Chrome is constantly eating up at least 2GB of my computer's memory, and that's when I'm not doing anything particularly demanding.

I'm not a huge fan of smart home dashboards; I want my smart home to work as automatically as possible. However, when I had an idea for building a retro game version of my house that I could use to control my smart home, I knew I had to make it happen.

I have a lot of appliance manuals that I've collected over the years. They rarely need looking at, but when they do, finding the right manual can be a chore. I decided to stick NFC tags to my appliances so that I could access their manuals more easily.

Hot on the heels of Apple’s HomeView launch, Amazon has unveiled a massive 16-inch Echo Show and updated the Echo Studio with a built-in camera. Both devices are worth your attention as they aim to make Alexa more useful around the home, whether you want to manage connected gadgets, monitor your living room, or keep your daily schedule organized. The new Echo Studio and Echo Show lean on the latest Alexa with natural conversations and the ability to handle complex, multistep requests.

Motion sensors are popular smart home devices. They're relatively cheap and simple to set up, but often people only use them for basic automations such as turning on the lights when you walk into a room. With the right automations, there's a lot more you can do using motion sensors.

Overpriced home appliances with lackluster smarts are a pet peeve of mine. I’d never upgrade a perfectly functioning fridge or dishwasher just to get access to half-baked smart features, and I’d choose value or performance over features I don’t need, or that might backfire on me down the line.

When smart speakers first burst onto the scene, it felt like this would be the way we would all be controlling our smart homes in the future. That future never really became a reality, as smart speakers haven't really improved much over the years. It's reached the point now where your old phone or a DIY smart speaker can do a better job.

Every time a new Wi-Fi standard comes out, there’s pressure from every side to upgrade. Wi-Fi 8 is on the horizon, and I feel that Wi-Fi 7 has barely had time to settle. But, do you really need to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 or Wi-Fi 8? There’s a good chance your old Wi-Fi router is still perfectly fine.

My smart home has a lot of complicated automations, many of which have their own quirks. When guests visit, they just want to be able to do simple things like turning on the lights, watching TV, or turning up the heating. I decided to turn an old Android phone into a dedicated guest remote that's simple enough for anyone to use.

Smart bulbs are a great addition to your smart home, especially if you’re just starting out. They are easy to install, set up, and control.

Every Android phone can play the role of a mobile hotspot, with most people using it to provide internet to their laptop or another phone, or to a computer that doesn’t have Wi-Fi via USB or Ethernet tethering.

I drew flak for saying the Apple TV 4K fills the shoes of Nvidia's Shield TV, and not without some merit. If you love Android or simply prefer the Shield's flexibility, no amount of apps or hardware brawn will make you switch. It's a good media streaming device—its age and the modern app landscape just work against it.

The number of features packed into Home Assistant is insane. The problem is that there are so many features that it can be easy to overlook some of the best ones. I slept on some of Home Assistant's features for far too long; here are some more of the best features that I wish I'd started using much sooner.

Gemini is Google’s big bet on AI that has made its way into the company’s search, mobile, and smart home offerings. The only issue is that Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that new technologies are supposed to improve the user experience, not make it worse.

I've been having some fun experimenting with Android Auto lately. Recently, I discovered I could set up buttons for specific tasks. I enjoyed the customization, so I decided to try something a bit more ambitious. So I tried building a custom Android Auto dashboard that changes based on where I'm driving. It did not go as planned.

I loved my first Walkman to the point where I used it until it fell apart, but my favorite music player was still my iPod. There was nothing quite like flipping through the albums in the Cover Flow view by spinning my thumb around the click wheel. When I found an old remote that had its own wheel-style input, I wondered if I could bring those days back.

NFC tags are really useful for triggering smart home automations. They're cheap to buy, they don't need batteries or to be connected to power, and you can stick them almost anywhere. I wondered if it would be possible to use my expired credit cards as NFC tags, and it turned out that they can be even more useful than the standard stickers.

Building a smart home can be an expensive business. Some devices, such as cheap Zigbee sensors, can cost just a few bucks, but other devices can run to hundreds of dollars. The good news is that it's often possible to build your own smart home devices, and the total cost can sometimes work out far less than buying a ready-made product.