or do you have to tell it?
It can learn multiple rooms (or connected areas), but yes, you have to tell it which one it is in via the app. Possibly newer ones are cleverer.
PIV unit in the loft. has made my old damp house considerably drier and more comfortable to live in.
Clean drinkable water arriving by pipe at the house in unlimited quantites and dirty water disappearing down sewers. If the power goes off it's no great deal. No water, see how you get on.
Home internet has to be considered an essential rather than a luxury these days, but changing from a wired landline BB limited at approx 24/6Mbps to home 5G mobile BB at approx 400/60Mbps has been massive for us.
More of a luxury than tech, but home delivery of food shopping ordered online has helped us enormously over the last ~4 years, as we don't have a car and both of us have long covid.
For personal luxury home tech, has to be smart turbo trainer. For ~5 years it was mainly a training tool through the winter months, but I've relied on it far more all year around in the last ~4 years since my long covid began. Some days it's far easier to jump on the turbo and know I can simply stop and walk through to the lounge, rather than head outdoors and know I need to cycle back home.
While not something I use indoors, the ebike has been a game changer in the last year or so. I still get bouts of long covid PEM, but they are far rarer while using the ebike to get to the South Downs lanes/hills I fell in love with '17-'22 before long covid, which I visited just a handful of times '23 to Easter '25 on my old road bike.
I've never had an interest in smart doorbells, everyone who has one tells me that by the time they've alerted you, the person ringing the bell is long gone
Yeah I don't think delivery driver schedules really factor in having to wait for someone to answer the door. In my experience they knock and immediately start heading back to the van - if you're in you've got til get to the van to get to the door and announce it. 🙂
Clean drinkable water arriving by pipe at the house in unlimited quantites and dirty water disappearing down sewers. If the power goes off it's no great deal. No water, see how you get on.
Indeed. I recall reading a long time ago that the way to improve public health in developing nations is to send in the civil engineers.
I've never had an interest in smart doorbells, everyone who has one tells me that by the time they've alerted you, the person ringing the bell is long gone. Maybe they've improved.
I have a Ring doorbell (as mentioned above) and Alexa rather than Siri. What you're saying is absolutely true for the Ring phone app, by the time the notification has been on its jollies to Beijing* and back you could have answered the door, dealt with the caller and closed it again. I can see the app being potentially useful when you aren't home, but the app notification alone would be not-fit-for-purpose useless as a regular doorbell.
However. Integration with Alexa works, and works well. The doorbell will ring on every configured Echo device in the building and it is near-instantaneous. If you don't have smart speakers then for £30 you can get dedicated chime boxes from Ring instead (which is about what you'd pay for an Echo Dot on Black Friday). I've never used the Chime but I see no reason why this wouldn't be at least as good as the Echoes, the camera's Wi-Fi connection is rock solid.
I've had other issues but alert lag is not one of them if you're not relying on the app as the only ringer. I would expect that the issue reported by your "everyone who has one" would be fixed with a chime box of some description.
(* - It's not really China, it will probably be a regional AWS server somewhere in the EU, but that's less funny.)
I've had other issues but alert lag is not one of them if you're not relying on the app as the only ringer. I would expect that the issue reported by your "everyone who has one" would be fixed with a chime box of some description.
but surely the whole point of the app is for when you're not home
I don't seem to have much problem with lag, can usually get on my phone in time to tell the driver to leave the parcel somewhere.
But being in the office at the bottom of the garden, just used as a doorbell that I wouldn't hear it's also useful - have an Echo Show on my desk too
Only home “tech” I have is a HomePod mini in bathroom and two either side of my bed for stereo, handy wee things as I’m in the apple ecosystem.
Central heating? ( after water and sewage of course)
As for high tech? Wireless streaming and a smart(ish) telly. Music from my phone played all round the flat and slideshows of photos on the telly
Phiips Hue lights everywhere have transformed (yes, really) our home. They aren't the coloured ones, just Ambiance, but they've made a big difference to how each room feels at an given time.
