Ring Doorbell - 4 stars

The Ring Doorbell is a wireless video camera and doorbell with mobile app. You simply replace your exiting doorbell and it even uses the same wiring (assuming you have 10VA wiring like most homes do).

Before the Ring I had the Doorbot, which was OK (made by the same company). Video quality was meh and it was a bit buggy. So I never wanted to review it. However, a few months back it was replaced with the Ring Doorbell.

If you have a doorbell transformer that looks like this:

You are in luck. I never really knew what this odd shaped gizmo is, but basically it connects to your home 120V AC power and converts that to low power for a doorbell chime.

The Ring doorbell has an internal battery that this low voltage power will keep charged. You can use it without hard wiring, but you will need to keep the doorbell charged every so often.

If you do not have a wired doorbell, there is a wireless solution too.

Once you install the Ring, you get the following features:

• Motion at the door sends your phone an alert (you can customize the distance and sensitivity)
• Rings of the doorbell chime your internal door bell and your mobile phone
• You can see and talk to people at the door
• You can optionally add cloud recording and see any previous motion activity or ring activity at the door

I find this product very useful to know when packages are delivered, and also when people are poking around my house (which happens more often then you might imagine).

My only real complaint with the Ring is that unlike Dropcam, you can not set up geofencing rules to disable motion sensing which I have found to be rather sensitive and bothersome when I am home.

Install is super quick and the product is high quality. It’s a really awesome home addition.

★★★★☆ Great. Worth purchasing.

ecobee3 is an Amazing Thermostat - 5 stars

I’ve had a Nest since August 2012. It was an exciting first few years. Since installing my Nest I’ve saved about 30% on my electrical and heating bills. How? Well the Nest is just a smarter way of heating and cooling. Not to mention it's simple to use and program, especially compared to the horrible thermostat my house came with. Nest was also my first “Internet of Things” device. Since then I’ve gotten Smart Locks, Dropcams and Nest Smoke Detectors. My house is getting smarter.

I’m not going to go into to much detail about why Nest is awesome, but I’ll highlight a few:

• When I tell the Nest, I want it to be 72 degrees at 7pm for bedtime, the Nest knows how long it will take to cool my house, and comes on at the right time to ensure it’s 72 at 7pm
• When I go on vacation, I can turn on my Nest before boarding the flight home and ensure the house is cozy when we arrive.
• I can tell the Nest, run my fan for 30min every hour on a schedule. This actually is the biggest money saver as what does is even out the temperature in my 3 story house. Cool air in the basement gets recirculated to the top floor. Honestly, this is the best feature.
• Nest sends an email 1x a month telling you what your energy usage was
• You can see what your last 7 days of cycle time was
• Mobile App, blah blah

However, like all technology, things are supposed to keep getting better.

Unfortunately for all of us, Google purchased Nest a few years back, and then Dropcam and as far as I can tell, they are both dead. Little to no innovation any more.

There are some critical gaps in the Nest thermostat. For one thing, if you live in a house with a single furnace/AC and you have > 2 floors, you have to deal with the reality that each floor will have a different temperature and the location of the thermostat is the only place you are going to experience the set temperature.

This is annoying. If I were building my house, I might have put in different zones or even 2 separate systems. But retrofitting my house is not an option. So I need some kind of remote sensor system. Alas, Nest does not offer such a system, even though the 3 Nest Smoke Detectors I have are recording temp.

So, the other day I was in the Apple Store and was looking at their very curated set of Internet of Things and noticed the ecobee3. It looked cute, simple, clean. I had never heard of it. It was priced pretty well ($249) and I noticed it had a remote sensor. In fact, you can purchase more remote sensors too.

I walked out to have lunch and while eating read some reviews of the ecobee3. It only took me 5 minutes to decide to go back into the Apple Store and walk out with the ecobee3. I was excited.

When I got home, it took me 10 min to replace the Nest with the ecobee3.

I LOVE THE ECOBEE. I can’t express how much more improved it is over the Nest. It’s what Nest might have been if Google didn’t purchase them and they had 3 years of innovation.

Just take a look at this web dashboard:

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Why is ecobee3 so great?

