For the last few months, I’ve had a D-Link DSP-W110 sitting in a drawer. I bought it when it was on sale, and have been meaning to compare it to the TP-Link HS100 smart plugs. Having put up our Christmas tree yesterday, I thought that now was the perfect time to pull it out of the drawer, set it up and tie it in to our “smart home” via the Amazon Echo.
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Over the last couple of years, the entire media landscape has changed. We were quite happy with MythTV, but its pretty limited in its scope, it can only handle TV, Recorded TV, Videos, Music and Pictures that are on its local drives. Now, add in the fact that we’ve had a Roku now for a while, as well as played with the Fire TV stick and set top box, and things get more messy. I’ve been exploring and trying out a bunch of different options, and have started to settle in on one.
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With Jessica not being nearly as mobile any more, we decided it was time to start looking into a little bit of home automation. To start, we decided to just add a couple of controls for our lights. The TP-LINK HS100 WiFi Smart Plug seemed like a good way to get started as TP-LINK makes fairly decent products and they’re significantly less expensive than most of the others. The fact they say it works with the Echo makes it a no-brainer.
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Its no secret that I like Amazon and their services. There are a lot of things they do much better than their competition, but there are also quite a few things that could use some re-thinking.
Continue ReadingLast fall, Amazon introduced its new Kindle Fire lineup, and we very excited by the new Fire HD Kids Edition Tablet for our soon to be 4 year old, Alex. We ordered it immediately and tucked it away for Alex’s birthday in December.
Continue ReadingSo back in December, Amazon was running a promo for Prime members to purchase the new Fire TV Stick for 50% off, making it just about $21 after tax. I couldn’t pass up that offer. After using it for a little while now, I figured I would give a review of it.
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