Smart Home

Wi-Fi LED lightbulbs are cool — I’m currently enamoured with a pair of LIFX bulbs I’m testing for an upcoming smart home post, along with those from competitor Philips. But you know what might be even cooler? Lightbulbs that double as wireless multi-room and music-reacting speakers. That’s the premise of Whome Bulb from London/Shanghai-based WaveBomb, Continue Reading →

The Nest Protect is now available following its two-month hiatus after it was pulled for safety concerns. The smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector is now only $99, down from its $129 launch price. The Nest Protect is available from the Google Play store starting tonight. However, one of its key features is still disabled. Continue Reading →

Honeywell may now be looking to take on Nest with a new sleek and stylish thermostat, but it’s still making sure that users of its other connected systems enjoy updates too. In a bid to make things a little easier for owners of it evohome smart zoning thermostat, the company has extended support to the Continue Reading →

Honeywell has played around with a variety of connected thermostats, and even offered a Wi-Fi option that let people set the temperature using voice commands, but Tuesday it launched its first “smart” thermostat that will control your comfort based on a series of algorithms. The Lyric thermostat costs $279 and will be available in August. Continue Reading →

People have been talking about smart homes for decades, but we’re still far away from that perfect, tech-enhanced home seen in so many movies and product demos over the years. But the relative failure of the smart home to date isn’t because companies have had bad ideas. For proof of that, just take a look Continue Reading →

For Belkin founder Chet Pipkin, the company that began in his parents’ Hawthorne, Calif., garage wants to go back home. After building Belkin into a consumer-electronics brand with more than 1,200 employees and a product line that includes everything from Wi-Fi routers and iPad keyboard cases to power adapters over the past 31 years, Pipkin Continue Reading →

Big Ass Fans, a company that began in 1999 making a 14-foot fan for industrial customers before eventually branching out into the home market 13 years later, is adding smarts to its residential ceiling fans. But unlike many companies that slap a Wi-Fi chip and an app on their connected products, the Lexington, Kentucky company Continue Reading →

Connected sprinkler company Rachio has made it big, with its Iro connected sprinkler system going on sale in 900 Home Depot stores nationwide. The Wi-Fi-connected Iro costs $249 and is now on sale alongside other connected products at Home Depot, such as the Revolv home hub or a variety of Zigbee and Z-wave switches and Continue Reading →

The connected home is mostly about light switches and locks today, but several companies are trying to launch connected products with more of a culinary bent. The Drop connected kitchen scale is one of those. On Tuesday it began accepting orders for its $99 connected scale that we covered a few months back. The scale Continue Reading →

Apple announced a new “Home” app and service that allows an iPhone or iPad to control smart appliances, lights and locks around the home. The Home app will securely connect to third-party products such as the Philips Hue lightbulbs, Honeywell’s thermostats and Withing’s smart alarm clocks. “We’ve come up with HomeKit to allow secure pairing Continue Reading →