App Developer Sunya Limited addresses the question of Bluetooth troubleshooting by providing a handy Bluetooth scanner app called HomeScan. HomeScan is designed to quickly and easily identify your bluetooth devices, and provide a portable and data driven means of determining signal issues.

Smart home hubs are growing in popularity, largely through the necessity of tying dozens of disparate devices together in the home. Logitech’s offering, the Harmony Hub, is a popular choice which has been examined by security firm Tenable and found lacking.

Consumer interest is ramping up in smart home devices in general, and we’re starting to see more options for control of non-ducted air conditioners and heat pumps. We take a look at the three models in the Cielo Breez range of smart AC controllers.

Assuming you have adequate WiFi and Bluetooth coverage for your devices, HomeKit users have had smooth sailing for a year. However, with the release of iOS 12, multiple users have reported a plethora of issues, most notably with Bluetooth devices.

European garden products manufacturer GARDENA announced at CES 2019 that HomeKit support would be coming to the range of smart garden products (known as the GARDENA Smart System). In a refreshing move that support has already rolled out to the Gateway device that provides connectivity to the other devices in the range.

Home weather instruments have long been the province of weather buffs, with various levels of tracking and trending the usual weather data points simply out of interest. For smart home enthusiasts, the availability of external environmental data offers a great deal of practical use.

Using any connected camera products comes with an unstated element of risk, and those of us with some sense of the inherent risks of connected devices deploy them with that in mind. Even so, we tend to hope that the service provider treats our video content with the appropriate level of encryption and privacy controls. 

As your smart home gains devices management of those devices can become somewhat cumbersome without the assistance of logical hierarchies and other organisational tools. These tools vary with the platform and app of your choice, but in the case of Apple’s HomeKit there are a couple of useful features in this area that are overlooked by many users.

The Smart AC Control promises huge energy savings, but that promise is based on dumb AC technology. When using it to add smart features to an inverter-based system, there is a better way. Find out how to use ‘non-thermostatic’ control to provide quieter, more efficient running.

Amazon’s Alexa has some limitations when it comes to managing your smart devices in the app, but by using the Groups feature you can simplify your device naming, and organize your gadgets much more easily.

With the growth of DIY smart home platforms and the increasing popularity of connected smart devices, integration of our reticulation and irrigation needs would seem to be a easy win. Oddly, this is an area that has been lagging for some time.

Motions sensors are the first port of call for many smart home initiates, and they provide some core functionality for triggering activity based on presence, often in conjunction with smart lighting. Two strong candidates are compared in this deep dive article.