We've got a big open plan kitchen living area, with about 25 of the GU10s and a few standing lights and being able to configure them for different zones, activities (cooking/relaxing/listening to music) and different brightness at different times of day turns what could be quite a cold, big room into something really nice at the touch of a button, or a lazy Siri command.
25 Hue bulbs in one room? My god, did you take out a second mortgage?
I like my smart lighting, but if I were doing over I'd do it differently. Hue is WAY overpriced and at the other end of the budget the Tesco 'Calex' bulbs are dogshit. Govee GU10s are the future, for now anyway.
I bought them a few years ago now, maybe six or seven years, never had a single failure (and they are in every day) and always when they are on offer with Hue.
I’d maybe do it differently now, these were pre Matter, but they’ve been faultless (unlike Nanoleaf and others I’ve tried). Never tried Govee.
Having endured ice on the inside of my bedroom window each and every winter, and freezing baths until well into my 20's, I would say central heating... I need any form of heating.
It's semantics but I'm thinking of 'tech' as meaning stuff that only become a mass market thing in say the last 20 years. And stuff like an air fryer isn't really 'tech' either (well, a flint blade was 'tech' to a neanderthal, so I guess it's all up for discussion)- it's just a small countertop fan oven. I like it and use it most days, but don't really think of it as 'tech'.
So I'll raise you central heating and give you smart central heating. Game changer for us. Biggish, very old stone house with bang average insulation in a colder bit of the nation without access to mains gas. The ability to focus the heat (and £££) on the places that need it and at the time they need it has been a godsend. Huge drop in both bills and ability to make spaces warm enough. Without it we'd be in fuel poverty I reckon.
Like my Sonos setup too. The ability to have it play the same thing throughout the house or different things in different rooms controlled from my phone or voice command is dead handy in a nice to have kind of way.
Clean drinkable water arriving by pipe at the house in unlimited quantites and dirty water disappearing down sewers. If the power goes off it's no great deal. No water, see how you get on.
If our power goes, we have about 3 days of storage of grey water and sewage before our waste treatment tanks are likely to fill... haven't had to test that yet though. In the meantime though it filters and treats and then disperses the treated water in the forest. Solid waste accumulates at approx 100 ml per person per year so it takes a long time before a clean out is required. I guess that's pretty good tech.
And if there's something I find much, much better than central heating, it's not needing it.
I used to hate going into people's houses where they had the heating up way too high. I don't think i've been in a house with it on for 20 years now.
It's semantics but I'm thinking of 'tech' as meaning stuff that only become a mass market thing in say the last 20 years. And stuff like an air fryer isn't really 'tech' either (well, a flint blade was 'tech' to a neanderthal, so I guess it's all up for discussion)- it's just a small countertop fan oven. I like it and use it most days, but don't really think of it as 'tech'.
I was sorting of thinking the opposite. Essential / commonplace stuff like fridges, central heating, wifi etc is definitely 'tech' but it's so normalised that it's considered a basic service or product.
I see tech as having smart speakers or voice controlled lighting installed rather than a basic radio in a corner of the room and a light switch on the wall.
Proper air conditioning for the bedroom. 19C in there 24/7, 365 days a year. Cools in summer, heats in winter, and sips at electricity like it’s a fine wine.
I've never had an interest in smart doorbells, everyone who has one tells me that by the time they've alerted you, the person ringing the bell is long gone
I looked in to this a while back because our Ring doorbell is dogshit for slow notifications. They claim if it wireless then to save power it's not always connected to the wifi, so if it detects motion then it has to wake up and connect to the wifi first before it can send notifications. Supposed to be better if you have wired power versions but I've never tried it.
The other day my wife came, walked right through the house and was in the garden talking to the kids before the notifcation popped up on my phone as good 15 seconds after she would hve triggered it. Utterly useless. I don't pay for the subscription on it any more because I didn't see much added value in watching a clip of a delivery driver walking away from the house.
EDIT: swear filter not working anymore? S****horpe smar****ch test
EDIT 2: looks like it is, just some swear words classed as worse than others?