Remote Sensor As I mentioned. The ecobee3 came with a tiny little remote sensor that runs off a car key battery. Once I paired it I placed it in my bedroom. And you know what? For the past 3 nights, and for the first time we’ve lived in our house, we’ve been going to bed at a very comfortable 73 degrees.

The only reason we have AC in our house is because 1) it’s brand new, and so it’s very tight given new construction codes, and it’s 3 stories (stack effect) and it gets really hot even if the outdoor temp is > 72).

So we just care about going to bed at room temp, and for years the Nest hasn’t done a good job. I would have to muck with the temp downstairs and the vents to some how get the upstairs cool enough. Problem no more!

In the above photo you can see how the remote sensors work and how the average temp is calculated.

Analytics The ecobee3 has real time analytics. It’s amazing. You can see in real time exactly how your cooling and heating is behaving, overlaid with the outdoor temp and humidity. I love info like this.

Just look at this data. You can also export to Excel.

As you can see, the ecobee nailed it. The cooling came on at around 2pm and hit the 73 degrees shortly after 7:00pm

I expect that over time, as the ecobee gets to know my home better, it will get more accurate. It’s still in learning mode.

You can also see how the fan is cycling on/off as well as cooling.

Below you can see my runtime for the past few days based on weather.

Scheduling Unlike the Nest, the ecobee3 has 3 “comfort modes”.

• Home - when you are home during the day
• Sleep - when you are sleeping
• Away - when you are not in the house

This is nice in that you can specific the different temp during these times and then specify the start and end time for each settings.

You can also create your own. I created “Bedtime” which starts at 7pm and goes till 11:30pm when “Sleep” starts. This ensures that when the kids go to bed, the house is cool.

So it looks like this:

• Home - 76 degrees (cool)
• Bedtime - 73 degrees (cool)
• Sleep - 74 degrees (cool)
• Away - 80 degrees (cool)

Vacations Unlike the Nest, you can schedule vacations. This means that you can punch in your start and end time for vacation and ecobee3 automatically takes care of things. Way easier then Nest where I would often set the thermostat to “Home” from “Away” when getting on the plane, but the Nest would set the thermostat back to “Auto Away” because there was no detected activity in the house. Very annoying. ecobee3 is smarter.

You can schedule as many vacations as you wish.

Smarts The ecobee3 seems a lot smarter and more customizable. It has similar features to the Nest, it has Smart Recovery which starts the heating or cooling a head of schedule to reach your desired temp. It also keeps the fan running 30 seconds after the furnace of compressor has run to make sure any col or warm air is pumped into your house (Cool Dissipation Time and Heat Dissipation Time). This saves some money.

Follow Me / Smart Home/Away The ecobee3 has some really interesting features with the sensors. You can obviously control your away / presence to override schedules (when you are not Home, ecobee goes from Home -> Away).

Follow Me is neat in that it uses your presence in a room/sensor to make that thermostat primary. I don’t have use for this. I’ve made my upstairs bedroom thermostat primary since it’s on the 3rd floor and our bedroom comfort is most important to us in the evening.

Mobile Apps / Apple Watch ecobee has an awesome iOS app and Apple Watch support to boot!

API As you’d expect, Ecobee has an API and IFTTT support. Support ecobee3 has awesome support. I’ve called them, and they answer the phone. I’ve emailed them to ask questions and they’ve answered within an hour.

Advanced Features There are many. Check out the excellent manual. One feature I am looking forward to is hooking up my mechanical ventilator to ecobee. Why? Well if I do this and the outdoor temperature is < my indoor temp ecobee has a feature called “free cooling” which sound amazeballs.

In Seattle it’s almost always < 68 deg in the evening so may as well just take advantage of that. Should not be too hard. I just need to figure out the wiring.

Summary I LOVE THIS PRODUCT. I’d give them 6 stars if there was such a thing.

If you have a Nest, consider ecobee3. If you never got a Nest, get an ecobee3.

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

Beyond Coastal Active Sunscreen - 5 stars

It's almost summer! Well at least in Seattle it is. So I thought I'd write about my thoughts on Sunscreen. When we had our first child, we started hearing about how terrible and horrible all the sunscreen products are for children. We turned to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) which publishes a lot of amazing information on Sunscreen and other cosmetic products. I recommend checking out their website and all their resources.

