Peloton Bike

Over the past year I started to notice that some of my clothes were fitting differently. Slowly my pants were getting tighter and I was just not feeling as comfortable.  Bending over was getting harder and I was just not feeling great physically.  Based on my BMI, I was about 25 pounds overweight.  Not a huge amount but I decided that I needed to do something about it for my health.  My plan was to start a diet in the new year and add some cardio as well.

Running is out for me as I have bad knees.  I had a gym membership a while back but I never really committed and went probably twice.  I started looking at ellipticals and other exercise equipment but nothing really got me excited.  Then I came across Peloton and my interest was piqued.  A Peloton is a spinning bike with a large internet connected tablet attached.  You login and can choose between live and on-demand classes.  The usually run 12 or so live classes a day and there are tens of thousands of on-demand classes to cater to your fitness level, musical preference or how long you want to ride.  The real draw though is the community of other riders that motivate you to get on the bike every day.   They have integrated gamification where you earn badges for riding x number of days in a row, your first ten rides, personal records and numerous other milestones.  Sounds great except for one drawback....The bike costs about $2250 and you need to pay $40 additional a month for access to the classes.  That is just a crazy amount of money for an exercise bike so I started researching other solutions.

The new year rolled around and to start my weight loss I made some diet changes.  I stopped drinking soda and eating potato chips, and other snacks.  I stopped snacking at night.  We started adding more vegetables into our meals and less red meat.  As can be expected I slowly started losing weight but I knew I needed to add some kind of a cardio to improve my health.  I kept coming back to the Peloton.  Yes it is expensive, but I think that is part of the motivation to use it,  you spend so much money on something you damn well better get you moneys worth.   I also loved that it is a tech product and I knew I need the convenience of having a bike in my home to use it regularly.  I also knew that the community and gamification of the Peloton was what I needed to stay motivated.  So my wife and I talked it over and I pulled the trigger,   It took a couple weeks for the bike to be delivered and I have had it for over a week now and haven't missed a day of working out yet.

Mt first couple rides were hell.  My butt hurt from the seat and I though I was going to die.   Each ride though has been progressively easier and I am scoring personal output records on every ride.  That is the great thing about the Peloton, everything is data driven so you see you progress and how much better you are doing for each ride.  At this point I am about 12 pounds from my weight loss goal and I have no doubt I will reach it before spring.

 

Along with the cycling classes Peloton also offers classes in stretching, running, walking, yoga meditation and strength training.  I have taken a bunch of the stretching classes and a couple strength training but all are part of the membership.  Last year Peloton also release a treadmill, this is twice as expensive as the bike at $4000.  Not something I am interested in but many runners seem to love it.

When you buy the bike the offer a bunch of different packages that include cycling shoes, bike mat, headphones, weights and a heart rate monitor.  If you are at all interested in purchasing a Peloton do your research but if you use the below referral code you will get $100 off accessories.

MGSWY3

Besides my solar panels this is the most expensive smart home product purchase to date.  I can justify it though as nothing is more important than health.  So if the tech is going to keep getting me on the bike every day then it is worth the price.

Echo Dot

The days of kids having a digital clock radio in their bedroom to use as an alarm clock and listen to their favorite radio station are long gone.  They now apparently have Echo Dots.  As a high school teacher I know than many high school students no longer know how to read an analog clock.  Soon I think the digital clock will be gone as well.   We will just ask our devices what time it is.   Amazon is making it really easy to fill up your house with these Echo devices.  Lowering the price on the 3rd generation Echo dot to $30 for the holidays was a smart move.  I am sure they converted a lot more customers into their ecosystem as well as got many more existing customers to purchase more devices.

Interestingly, this is the first Echo Dot device that I have purchased, I have a 1st generation Echo Show that I am pretty happy with.  The Echo dot had been reviewed ad-nauseum so there is probably not much I can add here.  It looks a lot nicer than the previous generation and the sound output seems pretty good for a device its size.  Won't come close to teh sound of Sonos speakers obviously.  The external speaker jack is interesting and something I may experiment with although I am invested in Sonos speakers so I probably won't go too far down that path.

