Scosche Rhythm+ Heat Rate Monitor

When I purchased my Peloton earlier this I got the accessory package that came with, among other things, a chest strap heart rate monitor.  I read some mixed reviews on these Peloton branded heart rate monitors but ordered it anyway and of course I had issues with it.  Sometimes it wouldn't connect, oftentimes it would drop out during a ride and after a month it just stopped connecting to the bike completely.  I called Peloton, who were great, and they sent me out another one but I started having issues with the new one as well after a couple weeks

A heart rate monitor is not an absolute necessity with the Peloton but it gives you better data regarding calories burned, how hard you are working and certain rides require it.  So after a bit of research I decided to give the Scosche Rhythm+ a try.  Many Peloton users seem to love the Scosche Rhythm+ so I pulled the trigger.  I have been using the Rhythm+ for a couple months now and I couldn't be happier.

Pros:

• Stays connected to the bike
• At least as accurate as the Peloton chest strap
• Much more comfortable than a chest strap, no need to moisten the leads
• Easier to put on and remove
• Good Battery life, I am getting about two weeks of almost daily rides
• Seems to be a high quality product

Cons

• Price- a little pricey for what it is  
• Have to connect to an app on your phone to check battery level

Overall there isn't much not to like with the Rhythm+.  It connects every time and is easier to use and much more comfortable than a chest strap.   Just slide it over your wrist and onto your forearm.  It stays in place pretty well, although I do find myself needing to adjust it on longer rides when I am really sweating.   It is pretty expensive but seems to be of high quality so it will probably last a while.  It does go on sale once in a while if you buy directly from the manufacturer but I couldn't wait and picked it up on Amazon.   My only complaint is that there no battery level indicator on the device.  This just means that I need to connect to my phone and open the app to check the battery level.  Not a huge deal but for the price a battery indicator would be nice.  What would be even nicer is if Peloton started shipping the Rhythm+ with the accessory package rather than the crappy chest strap.

Nest Protect - Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector

 

I decided a while back that I was not going to invest in Nest Protect Smoke and Carbon Monoxide detectors for my home.  I have a rather large home with almost 20 smoke or carbon monoxide detectors throughout my home.  Only 5 of those detectors are wired the rest are battery powered so I have been considering replacing the wired detectors.  The price though is still just too high for me for a smoke detector.   

I was hoping that Nest would come out with a 3rd generation of the product with more features but there seems to be no rumors of anything coming soon.  I was on Facebook market place the other day and came across someone local selling a new, still in the box nest protect for $65.  At that price I could try one out and see if the is worth the investment to purchase more.  I was able to negotiate the price down to $60, not a bad deal.

Installation was pretty straight forward as expected.  I did have one issue after installing that the app was reporting that the Protect had no power.  I thought one of the wire nuts may have come off when I shoved the wires into the ceiling but after checking everything was fine.  The small green light was on so that confirmed that the unit was getting power.  I started to get nervous that I got burned buying the protect off Facebook but before I contacted the seller I decide to contact Nest.  So off I went to chat with Nest tech support online chat.  What should have been a simple chat took close to an hour.  I gave support my serial number, they checked in their system.  He wanted me to check that it was getting power with a multi-meter.  He wanted to see what kind of batteries were in the teh system.  I think the issue was that the batteries were not properly seated.  When I took them out and put them back in the "no power" message disappeared.  The may have just jogged loose in transit.  Really this should have been the first thing that support asked.  There was really nothing on the website about reseating batteries if this message occurs.

I decided to replace our upstairs smoke detector with the nest as it is between my kids rooms and the bathroom and I figured the pathlight feature would be good for them. So I have had the protect installed for a couple days now and I would describe the product as underwhelming.    It does look good, I was able to replace an ugly smoke detector and a separate carbon monoxide detector installed a few feet away.  So my ceiling looks a bit cleaner.  The pathlight feature is nice but other than that it doesn't do much.  I feel like for the price it should do more.     

I think there is so much room to pack more features into this product.  Speakers, Digital Assistants, Air quality monitor are just a few examples.  If I can get another one for $60 I will but I don't think I will be paying full price given the current feature set.

Greater Goods Bluetooth Smart Scale

My resolution for this new year was to get healthy.  So I changed my diet and bought a Peloton bike to jumpstart my new healthy lifestyle.  I knew tracking my weight loss would be a huge motivation factor for me to keep going and my old bathroom scale was looking pretty grungy so we decided to look into a smart scale.  

I actually let my wife do the research on this one and I think she picked a winner.  Setup was easy.  Just make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your device, discover the scale and you are done.  A great feature is that both my wife and I can connect the scale to our devices and track our weight separately.  In order to use the smart features, the scale requires you to download a free app called Weight Gurus.  You will need to enter your preferred units, height and goal weight but that is pretty much it for setup.   Once you are ready to track your weight you just open the app and step on the scale and your weight is added.  The app has all kinds of cool charts and graphs.   I calculates your BMI, body fat percentage, muscle mass and water weight.   You can also see your weight loss by week, month or year.

The digital readout on the scale is bright and plenty large enough to see.   I think the scale look pretty cool as well.  Kind of like and Apple product with its rounded edges.  Much nicer than our old scale.   Overall we are very happy with our Greater Goods Bluetooth Digital smart scale.  It keeps me motivated every day to step on it and see where my weight is going.

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.