Harmonic Aftershock

5 hot holiday gifts for the connected geek in your life.

There are only 15 shopping days left until Christmas. And those who love connected devices have lots to hope (and rejoice) for. Here are five gift ideas that would make the geek in your life feel very merry.

1. Hue or Wemo
The whole “smarthome” trend is just plain awesome. Wemo offers a suite of devices that can WiFi-enable your outlets and light switches allowing you to remotely control pretty much anything with an on/off switch. Add their motion sensors and HD security cam and your geek will be in smarthome heaven. 

If your geek is feeling a bit more experimental or creative, the Phillips Hue lighting system lets you do all kinds of things with their colorful LED lights.

2. Xbox One
The just launched Xbox One unites your TV, Cable box, and audio receiver into a unified voice-controlled experience. Simply say “Xbox on” and everything turns on through an easy to navigate GUI. Plus the new Kinect sensor is ridiculously better than the first gen one – it can actually “see” in the dark.

3. Pebble or Samsung Galaxy Gear Smartwatch
Your wrist is the new “screen.” If your fellow geek likes to stay connected, Pebble’s latest update integrates with all iOS 7 alerts.

And, of course, Samsung’s incredible advertising for its Galaxy Gear smartwatch speaks directly to us geeks' greatest communications fantasies:

4. Anki Drive
A personal favorite, Anki Drive was first demoed at Apple’s WWDC. It’s an incredible physical + virtual experience. I’ve found that everything “just works” and the app’s user experience is both rewarding and awesomely simple to use. This is a great gift for kids but also adults (I can’t seem to stop playing it). The best part? Patrick Stewart (a.k.a. Captain Picard) is the VO of the tutorial.

5. Google Chromecast
At only $35, Google’s Chromecast is the perfect way to turn your TV into a smart TV, enabling your geek to “flick” her/his favorite Netflix, YouTube, HBO Go, or Hulu Plus videos on to “the big screen.”

Merry nerdy Christmas to all…

My Hue lighting experiment. [UPDATED]

I first learned about Phillips Hue just over a year ago - The idea of WiFi-connected light bulbs quickly caught my eye.

After seeing it in action from a colleague, I decided to dive in and set it up over Thanksgiving break in my living room.

What I like about it:

• Control the lights from anywhere with a smartphone.
• Set different lighting “recipes” to fit any use case/mood.
• Micro-control each individual light bulb.
• Integration with IFTTT turning the lights into alerts.*
• 3^rd party apps (like Hue Disco) listens to music + controls lights.
• Geo-fencing can turn on/off lights based on your (smartphone’s) location.

Room for improvement:

• Use of light switch turns lights on at full brightness.
• Bulbs make a pretty loud buzzing sound when at full brightness.
• The dimmest of settings is still fairly bright light.
• If bulb needs to be replaced, there’s no easy way to unregister it.
• The official app is a bit clunky to use.

If there’s one thing I could change first about the items above, it would be for “the system” to somehow remember the last light setting so that when the light’s are turned on via the wall switch, it maintains state. It’s not yet natural (nor efficient) to walk into a room, grab your smartphone, open the app, and turn on the lights. Besides, any houseguest is going to need to use the wall switch, which means, at the moment, they’d be blasted by very bright white light that makes a buzzing noise (with no way to dim it). 

UPDATE: 12/13
Yesterday I received the following email from a HUE support person who saw this post. He confirmed that the buzzing sound at full brightness is most likely because the lamps are connected to a dimmer switch.

Hi Mike,

 

I just read your Philips Hue review.  If you have any of your lights on a circuit with a dimmer switch, that could create a buzzing sound.  To isolate whether it is the bulb or the circuit, you could try moving the bulb to a stand-alone lamp and observe noise levels.

 

It looks like you purchased the BR30 bulbs.  Some people are complaining about buzzing with these.  I have mostly A19 and BR30 bulbs with no buzzing at all.  You could try to return these to the store and try another Starter Pack.

 

Finally, if you want to try a third-party app for controlling your new setup, please take a look at "Hue Lights" on the App Store:  http://bit.ly/1aroCDC