FFS - user error - I hit quote instead of edit
FFS did it twice 😐
Supposed to be better if you have wired power versions but I've never tried it.
I have, it doesn't make a difference. (Well, anecdotally anyway.) See my post earlier, you need some form of internal chime.
I don't pay for the subscription on it any more because I didn't see much added value in watching a clip of a delivery driver walking away from the house.
I think the issue with notification speed rather than video activation speed, when you press the bell at least.
It's semantics but I'm thinking of 'tech' as meaning stuff that only become a mass market thing in say the last 20 years.
To me there is technology and high technology perhaps? Trouble is folk abbreviate high technology to tech.
bloody people. 🤣
Yeah, would have to say fibre broadband.
Having just moved to Fibre from ADSL have to say I'm yet to see a benefit. We had 70Mbps on ADSL and now have 300 but it's no more responsive in use - the sites on the other side can't deliver those sort of speeds. I upgraded to a Unifi Router/Gateway and it gives loads of data about traffic. The fastest download speed in the last 24 hours was 11.1 and I've never seen it above 10 when I've looked before.
If you're running a server and moving big files around maybe but even if there was a whole family streaming content individually my old connection would probably have been sufficient.
Hey reeksy
"Solid waste accumulates at approx 100 ml per person per year so it takes a long time before a clean out is required. I guess that's pretty good tech."
How do all those Family Logs get reduced to 100ml for the year ?
Short answer… tech and bacteria.
Long answer
https://taylex.com.au/wastewater/secondary-wastewater-treatment-systems/
Putting the 'normal' stuff that is part of late 19th and 20th century stuff like electricity, fridge/freezer, running water from a tap etc...
The dish washer was a revelation when we got one 25 years ago. Such a time saver AND a place to store filthy crockery when you just CBA to wash up after a meal.
As far as newer 'tech', the Hive thermostat / App for controlling the central heating. Waaaaay more controllable than the electro-mech timer we had previously (you know the old clockwork dial with 2 red and 2 blue movable pointers for on and off of heating/ hot water). Must have saved us a small fortune on the gas bill in the decade or so we've had it - both due to the accuracy, multiple periods you can set for heating / temp settings, and being able to turn the heating on or off remotely eg when gone away for the weekend etc.
Having just moved to Fibre from ADSL have to say I'm yet to see a benefit. We had 70Mbps on ADSL and now have 300 but it's no more responsive in use - the sites on the other side can't deliver those sort of speeds. I upgraded to a Unifi Router/Gateway and it gives loads of data about traffic. The fastest download speed in the last 24 hours was 11.1 and I've never seen it above 10 when I've looked before.
As my old Maths teacher would have said, "11.1 what, elephants?"
Watch your units. Are you measuring a 300Mbps connection with a 10MB/s download speed?
Having just moved to Fibre from ADSL have to say I'm yet to see a benefit. We had 70Mbps on ADSL and now have 300 but it's no more responsive in use - the sites on the other side can't deliver those sort of speeds. I upgraded to a Unifi Router/Gateway and it gives loads of data about traffic. The fastest download speed in the last 24 hours was 11.1 and I've never seen it above 10 when I've looked before.
As my old Maths teacher would have said, "11.1 what, elephants?"
Watch your units. Are you measuring a 300Mbps connection with a 10MB/s download speed?
I see what you’re saying, but my WiFi is tested to above my WAN speed now (on device speed test and test by gateway here) and anything that has a port (including my iMac) is on wired Ethernet and a fast switch
Purely a guess but,
Is that first graph measuring successive points in time and the sample rate is too slow to catch the speed test? Ie, device polls usage @ ~10Mbps - speedtest runs at 300Mbps - speedtest completes - device polls ~10Mbps again?
That little graph is an entire 24h period, 30 seconds' activity is going to be like 1/100th of a pixel wide. Are you simply zoomed out too far?
Purely a guess but,
Is that first graph measuring successive points in time and the sample rate is too slow to catch the speed test? Ie, device polls usage @ ~10Mbps - speedtest runs at 300Mbps - speedtest completes - device polls ~10Mbps again?
