Pocketnow Smart Home: automation with rules and scenes

Posted on by Joe Levi

In recent years, our phones have evolved into the “universal remote control” – not for our televisions, but for our homes. That’s where the Pocketnow Smart Home series comes in! Thanks to a combination of sensors and Internet of Things innovations, taking your old-fashioned home and turning it into a smart home isn’t as difficult, or as expensive as you might think – and it’s all controllable from your phone, phablet, or tablet.•If you’ve been following our smart home series, we laid its ...

Continue reading »

The post Pocketnow Smart Home: automation with rules and scenes appeared first on Pocketnow.

Pocketnow Smart Home: adding sensors and devices

Posted on by Joe Levi

In recent years, our smart phones have evolved into the “universal remote control” – not for our televisions, but for our homes. That’s where the Pocketnow Smart Home series comes in! Thanks to a combination of sensors and Internet of Things innovations, taking your old-fashioned home and turning it into a smart home isn’t as difficult, or as expensive as you might think – and it’s all controllable from your phone, phablet, or tablet.•So far in the series we’ve already covered the ...

Continue reading »

The post Pocketnow Smart Home: adding sensors and devices appeared first on Pocketnow.

Pocketnow Smarthome: it starts with the hub

Posted on by Joe Levi

When Pocketnow began bringing you news, reviews, and editorials over a decade ago, the industry was pretty limited in its product offerings. PDAs and smartphones, and other gadgets you could fit in your pocket were our primary focus. Since then we’ve covered accessories and the wireless networks that empower them, and have branched out into wearables and even fitness devices.Over the years, the role smartphones play in our everyday lives has changed – significantly. In fact, studies have ...

Continue reading »

The post Pocketnow Smarthome: it starts with the hub appeared first on Pocketnow.

The future of Bluetooth: what to expect and why you should care

Posted on by Joe Levi

Back in 1994, Ericsson (who would later merge with Sony) “invented” Bluetooth. Back then out devices were connected by one of a few technologies: RS-232 “COM Ports”, Parallel Ports, and SCSI. USB was still being worked on. Ericsson’s vision was to replace the serial RS-232 cables with a new, wireless standard. Bluetooth was born.Uhura knew about Jawbone before Jawbone knew about Jawbone.Bluetooth is a wireless communication standard using the 2.4GHz band (which ...

Continue reading »

The post The future of Bluetooth: what to expect and why you should care appeared first on Pocketnow.

My new house is going to be intelligent, and controllable from my smartphone

Posted on by Joe Levi

We have smart phones. We have smart cars. Some of us even have smart homes – but the smart homes of yesterday usually have to be professionally wired and programmed. Thanks to modern technology, the capabilities of smart homes are changing, and the interoperability of devices with each other, and controllability from our smartphones and tablets is finally within reach of the average person.Unfortunately, all these different components that go into a smart home are fairly disconnected from each other. We rely on services like IF (formerly IFTTT) and apps like Tasker to build recipes ...

Continue reading »

The post My new house is going to be intelligent, and controllable from my smartphone appeared first on Pocketnow.