Author Archives: Michael Brown

Here’s a smart-home spin on a familiar philosophical question: If an alarm goes off in an empty house where there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

If you want your smart home system to also provide home security, having a third party that can contact emergency responders on your behalf is an essential feature. If a burglar breaks in or a fire breaks out while you’re away from home, a local siren will provide little protection. If it’s loud enough, it might convince the thief to beat a hasty retreat, but it will do nothing to prevent your house from burning down.

Lowe’s

In addition to its new Wi-Fi router and range extenders, D-Link is showing off a trio of new wireless home security cameras at CES this year: two indoor models and an outdoor camera that was previously unveiled at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin last September.

We’ve seen a barrage of super-inexpensive security cameras offered by lesser-known Chinese manufacturers such as Reolink and Ezviz, and it looks like D-Link intends to go head-to-head with those products with its DCS-8000LH. This 720p indoor camera is capable of delivering a 120-degree field of view, two-way audio, and an onboard microSD card slot that eliminates the need for a cloud-storage subscription fee. D-Link will offer optional cloud-storage service plans.

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OK Google, it’s time to take aim at Alexa. Google has announced that consumers can now preorder its Google Home digital assistant for $129, with a ship date of November 4. First revealed at Google I/O in May, Google Home will compete with Amazon’s surprisingly popular Echo product line for voice-activated control of the smart home. The price tag is attractive, and it has some features the Echo doesn’t, but Google still has a lot of work to do to catch Amazon.

Like the Echo, Google Home can recognize natural language and answer simple questions when it detects a “wake” word (“OK Google” for the Google Home, “Alexa” for the Echo). Google has a leg up on Amazon in this regard, as it arguably has the world’s best search engine, and the company has been working on speech recognition for many years longer than Amazon.

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Sears continues to shed its image as a staid, old-school retailer, introducing yet another line of new products for the smart home at an event in New York City on Wednesday. Among the 12 new products: A sensor-laden refrigerator that tracks how many times its doors have opened, a clothes washer that can be started from afar using a smart phone, a garage-door opener that sends alerts when you forget to close it, and a series of tool chests with Bluetooth locks. The company also extended its Kenmore brand to televisions for the first time ever; surprisingly, however, its first generation of Kenmore HD and 4K/UHD sets won’t be connected smart TVs.

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