There are two kinds of sunscreens in the world. Natural (mineral based) and Chemical. Both can be bad for you. So you are picking from the lesser of two evils. In Europe they have a larger diversity of chemical options, some of which are less toxic than the limited options we have in the US.

Here is what the EWG has to say about Chemical sunscreen in the US

The most problematic of the sunscreen chemicals used in the U.S. is oxybenzone, found in nearly every chemical sunscreen. EWG recommends that consumers avoid this chemical because it can penetrate the skin, cause allergic skin reactions and may disrupt hormones (Calafat 2008, Rodriguez 2006, Krause 2012). Preliminary investigations of human populations suggest a link between higher concentrations of oxybenzone and its metabolites in the body and increased risk of endometriosis and lower birthweight in daughters (Kunisue 2012, Wolff 2008).

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has detected oxybenzone in more than 96 percent of the American population, based on a representative sampling of more than 2,500 children and adults (Calafat 2008). Researchers found higher concentrations of oxybenzone in samples collected from participants during the summer months, and concluded that sunscreen use may explain this seasonal difference.

So basically, stay away from oxybenzone.

Natural sunscreens, which are mineral based, contain products, namely titanium-dioxide and zinc, which don't get absorbed into the body and block the sun. Unfortunately, they are white, and make you look whiter. And some companies use "nano particles" to deal with the "white" problem which shrinks these minerals so they disappear. However, that means they get absorbed! You can't win! Some companies are experimenting with tinting sunscreen to deal with the white color. This seems to be a good approach and I'm surprised more companies don't do this.

Lora and I used mineral sunscreen for a few years. We tried every brand. My verdict? They STINK. Here are my realizations with mineral sunscreen:

1. It makes you look like a Ghost. Fine, no biggie. I don't really care if my kids look like Ghosts, as long as they are not being poisoned.
2. Some of them don't work very well. Our kids have gotten burned a few times with various brands.
3. That white gunk gets on all sorts of things and never comes off. It stains clothing, black car trim, and is pretty greasy
4. Taking a shower after applying this stuff doesn't really remove it. You are left feeling nasty
5. For children, the products don't do a great job if you are swimming a lot

So, imagine my joy when I found a chemical sunscreen that EWG rated as a "2", which is on par with many of the natural sunscreens!

Beyond Coastal Active Sunscreen SPF 34 is our new go to Sunscreen. We've been using it for 2 years for the whole family. It works really well, does not stain, does a great job protecting, and has none of the issues with mineral sunscreen. It is Oxybenzone Free, Paraben Free

You can get the Sunscreen from Amazon in 2.5oz (great for carry on) and 4oz sizes. Amazon's pricing tends to vary from $12 - $20 a tube depending on who the seller is, so I usually get 2-3 when I order.

They also make a great face stick which is good for kids.

We love this stuff. 5 stars!

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

Dyson Cordless Vacuum Cleaners - 5 stars

Since I can remember I grew up with a DustBuster in the house. The noise of my mother going around the house with her DustBuster picking up after my sister and me is seared into my brain. As is the sound of the pathetic battery dying in less than a minute. When I went out on my own, and had my first apartment, a DustBuster is one of the first things I purchased. But the suction and battery life of these things has always been poor.

Here she is, circa 1980.

When we purchased our first apartment together, my wife and I splurged on a Dyson Vacuum (the original Dyson Ball). We’ve had it for 10 years now and it’s still as good as the day we got it.

When we moved into our current house and had our son, we had more crumbs and such to pick up every day. Our Dyson Vacuum is too bulky to cary around the house and un-coil for a quick job. I did some research and settled on one of the new Dyson Cordless Stick Vacuums. There are a number of models.

• Dyson DC 59 - New motor / suction design and power brush. This is the top of the line model. You can save a few bucks by skipping the motor head and getting the DC 59 Animal
• Dyson DC 44 - larger battery than the 35
• Dyson DC 35 - the original, I’d skip this one

There are also “Animal” designations like the other Dysons. All this means is that they include additional attachments like a mini motorized brush head to clean pet hair and the like.