That little graph is an entire 24h period, 30 seconds' activity is going to be like 1/100th of a pixel wide. Are you simply zoomed out too far?
It's not picking up the speed tests and looking now the scale of the graph has changed and it's showing a peak of just over 20. So yes, I guess it's not going to pick up very brief periods of fast data (and I guess unless I'm downloading a large file nothing else is going to see a sustained high data rate). But you can see us watching 90 minutes of Apple TV last night at about 8Mbps.
That's only HD and a quick search suggests that their 4K streams can get up to about 40 for short peaks. So 5 people simultaneously watching different 4k streams *might* hit 200Mbps. (I think online gaming might be similar)
4k streaming is going to be about 25kbps, but may well peak up to 40 yes. It's not an exact science.
Online gaming probably isn't going to be a huge load, by design. Online game patching on the other hand is going to be high load for a sustained period.
If (for some reason?) I wanted to stress test the WAN connection in a way which would light up that graph, I'd hard-wire a torrent client or two and start downloading large .ISOs.
Best one I've got & not seen mentioned is a Sensibo.
Basically a network connected IR remote for the aircon so you can turn it on & off from anywhere in the world.
100x easier to program than the Daikin remote & cheaper than getting a unit with it built in at only $80Au.
Basically a network connected IR remote for the aircon so you can turn it on & off from anywhere in the world.
Why would you want to control your aircon from anywhere in the world? You're not there.
4k streaming is going to be about 25kbps, but may well peak up to 40 yes.
To use your own analogy, I think you've swapped elephants for hippos there - don't you mean Mbps?
Having just moved to Fibre from ADSL have to say I'm yet to see a benefit.
Key one for me has been stability, the old copper wire line in would drop out for no obvious reason semi-regularly for a while, then not for ages, then again for a period. Fibre, it's happened once in about 6 months.
My ISP said there was a higher speed rate, but that unless you had a lot of people streaming/gaming, you wouldn't use it so pushed you to the cheaper option. My connection is also now £10 a month less than it was via a BT provision.
To use your own analogy, I think you've swapped elephants for hippos there - don't you mean Mbps?
Oh piss, yes I do. Nice catch, I thought it looked wrong!
Having just moved to Fibre from ADSL have to say I'm yet to see a benefit.
Key one for me has been stability, the old copper wire line in would drop out for no obvious reason semi-regularly for a while, then not for ages, then again for a period. Fibre, it's happened once in about 6 months.
My ISP said there was a higher speed rate, but that unless you had a lot of people streaming/gaming, you wouldn't use it so pushed you to the cheaper option. My connection is also now £10 a month less than it was via a BT provision.
Plus you can (probably) bin the phone line and save whatever line rental is per month these days, £30?
Basically a network connected IR remote for the aircon so you can turn it on & off from anywhere in the world.
Why would you want to control your aircon from anywhere in the world? You're not there.
I can also open my garage door from anywhere in the world, but don't think I'll have to.
Basically a network connected IR remote for the aircon so you can turn it on & off from anywhere in the world.
Why would you want to control your aircon from anywhere in the world? You're not there.
I can also open my garage door from anywhere in the world, but don't think I'll have to.
Probably Wife v1.0 - getting a bit slow and laggy now after 24 years, and recent updates have made it a bit glitchy, but it would cost a fortune to upgrade to v2.0, so I'm sticking with what I know
Flush toilets.
I've never really considered toilets as 'tech' tbh
you should visit Japan 🙂
"Japan has the greatest toilets in the world, but no Mexican food. Why have a Ferrari if you're never going to take it to the track?"
My espresso machine and grinder. I use them every single day when I'm at home and miss them when I'm away. I make better coffee than 90% of cafes I've tried and I love my little morning ritual of prepping and drinking a brew (or two).
"Japan has the greatest toilets in the world, but no Mexican food.
Have you visited Japan in the last 20 years? If you go to any major city, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding a Mexican restaurant.
