..read more

For your Echo device to have full functionality with the latest features, security and long-term usage you will need to update your firmware/software. Updating your Alexa Software does require a stable connection to the internet via WiFi, luckily you don’t need to manually update your device as Alexa will check for updates on a nightly basis. Follow the steps below in this post to learn how to force a firmware update on your echo device. How to Force a Firmware Update on your Echo Device Before updating your device, you will need to check if your Alexa device is connected to your WiFi conne ..read more

Turning off your Amazon Fire Stick can be quite frustrating as there’s not a power button on every generation of Fire Stick. If you leave your Fire TV Stick for 20 minutes it will automatically put itself to sleep which uses less power and will receive software updates. If you want to put your Fire TV stick to sleep manually, follow the steps listed below. Turning off the Amazon Fire Stick There are three routes you can go down when attempting to turn off the Amazon Fire Stick, if you’re using the original Fire Stick where there is no power button you will need to use the Quick Access Menu or ..read more