Our kitchen is small so there really isn’t a good place to put a TV, even a small one. So I often end up watching football of the tablet while getting the Sunday roast started. Finding a good place to put it can be difficult though because I don’t want it down on the counter with the chicken and vegetables […]
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I don’t remember seeing Zipato at CES last year, so when I noticed their unique Z-Wave ZIPABOX home automation controller (HAC) while roaming the show floor I made a point to stop in and have a look. With all the change in the smart home space it can be tough to select the right hardware; with the HAC the most […]
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Z-Wave sensor/switch maker AEOTEC teased a new switch before CES, so I made a point to stop by and have a look. It was worth it. Losing ½ the size from the previous generation external module the Smart Switch 6 gains USB support and doesn’t give up any of the energy monitoring features present on the previous generation. We will […]
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Creating a new standard for anything is hard. For a market as diverse as home audio, I can only imagine how difficult it is to get OEMs to collaborate, let alone agree on a wireless standard that lets end users build best-of-breed systems according to their needs – instead of playing to the vendor’s desire to lock them into their […]
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My first introduction to Piper was at last year’s CES, this year they were back again with an updated night vision version of their innovative Z-Wave home automation controller/camera. The Piper NV (for night vision) also upgrades the ARM processor (allowing for more imaging processing options), sensor (to 3.4MP), and ups the field of view to 180 degrees. Naturally the […]
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SiliconDust didn’t have any new products to show in their suite this year, but we did get a chance to look at the new packaging which is important as they make a bigger push into retail, especially in Europe. We did get a chance to discuss some of the products that should have launched, but unfortunately were delayed due to […]
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NETGEAR had a lot to show at CES this year besides routers, and we ended up skipping those because with the rapid release schedule (AC3200 & AC2400 launched earlier) there wasn’t anything new. That’s not to say that they’ve been standing still in the networking space with several new product to enable more bandwidth around the house. […]
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The biggest news from Vera Control is that we finally have a controller with the new Series 500 Z-Wave+ SoC. In fact, there will eventually be three different models; VeraEdge, VeraPlus, and VeraSecure, with VeraEdge available now and the other two expected to ship early summer. The $149/£149(doh) VeraEdge is essentially an upgraded VeraLite, but the really interesting model is […]
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Intel is moving hard into small, low power devices and that was evident in what they were showing at CES this year. We started out with tablets, but the really interesting stuff started when the new Broadwell NUC came out. First we saw a demo of it running an incredibly slick picture/video manager that used to require a quad-SLI system […]
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CableCARD is the technology that enables HTPC users to build the ultimate DVR. The kind of multi-tuner DVR backed by insane amounts of storage that makes it easy to “meh” when a company proudly proclaims the capabilities of their – not quite as spec’ful – aspirational kit. It has drawback though, especially if you prefer not to use Microsoft Windows […]
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