Do You Need a Hub For Smart Lighting?

Updated on 18th Dec 2020 14:39 in General, Smart

When it comes to smart lighting, many will often wonder if a hub is required. The short answer? No. It would be nice if that was all there was to it, but as usual, there are many different nuances that could affect the answer for you. We're going to see how hubless bulbs work and why it's almost always better to use a local hub.

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Stop Worrying About Smart Home Power Outages With a UPS

Updated on 10th Dec 2020 20:56 in General, Smart

There is no doubt that everyone has experienced some sort of power failure in their lifetime. While power providers have been getting better at maintaining a constant service, situations do arise where it will be interrupted. Sometimes accidents happen and the power will be turned off for safety and other times severe storms can damage infrastructure. Regardless of the reason, the impact is always the same: you lose power to your smart home. Depending on your setup, this can be a big problem. Let's see how we can fix that.

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The ESP Is Better Than The Arduino For Smart Home DIY

Updated on 8th Dec 2020 16:43 in DIY, IoT, Smart

When we are building smart devices ourselves, either to reduce cost or to customize the installation, there are a lot of choices to be made in terms of which components should be used. The most important component to projects in the smart home industry is arguably the microcontroller, which is responsible for keeping everything moving along smoothly. Many will immediately think of board such as the Arduino, while others might be thinking of the ESP8266 or ESP32. Which board should you use to build your DIY project?

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Hub-Based Smart Bulbs Are Better And This Is Why

Updated on 5th Dec 2020 23:22 in General, Smart

Smart bulbs come in all shapes and sizes, with one of those being with a hub or without. The distinction is a bit more particular here when compared to any other smart device since many manufacturers use a proprietary protocol. That means that anyone looking to use their smart bulbs will need to continue buying products from the same vendor. Despite that, there are many advantages to using a smart bulb hub, and we will quickly see why they can be superior to their hubless counterparts.

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4 Simple Ways to Setup Smart Home Presence Detection

Updated on 3rd Dec 2020 16:18 in General, Home Assistant, Smart

Smart homes have many various features that work together to create a better living experience. Wouldn't it be amazing if your home could greet you as you arrived with any action you desired? This is possible with presence detection, which helps identify who is home and who isn't. What actually is presence detection? How does it work? Why is it important? How can it be used? These are all questions we will answer in this post.

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