A little known secret is that Amazon sells refurbished models for a substantial discount. Dyson DC44 (Refurbished) is $229 (vs $399 from Dyson). Another pro tip is that your Bed Bath & Beyond 20% off coupon is a good way to get a steep discount on a Dyson.

The only thing they really change over the years is the battery capacity and recently they redesigned it to improve the motor / suction.

The refurbished designation means that you may get a unit that appears to be completely brand new. And you may get a model that is used, where some set of parts have been replaced. In our experience, we once got a brand new unit, and once got one that looked like it had been used (canister was cloudy). I don’t care much, but if the price difference is small, you may want to just spring for a new one.

Over the years we’ve purchased two of these units so we can have one in our kitchen and upstairs in our home. We use them a few times a week. I’ve never used one to the point where the battery was depleted. Each one runs for at least 15 minutes of Vacuuming. Pretty impressive. They have the same suction qualities of the big Dyson, they are just smaller. And they have attachments that allow them to be used in many different situations.

I love the integrated wall stand and charger. We have both of ours attached to the wall above power outlets. The attachments also attach to the wall making for a nice and tidy setup.

We love our Dyson cordless vacuum. It’s a snap to clean up, the filter lasts forever, and like all Dyson products it excels in form and function.

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

August Smart Lock - 3 stars

The idea of the automated home has been around for a while now. However, it's our mobile phones, and the advent of Bluetooth 4 Low Energy (LE) and geofencing that has unlocked the potential for this to become mainstream. In my last post on the Tile, I should have mentioned that this uses Bluetooth LE to do its magic.

Besides finding things, why  not automatically unlock your doors when you arrive at home? There are a number of products on the market today that do this sort of magic. The most popular and mainstream are probably the Kevo Smart Lock and the August Smart Lock. Apple recently started selling the August Smart Lock [$249].

The Kevo Smart Lock is rather invasive as you have to replace your whole deadbolt. A problem for me is that our house is keyed with Baldwin/Schlage blanks, and the Kevo lock is keyed with Kwickset, which are different keys. So that was a non starter. I like having 1 key for every lock in our house.

The August Smart Lock doesn't require you change out your deadbolt. Rather it replaces the inside part of the deadbolt, so you are not really doing that much to your locking system and it's easy to install.

So how is it?

Well, it's OK. There are bugs and kinks, and my quick summary is "really cool" but not ready for main stream.

First, lets discuss what you can do with the August Lock.

1. Lock and unlock your door with your phone
2. Set your lock to automatically lock after a set period of time (Everlock)
3. Set your lock to automatically unlock when you return home
4. Allow guests to lock and unlock your door

I purchased 2 August Locks for our house where we have deadbolts. I imagine this world where I can leave my house without any keys (well just car key, which is a smartkey and I just push a button). In practice though it only works so so.

Here are my main issues:

1. Auto unlock does not always work.

I'm not sure if this is the interaction between the geofence and bluetooth (August uses geofencing to ensure the battery isn't constantly looking for your lock - which is smart) but it's not flawless by any means. It's a little deflating to come home and not have a $200 gadget work as described

2. The auto lock (ever lock) is great as I often forget to lock the door and my wife gets grumpy about this. However, in practice it can be problematic as I really only want this to run at certain hours, and how when I've gone out quickly to take the trash out and the door locks behind me.

3. The auto lock can damage your door frame if the door is not completely shut when the August attempts to lock the door. It's a bit too aggressive about locking. It would be great if it were able to detect if the door were "shut" before it attempted to lock the door.

4. Finally, the biggest issue I have with the August is a design flaw. The battery door is held in by magnets, and often people in our house turn the lock and inadvertently unseat the battery cover.

So in short. It's  neat. I'm pretty happy with mine. When the auto unlock works is downright magical. When I'm getting out of my car with my bag and my hands full and the kids in tow, walking right into the house is great.

I expect v2 will address most of these issues. For now, it gets 3 stars.

★★★☆☆ Good, but nothing exceptional.

Dropcam

A few months ago, I started the process of looking into security cameras. There are basically two choices when it comes to these things:

1. "Old School" systems that your Alarm company can install. These have been upgraded in the past years to include things such as High Definition, WiFi, Power Over Ethernet and DVR capabilities
2. Internet Connected "Internet of Things" Cameras such as Dropcam or Simplicam

I got a quote from my security company for #1. It was about $3,000 installed with 4 cameras and a DVR. The App and monitoring story was questionable. The company that produced this camera had a few different iOS apps, all with 1-2 stars and nothing but complaints. This was a deal breaker. However, the idea of having a custom installer put these things in appealed to me. I am not an expert at placement and wiring outdoors.