My only complaint has to do with the echo device integration with Sonos speakers.  Every time you say the wake word to any Echo device all Sonos speakers in my house are muted.   So my daughter was playing a game on her Echo and all of our Sonos speakers that were playing music muted while the was talking to her Echo.  I think it does that so that the Echo devices can hear more clearly but it really causes an seemingly unnecessary interruption.  Something I may have to look into a workaround for.

WIFI Smart Plug

 

I think every smart home enthusiast has dreams of a home where every light, appliance or fixture is somehow connected to the internet and can be turned on or off with the swipe of a finger on a smart phone or a wake word on a digital assistant.  The reality is, for most of us, it is still way too expensive to retrofit our homes with all of the tech.  The other issue is this technology is in its infancy so 5 years from now there will be new and better products so too big of an investment early may not be too smart.

There are ways to accomplish this dream.  We have smart bulbs, but at $10 a bulb minimum it can still get pretty pricey to outfit a whole house.  I have at least 120 light bulbs in my home not including outside lights and can lights.  By replacing all of them I would not gain any cost savings and the convenience gain is not worth the money for me.   The next logical step would be smart plug.  These smart outlets plug into your wall outlet and can be controlled by an app, a timer or a digital assistant.  You could also plug a power strip into the smart plug and control a group of appliances.  But again, to outfit a whole house with these to me is not cost effective given the price of around $20 per plug.

I have always been intrigued by these smart plugs but never had an obvious use case for just one of them so I held off on purchasing any.  Then my electric utility had one of their promotions where I could purchase 10 60 watt equivalent LED bulbs and get a free Linksio Smart Plug.  So I pulled the trigger.  I have never heard of the company Linksio and they don't even sell their products on Amazon but the product seems to be identical to many of the smart plugs from WEMO, Amazon and other manufacturers, and the price was right.  Most of these smart plugs work with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and IFTTT.

After setting up my smart plug I was able to synch it with Alexa so I can ask her to turn on/off the plug which was pretty cool but I was still at a loss of where to use the plug.  I plugged my home entertainment center power strip into it thinking I would use the smart switch to turn off all of my electronics components and save some money on the phantom power usage but soon realized that my cable box has a five minute power on boot so that wouldn't work for my family.   So my smart plug stayed on until the holidays when I finally had a use case.  My Christmas tree, in order to turn off the lights I need to bend down and crawl under the tree to unplug it.  Now all I have to say is Alexa, turn on/off the Christmas tree.   Is that worth $20?  Maybe, for the cool factor and impressing friends.

The one other useful feature that many of these smart plugs offer is energy monitoring.   So whatever is plugged into the smart outlet can be monitored and you can see how many watts it is using in real time and by month and year. So I can see my Christmas tree lights are using 19.8 watts and my home entertainment components were using over 100 watts.  I probably won't be purchasing any more smart plugs anytime soon but it will be useful around the holidays and if I ever need to determine how much electricity an appliance is using I am set.

FEIT Smart WIFI Color bulb

I have been wanting to add some color smart lights to my home for the past couple years but I just can't justify the cost that some of the major manufacturers are charging for their bulbs.  Both Philips Hue and LIFX are upwards of $40 per bulb and with Philips Hue you also need to buy a hub.  I have well over 100 bulbs in my house which I recently upgraded to LED so the cost to replace them all would be astronomical.  So I decided to wait until the price comes down or until I find a real use case for the bulbs.  Then last month my electric utility, National Grid has a promotion where if I bought 8 led bulbs from them for $10, I would also get a FEIT Electric Smart WIFI color bulb.  This was a no brainer for me, I bought 2 of the promotional packages and got 16 regular LEDs and 2 color smart bulbs for $20!!  You can purchase one FEIT Smart WIFI color bulb on Amazon for under $20 which is half the price of the other color smart bulb manufacturers.

      

For basically free color smart lights I did not expect these light to have the functionality of Hue or LIFX but I have to say I am pretty impressed with these lights.   The lights are very bright and the colors are pretty close to what I would expect of reds greens and blues.  On the non color settings you change the temperature from warn to cool and they are dimmable as well.

