More from All the smart home news, reviews, and gadgets you need to know about
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The Bridge Pro is Hue’s most compelling update in years, as long as you’re deeply invested in the smart lighting ecosystem
Its PowerDetect UV Reveal now comes in four colors — brown, green, blue, and ivory. The earthy neutral palettes feature metallic accents and look surprisingly good — for a robot. I’ve been testing the blue one, and I like how it blends in with my kitchen cabinets.
As robot vacuums become more capable, they are also getting bigger, so it’s encouraging to see manufacturers putting more thought into how they fit in with your decor.
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The new feature in Google Home lets you add your pets’ faces to your indoor cameras, so you get alerts that tell you which cat is walking on the counter rather than just that a cat is traversing the kitchen. To enable it, type your pet’s name and species into the Ask Home search box in the Home app; you need Google Home Premium Advanced ($20/month).
The smart lighting company best known for its modular RGB lighting panels has been acquired by OneRobotics, the parent company of Switchbot. According to a filing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, the purchase will take two years to complete.
Nanoleaf just announced a pivot to robotics and AI, an area in which the smart home company Switchbot is heavily involved, launching its first humanoid household robot at CES this year.
It’s combining Google Home APIs with Gemini smart home features, so ISPs, security companies, and carriers can “build monetizable, proactive services” for your homes. In other words, Google wants other companies to put Google Home’s AI in their products — and charge you a Google Home Premium subscription. With manufacturers now able to build Gemini-powered speakers and cameras, it seems entirely possible that Google may never make another Nest device again.
Come join me for a robot vacuum-themed subscriber AMA. Drop your questions in the post linked below, and I’ll be answering them starting at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.
I review robot vacuums for a living, ask me anything!
Its new DIY security system, ADT Blu, revives the Blue by ADT name (the company’s last attempt at an off-the-shelf system) and uses the same hardware as ADT Plus (its self- or pro-installed system). But it’s DIY-only and can be bought on Amazon. The other difference? No Google Nest cameras. The system comes with new ADT cameras. Pricing for ADT Blue starts at $249.
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Today, the company announced that on May 27th, it will reveal when its Cyber X bionic quad-track stair-climbing system will launch and, presumably, how much it will cost. The robot that can transport a robot vacuum up a flight of stairs will arrive alongside three new X60 Pro series robots, the most intriguing of which features Dreame’s first dual-joint bionic robotic arm that can extend a mop pad into tight corners and under furniture.
The right robot for your home has less to do with specs and everything to do with your floors, rugs, clutter, and general tolerance for robot nonsense.
The home security company launched two new products today: the Ring Spotlight Cam (2nd Gen) at $169.99 and the Ring Floodlight Cam (2nd Gen) at $199.99. Both feature Ring’s Retinal 2K video resolution, bringing higher-res support to Ring’s base models.
Increased resolution provides clearer video and better zoom capabilities and feeds richer data into Ring’s AI features, such as Search Party, AI-generated text descriptions, and search history. The cameras will be available on June 3rd.
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CEO Gimmy Chu says the commoditization of smart lighting is behind Nanoleaf’s pivot.
Influencers and vaporware collided with some interesting-looking robot vacuums, a laundry robot, and a rocket at Dreame’s US launch event.
This was one of my favorite gadgets from CES, and Lifx says the $199.99 Matter-enabled LED lighted mirror will ship later this month. I have one to test and will be posting a review soon.
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Lifx launches a smart mirror and a $30 dimmer switch that can control smart bulbs
When Google launched Gemini for Home, it put one key feature behind a paywall. Continued Conversation became available only on Gemini Live, which required Google Home Premium.
Starting today, users in Early Access can once again ask follow-up questions to Google’s voice assistant on their Google Home devices without saying “Hey Google” every time, and without paying. Another bonus is that the feature now works with all supported languages and in all regions.
[Google Nest Community Blog]
The Thread Group has released a new Thread Network Diagnostic app that lets you “explore, monitor, and visualize your Thread network.” It displays network topology, connection status, and device roles to help troubleshoot issues. It’s Android only for now, but an iOS version is in the works.
Thread connectivity problems have been one of Matter’s biggest pain points — most recently with Ikea’s Matter-over-Thread rollout. There are some apps that let you see your network, but a dedicated tool like this could be very useful. I’ll report back after testing it out.
[Google Play Store]
European Mammotion owners took to Reddit to complain that their expensive machines have been offline for three days. Mammotion says a fix is in the works, but hasn’t said what happened. One Redditor claims the outage stems from a bug in the Mammotion Home Assistant integration he had built. We’ve reached out to the company for the full story.