Hasta La Gadget!

Every time I leave home I worry about a multitude of things. If I’m gone for say, a vacation, I worry about the house looking empty to potential thieves. If I’m gone for the day, I wonder about the cat, the temperature and whether or not I left the porch light on, or worse, that I turned it off and won’t be home till after dark. There are probably some things I should look into in order to control my anxiety, but I think I’ll just get an Insteon Hub.

The Insteon Hub allows you to check on, and control your home (from almost anywhere) right from your handy smartphone. So simple, you can install it yourself, Insteon offers a super convenient, and affordable home automation system. Beginning with the Insteon Hub,  you can connect to your home from anywhere in the world using your smartphone or tablet. Insteon gives you control of LED bulbs, wall switches and dimmers, thermostats and  cameras, and Insteon also offers sensors that actually lets your house text or email you messages, like when a water leak is detected, motion is sensed, or doors and windows are opened.

So maybe you would like to turn on your bedside lamp automatically to help wake you up in the morning? or get the heat going before getting going on a frosty morning, maybe you just like to keep tabs on your kids, or pets or have some added security when you’re on vacation. The Insteon Hub may be for you. Insteon solutions have no activation fees, or monthly charges connected to their service, so simply choose the components that work for you, and sit back and relax. Starter kits are available from bestbuy.com and add on’s like LED bulbs, outlets or appliance modules seem to start at around 30 bucks. Maybe now I can stop obsessing? Nah.
[ Insteon Hub – Control Home, with your Phone copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

If you’re tired of your kids ramming their remote control vehicles into the walls in your house, there just might be a fix on the way that doesn’t involve padding your baseboards. A company has implemented emergency braking systems into prototype RC cars to have them automatically stop before they run head-on into a wall.

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Apple’s WWDC 2013 has kicked off, and it’s starting by bringing a startup on-stage that’s half a decade in the making: anki. Based on artificial intelligence and autonomous race-cars, the anki cars hook up to iOS devices via Bluetooth 4.0 low energy, and can automatically stick to a track. anki drive pits numerous cars against

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Sure, I know it’s a little early to be talking about holiday lighting, of course my neighbors have their lights up already, or did they not take them down? Either way they’re six months into looking ridiculously enthusiastic, or horribly lazy… I’m leaning towards the latter, I really never liked them anyway. But they got me thinking about holiday lighting.

I’m excited to add some new tech to my Christmas display this coming holiday season with iGlo LED lights. Offering real time special effects, with the controls right on your iPhone or Kindle Fire, you connect via WIFi to a specially designed LED light strip, which you can manipulate by waving your phone in the air, or utilizing the touch screen in order to “paint” the customized light effects.

This cool light show doesn’t need to be limited to Christmas, since you can change the colors and effects at will, why not do some backlighting, or light your home for birthdays, Halloween, or the Fourth of July. Do some special lighting effects in your car…Heck, with lights like these, you wont be the scourge of the neighborhood if you leave them burning all year, you’ll just appear uber festive.

Originally designed for architectural lighting, the iGlo LED set is fully customizable, comes with hundreds of presets, can be connected to a max of 49 feet per chain, and the associated app can control multiple chains. So turn your deck into a dance floor, or a tent into a color morphing wonderland, or simply put your neighbors white twinkly lights to shame. Buy them for under 300 bucks at amazon.com, but check the video at www.igloledset.com, way before you decide that these not-just-for-Christmas lights are too expensive.
[ iGlo LED Light Set – Year Long Holiday Lighting copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The smartphone-connected home security options keep coming, with the Goji smart lock latest to entice us to upgrade our door furniture and hook it up to the cloud. The Goji looks, at first glance, like the August smart lock announced last week, but Goji manages to squeeze in a digital camera to snap photos of

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