The FEIT Electric app is just ok.  Again, I wasn't expecting much for the price of the bulbs but the basic functionality is there.  You can group the lights, change colors, temperature or dim the lights.  There is a basic on/off timer but unfortunately no dusk/dawn timer so if you plan to use them as outdoor lighting you will have to change the timer every few months to keep up with the changing sunset/sunrise.  I couldn't find any information from the manufacturer about using these bulbs outside but their Amazon page says they are damp rated and can be used in enclosed fixtures.

 I have both of my bulbs installed in outdoor covered fixtures.  I decided to use them as Christmas lights so one is red and one is green.  I truly expected them to die in a couple days outside in our cold New England climate but they have been faithfully been turning on and off using the timer for a couple weeks now.  I will probably switch them back to regular white lights after the holiday.

Setup was fairly straightforward.  Install the app, register and then discover the lights.  I had to go through discovery process twice with each light but eventually it worked for me.  I do consider myself to be pretty technically savvy and I don't mind tinkering with tech As I mentioned earlier the app has very basic functionality.  No synching with music or scenes like the other expensive manufacturers.  Also it does not work with IFTTT so no getting the bulbs to work with other smart devices, kind of a disappointment as this would add to the functionality, maybe sometime in the future.  My only other hope would be that they will add a dusk/dawn timer as that seems like it would be a pretty simple software update.

They also work with Amazon Alexa and Google assistant.  I have only tried using Alexa but it seems to work just fine.  Just tell Alexa to turn the lights on or off or to change the color and she does it.  My eleven year old daughter has already asked for one of these bulbs for her room and for under $20 I just may purchase a couple for her and my son's rooms.   Overall great smart color WIFI lights for the price.

Dyson V8 Absolute Cordless Vacuum

Not sure if this really qualifies as a smart product but it is definitely high tech and the time it saves me makes it smart for me.   I have owned a Dyson DC14 corded vacuum for the past 10 years and I love it.  Cleans great and is easy to maintain.  But with a large, almost 5,000 square foot house the cord is really a hassle not to mention lugging the heavy DC14 up and down the stairs.  So we decided to treat ourselves this past holiday to a new Dyson cordless vacuum.

Dyson has been making the cordless vacuum for quite a few years now and really seem to have figured the technology out.   They recently announced that they will no longer be making the corded vacuums as the cordless models produce the same suction power.  Models offered range from the original V6 to the latest model, the V10.   Each progressive model offers better suction and battery life but obviously get more expensive.  At this time the V6 can be purchased for around $160 and the top of the line V10 will set you back about $550 on sale. Within each model line they over sub lines with different attachments.  The basic sub line is the motorhead the has just one motorized cleaning head.   The next line up is the Animal which has a more powerful torque drive cleaning head for removing pet hair from carpets and furniture.   The top of the line Absolute model line includes a motorized cleaning head for carpets as well as a fluffy head for cleaning hard wood floors.  It also includes a mini cleaning head and various other attachments for crevices, curtains and pretty much anything you need to clean.

Having a home that is all hardwood and a few area rugs I knew I needed the Absolute model so my only decision was V6, V7, V8 or V10.  With a larger house longer battery life is important so I know I needed a later model so my decision was ultimately between the V8 and V10.  A read lots of reviews and both models were reviewed well so ultimately it came down to price and functionality.  One thing I didn't like about the V10 is you have to remove the extension tube in order to empty the dust bin and the V8 was about $150 cheaper so V8 it was.  I have been using the product for over a month now and and am pretty satisfied with my V8 Absolute.

Battery Life

One thing I was a bit concerned about was battery life and would I be able to clean the whole house on a charge.   I am happy to report that I can clean the whole house with charge to spare.  I use the low power mode which seems plenty powerful.  The full power mode is only needed when there is a really dirty spot.  It has been really useful getting the Christmas tree needles out of the carpet.

