Today, I have a bit of a different post to share.  A recent Gizmodo article uncovers the volume of data your Smart Home shares with the manufacturers, and calls into question just how useful a Smart Home actually is. So, is our privacy further under attack?

Things change fast with technology.  The last time I looked at using Cortana Voice control with Philips Hue, there was no direct integration.  Thus, I was reliant on a third party app.  Now however, official support is available - thus it's time to take a fresh look.

In this post, I want to share with you my latest attempts at controlling Philips Hue from my Windows PC.  This is a bit of a challenge, as there's no official native app available from Philips.  Instead, I've had to find alternative ways to do this, and today I want to share my latest attempt.

I've been writing and posting videos about my Smart Home project for a while now.  It will be a year in May.  So, it's time to update the 'Plan' page, and share an update on how the project is generally going.

In this post, I want to take you through my experiences of setting up the Samsung Smartthings Hub, using my Android Smartphone.  In the video I'll show you how things went, and below I'll outline a few additional details.  I'll run through how I found the setup process, and what I'm hoping to acheive now that it's complete.

A few of you have asked whether I planned to add a central controller or hub to our Smart Home.  The answer? Yes! Today I get started on that process.  We've chosen to add a Samsung Smartthings hub, and here I begin by taking a look at what that is, and (as you'll see in the video), the unboxing.

Having a Smart Heating system is great.  It controls your energy in better ways, offers greater control, and lets you adjust things like temperature and schedule much more easily.  However the biggest question is - does it save me energy & money?  Here, I explore a little on how you can see where you're saving.

Controlling your smart home is so much easier when it all fades into the background and 'just works'.  Having the ability to use a smart light switch such as the Philips Hue Tap switch makes so much more sense than opening the app every time.  Here, I discuss how this works, and why you should get one too.

Having a video doorbell means not just seeing what's going on when someone rings.  It means you've got a camera at the front of your house that you can use to alert you to activity, and see what's happening.  Here, I run through how we're getting on with our Ring Video Doorbell Pro's Motion Detection feature.

Having smart control over the heating for your home is good. Having control over each individual room is better!  Here, I explore how that works inside the Tado system we're using, and take a look at the control it gives you through the Tado app.