smart home - consumertechfix.com

Smart Bulbs: What to Buy First and What to Avoid

Colour bulbs are fun and mostly unnecessary. Here is what actually makes smart lighting worth having.

A doorbell that notifies your phone but does not ring the house is usually a transformer, a bypass, or a chime setting.

White-out, glare and blurry night footage are nearly always reflection, not a bad camera.

Most smart lock problems start at installation. Here is what to measure and check before ordering one.

Smart plugs are the cheapest way into home automation. Here is what to check before buying and what to actually use them…

Schedules an hour out, or firing in the middle of the afternoon, usually mean a time zone, a daylight saving bug, or…

Flicker at low brightness is usually an old wall dimmer left in the circuit, or a bulb being driven below what it…

A hub that drops takes every device with it. Here is how to bring it back, and how to avoid the reset…

A speaker that gets every third command wrong is usually badly placed or fighting background noise. Here is how to fix it.

Energy monitoring plugs are useful for comparisons and poor at absolute accuracy. Here is how to use them well.

Forty notifications a day for passing cars and moving shadows trains you to ignore the one that matters. Here is how to…

A lock that jams, retries, or reports locked when it is not is almost always a door alignment problem rather than a…