Usability

The cordless vacuum has made cleaning so much easier, I am finding myself cleaning more often as it is so easy to just grab the V8, pop on the proper head and clean the mess.  Vacuuming stairs is so much easier than my old DC14, I don't have to worry about the extension tube damaging walls.  The fluffy floor motorized cleaner is great for my hardwoods.  Every once in a while a small rock would get stuck under the wheels of my old Dyson and would cause scratches in my floor.   This has not happened with my V8.  Anther great benefit of my V8 is the ease of vacuuming under furniture and beds.  I don't think I had cleaned under my bed since I moved into my house three years ago.

Cleaning

It goes without saying that the fluffy head does a great job on hardwood floors which I have throughout my home.  The few area rugs I have seem to get at least as clean as my old corded Dyson and that is on the low setting.  I have not used all of the attachments yet but cleaning stairs is so much easier and I am saving a lot of time.  The V8  really makes vacuuming fun.

Setup

Once concern I had about a cordless vacuum was where to store it.   My wife wanted it somewhere out of the way where it could not be seen.  So the dining room and family room were out,  Our closets don't have any outlets so I was left with the mudroom.   Perfect place for a vacuum.  We have it out of the way in a corner near the washer and dryer.   Installing it was simple.  Dyson  provides all the hardware, just install the drywall anchors, screw it in, let it charge for a couple hours and you are off to the races.

My complaints

I don't have a whole lot to complain about the V8.  The dustbin is way smaller than my corded Dyson so that means emptying the bin a lot more frequently.  Usually a couple times if I am cleaning the whole house.  My only other complaint is the V8 does not seem as solid as my old corded Dyson.  Not that it seems cheap but there just seems to be a bit of play after connecting the parts together,  I think it is by design but was not something I was expecting.

Overall

Overall I am very happy with my Dyson V8 Absolute.   It is saving me lots of time and getting my house cleaner than it ever was.  No more worrying about the cord not reaching places or having to carry a heavy vacuum up and down the stairs.   Can't really beat the Dyson V8 Absolute for the price and functionality.

Arlo Doorbell and Chime

Nest and Ring both have doorbells in their smart product lines so I have been anxiously waiting for Arlo to release a doorbell as well.  Arlo took a different path with their version of the smart doorbell releasing an audio doorbell rather than a video doorbell.  There was a bit of angst in some of the online communities regarding Arlo's decision to release an audio doorbell rather than a video doorbell, but I like the idea.   First, already have Arlo cameras at my doors so I don't really need a video doorbell, it would be redundant.  Second, by releasing a audio only product they are able to keep teh price down, although it is still a pretty pricey product.  Ultimately I think Arlo is aiming this product at existing Arlo customers like me.   I ended up purchasing two doorbells and the chime.

Features:

• Mobile notifications - When someone rings your doorbell, the doorbell calls your phone which activates the Arlo app and you can see who is there and speak to them.
• Messaging- If you are not available, the visitor can leave a message that is saved to the cloud
• The doorbell works with exiting chimes or you can purchase a smart chime from Arlo
• Cloud storage - you get 7 days of free cloud storage for messaging
• Long battery life - Arlo claims the included AA batteries will last a year
• Motion detection - The doorbell works with your existing cameras to detect motion
• Silent Mode - You can silence the chime at night when the kids are sleeping
• Alexa Integration - Alexa Devices will notify you when someone rings the doorbell.  Kind of defeats the purpose of the Arlo chime, wish I would have known this before I bought the Arlo Chime.

Installation:

Installation was pretty straight forward.  I did have an issue getting the app to recognize the doorbell initially but it worked on the third or so try.   Once the doorbell is recognized, you select which camera you would like to pair it with and then screw it into the wall.  I bought the Chime accessory so I cannot comment on how well it works with existing chimes but that part seems easy enough to set up if you need to.

First impressions:

I purchased my two Arlo doorbells and a chime to replace an existing dumb wireless doorbell system that I think I paid $20 for.  The two Arlo doorbells and the chime cost me over $200 so it is a pretty expensive product.  The functionality it gives me over the dumb doorbell probably isn't worth the price but I enjoy trying new smart products so I was willing to pay up.  The one nice piece of functionality is I can assign a different chime to my front and side doors so I know which door a visitor is at if I am home.  It also has a nice led ring that lights up when it detects motion so a visitor can see the doorbell at night.

