Smart Home

The smart home was once a far-flung pipe dream, but it is now a reality. Wherever you live, your home is ground zero for some of the most interesting tech available right now, and tech that’s yet to come. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to get your home up and running with smart hardware and services.

Home security and monitoring solutions can alert you to a burglary, smoke, fire, or just simple motion activity. There are plenty of options with a range of capabilities, from smart doorbells and smart locks to indoor and outdoor cameras that can see in the dark.

Smart speakers, like the Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple HomePod each play a big role in helping you out, too. In the kitchen, they can read out recipes, or if you’re cleaning, you can call out to them to change the song on the fly. If you buy smart light bulbs, for instance, you can turn them on and off by using your voice.

Sheena VasaniFeb 17

Govee’s color-changing floor lamp is down to nearly its best price to date.

Govee’s RGBIC Floor Lamp is on sale for just $64.98 ($35 off) at Amazon. The 4.6-foot smart lamp can light up your home with over 16 million colors, syncs with music, and boasts dozens of preset effects. I’ve owned it for more than a year, and despite being a last-gen model, it’s a reliable way to brighten your living space.

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Govee Floor Lamp

$65 at Amazon $70 at Govee

Ring’s Flock breakup doesn’t fix its real problem

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 14

The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them

Sean HollisterFeb 14

iRobot’s Roombas have a new Chinese owner, but it says your data will remain in the US

Stevie BonifieldFeb 13

Ring’s adorable surveillance hellscape

David PierceFeb 13

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 13

Flock is “pausing further exploration of a potential partnership with Ring.”

After Ring announced that it had canceled integration with Flock Safety, the law enforcement technology company criticized for connections to ICE (a claim it denies) has released it’s own statement and blog post:

Over the past several months, Flock and Ring explored whether their respective platforms could responsibly complement one another in support of public safety. Throughout those discussions, Flock engaged extensively with customers, public officials, and community stakeholders to understand expectations around accountability, transparency, and lawful use.
Based on that engagement, Flock and Ring have chosen to cancel the planned integration.

Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 12

Eufy’s midrange X10 Pro Omni robovac has fallen to its best-ever price

Brandon WidderFeb 12

Jay PetersFeb 11

Wyze is sticking it to Ring.

Yes, Wyze has had its own issues, but this video is pretty funny.

Why ‘deleted’ doesn’t mean gone: How police recovered Nancy Guthrie’s Nest Doorbell footage

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 11

Richard LawlerFeb 11

Sen. Markey calls on Amazon to “discontinue” Ring monitoring features.

Ring’s Super Bowl ad focused on how its cameras could be networked to find a missing dog, but for a lot of people, it highlighted the surveillance power hiding in those devices. Now Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) has sent a letter to Amazon saying, “Get this creepy technology away from our homes.”

You can read it in full here, but here’s a snippet:

Lifx’s two-pack of Matter-enabled smart color bulbs is down to $20

Cameron FaulknerFeb 11

Will Ring’s pet finding cameras eventually track people?

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 11

Apple is killing the old HomeKit Tuesday

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 9

Richard LawlerFeb 9

Ring advertised its neighborhood surveillance network.

The Search Party ad showed Jamie Siminoff’s vision of what connected cameras can do, and it seems to suggest they will only use that power to find lost dogs.

How I Built the Star Trek control panel of my dreams

I used ESPHome and LVGL to make my living room a little bit more like the USS Enterprise

Ursa WrightFeb 8

The Alexa app is so bad I’m using Siri again

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 6

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 4

A US chipmaker is buying this IOT company for $7.5 billion.

Texas Instruments (TI) has agreed to purchase Silicon Labs, a leading designer of smart home radios and SoCs, including Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread, Amazon Sidewalk, and Matter. TI, which is building wafer fabs in Texas and Utah, also just announced a partnership to supply MCUs for The Home Depot’s Hubspace smart home line.

Texas Instruments to acquire Silicon Labs

[Silicon Labs Newsroom]

Ikea’s cheap new smart home gear is struggling to get connected

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 4

Amazon rolls out Alexa Plus nationwide and launches a new free tier

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 4

I didn’t expect to love Dyson’s PencilVac Fluffycones – but I did

It won’t clean your whole house, but it’s the perfect companion to your robot vacuum

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 3

Millions of books died so Claude could live

David PierceFeb 3

Google Home finally adds support for buttons

Jennifer Pattison TuohyFeb 3

Ikea’s next cheap Bluetooth speaker is a playful purple mouse

Andrew LiszewskiFeb 2

Now anyone can tap Ring doorbells to search for lost dogs

Terrence O'BrienFeb 2

Dyson’s powerful 360 Vis Nav robot vacuum is nearly 75 percent off today

Brandon WidderJan 30

Belkin’s Wemo smart devices will go offline on Saturday

Stevie BonifieldJan 30

The best robot vacuum and mop to buy right now

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 30

I used Claude to vibe-code my wildly overcomplicated smart home

After years of trying to switch to Home Assistant, Claude Code got me (mostly) there in one afternoon.

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 28

Clean floors don’t have to cost a fortune.

While robot vacuums are getting fancier and more sophisticated (there’s now one that can climb stairs!), there are lots of great budget bots you can get for just a couple of hundred bucks that will keep your floors swept and mopped.

Check out my top picks for the best budget robot vacuum and mop in my updated buying guide.

The best budget robot vacuums

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Jan 27

Verge Score

The Loch Capsule dishwasher is small, fast, and efficient — it even sanitizes gadgets

I should want this, but don’t.

Thomas RickerJan 24

Ring says it’s not giving ICE access to its cameras

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 22

Netatmo launches a new smart thermostat.

The French smart home brand has announced the Thermostat Original (€149.99) and the Radiator Thermostat Original (coming soon). Both will work with Matter through an included Thermo Hub.

The Thermostat is Netatmo’s first product to work with Matter. Designed for European homes, it supports boilers, air-water heat pumps, and wood/pellet stoves.

The new thermostat comes in wired or wireless versions.

Image: Netatmo

Jennifer Pattison TuohyJan 22

DJI’s see-through robot vacuum might soon work with Matter.

As first spotted by Matter Alpha, the Chinese drone manufacturer has joined the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization behind Matter.

This means it could potentially add Matter support to its new Romo robot vacuum line, allowing the robot to work with Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, or any other Matter ecosystem.