Issues:

The doorbell button itself does not give the user any feedback, when you press the button there is no click or much movement at all so the visitor may not know whether they pressed the doorbell or not.  Of bigger concern is battery life.  Arlo claims a one year battery life but after having my two Arlo doorbells installed for just two weeks one is at 92% and the other 83%.  At this rate neither will last a year.  Definitely something to keep an eye on, if the batteries need to be replaced a few times a year this may become an expensive product and not at all what I was expecting.

Overall:

If you are an Arlo camera owner and are looking to enhance the functionality of an exiting doorbell you may want to look into the Arlo Doorbell.  It is pretty expensive for the functionality it provides but for a tech geek like me it is just another fun toy for my smart home.  It also looks much nicer than my existing $20 dumb wireless doorbell.  This is evidenced by the trick or treaters at my door on Halloween that I caught on camera commenting that it was the nicest doorbell that they have ever seen.

1/27/2018 - Update

So after having the doorbells and chime installed I wanted to give a couple of updates.  The issue with the doorbell not giving any tactile feedback has sort of been fixed.   The doorbell now plays a chime when pressed, there is a little delay but it is better than nothing.  I would still prefer some movement in the button.

My big issue with the doorbells is battery life.  I have two doorbells installed, side door and front door.  I get very little activity at my front door and much more activity at the side door.  The issue I think is that every time activity is detected the LED is activated which kills the battery over time.  These doorbells were installed in late October and I had to replace the batteries in both doorbells this month (January) so just about 3 months of battery life.   Well short of the 12 months that Arlo claims. I think part of the issue may be the cold weather we had the week before that batteries died.  Living in New England cold temperatures are pretty common so I think the sub zero temperatures may have killed the batteries.   Someone suggested Lithium Ion batteries as they do better with cold but of course are much more expensive.   Others on the Arlo community forums have posted similar issues with the batteries dying quickly.

First Alert Onelink Safe & Sound Smart Smoke + Carbon Monoxide Alarm

This is the killer smart home product that I have been hoping for Nest to release for the past couple years.  I love Nest products, I have a couple of their thermostats and have been lusting after their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.  For $119 though they are just too pricey for just a smoke and carbon monoxide detector.  I have almost 20 smoke and/or carbon monoxide detectors in my home so replacing them all would not make economic sense.  I would have considered replacing a couple if they packed a couple for features into the product.

Now First Alert is releasing a smoke and carbon monoxide detector with a high quality speaker and Alexa built in.  The product is set to be released May 1, 2018, I can't wait to read the reviews and hear about the quality of the speaker.  Unfortunately it is pricey at $250.  To me, if the speaker has high quality sound it is worth it.  You are getting an Alexa device, a wireless speaker, a night light, a smoke detector and a carbon monoxide detector.

As good as it sounds I still have some questions and see some potential issues:

• If you have already bought into the Google or Apple smart speaker eco-system having an Alexa device may not work.  No word on whether they will release Apple home kit or Google versions of the product.  I am guessing Nest is probably working on something similar for their next version of Nest Protect.
•  My assumption is the product needs to be hard wired.  Which means you can't just swap out your battery powered  smoke detectors without some major electrical work.
• Will it interconnect with other smoke detectors n the home.  The fire code in my town requires smoke detectors to be interconnected, so if one goes off they al go off.  Does it support the interconnect wire or does it interconnect wirelessly like Nest Protect.
• It has a battery backup but I assume that only powers the smoke and carbon monoxide detector in a power outage
• Most smoke detectors have a 10 year expiration date.  Do I need to throw away my $250 smart speaker when the smoke detector expires.
• The App.  Sometimes non tech companies do not produce quality phone apps.  This is a wait and see, hopefully they put some resourced into developing a quality app.

I think this is a really cool product that I would consider purchasing.  Yes it is pricey, but could be worth it considering all of the functionality they are packing into the device.