My needs for such a system are pretty simple:

• Monitor an indoor main living space in our house
• Monitor the the entrances to the house (outdoor)

My main goal was to have monitoring while we were traveling, in case our alarm went off. And to have video footage for any kind of investigation. It's a fact of life that Alarms go off for no good reason (motion sensors, etc) and when you are traveling the only peace of mind you'll get is visual confirmation of something wrong.

I already have a Nest (best thermostat and gadget ever), and a few friends have Dropcams. Generally, like the Nest, the Dropcam has incredible software / service and quality. It's dammed easy to set up and use. Nest (owned by Google now) aquired Dropcam a few months back. So now Google owns Nest and Nest owns Dropcam.

As mentioned, I needed cameras outdoors as I mentioned. A little bit of research and I found a company called Dropcases.

So, for the cost of 3 Dropcams, 2 outdoor kits, I was looking at $800. Well below the $3000 quote I got.

I then signed up for the 7 day Cloud Video Recording Service that Dropcam offers. For 3 cameras I'm looking at $200/year. Still cheaper than adding Video Monitoring to my security system. First camera is $99/yr and then each additional camera is 50% off.

So, How is it?

The quality is top notch. Setup is a breeze. The iOS app is incredible. The custom alerts are amazing. It's reliable and works from anywhere.

One thing though. These cameras are internet hogs. You see the way they work is that they upload all video to Dropcam and Dropcam's cloud determins things like activity and alerts. So it requires a constant stream of information to make these decisions.

As a result, each cameara pushes 2GB of data per day. So for 3 cameras running 24/7 you are looking at 60GB per month per camera or 180GB per month for all 3. This will really it into your cable operator bandwidth.

My solution for dealing with this is to set up integration with my Nest so that when the nest determines I'm "Away" the Dropcams activate. This keeps them running only at key times. You can also set up "Geofencing" alerts for the camera so that when your phone leaves the vicinity, the camera turns on and alerts are enabled.

I've really enjoyed having these cameras. They are neat for things like triggered alerts when the UPS guy arrives, the mailman delivers a package, or suspicious people enter your property. You can also create time lapse videos and save footage for later.

The only criticism I have is that these cameras are really designed for indoor use. Dropcam needs to make an outdoor camera. If they do, they will simply destroy the custom security camera market.

I have no hesitation recommending these cameras. I'd suggest starting with 1 camera first and then going from there. If you plan to install them outdoors you may need the following:

1. Dropcases - I got the Case and Goose Neck Arm.
2. Long USB cable - I recommend the 15 foot Cable Matters (longest cable run you can use)
3. WiFi Repeater - I recommend the Amped 802.11ac. This is simply the best repeater you can get as it has dedicated bands for connecting to your wifi, and then repeating the signal resulting in no loss of bandwidth.

Final verdict?

I'm using a new system to review products (borrowed from MinimallyMinimal - great blog).

Dropcam gets:

★★★★★ Exceptional. A spectacular product.

Leifheit Wall Dryer

Back to writing about some home related items. My wife suggested I write about our Wall Dryer since we love it, and just got a second one to increase the amount of wall drying space in our laundry room. What is it?

The Leifheit Wall Dryer is a nice looking plastic device that extends out from your wall for drying clothing. It's compact, looks good and does the job.

Oh, and it's German. So it rocks.

Here is our setup

Why did you get it?

We are super fortunate to have a 2nd story laundry room, and while we love that room, it doesn't have a ton of space. So I looked for solutions for wall drying that did not involve one of those crazy floor standing aluminum drying racks.

How has it made your life better?

In an indirect way. It's made Lora's life better, and she likes it so much she suggested a post in the Newsletter.

Are you going to keep it?

We've had one on our wall for 4 years. We go the second this week. So yes.

Newsletter

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Picturewall - A wall full of photos in a box

Photos.... you have lots of them. I bet you look at your walls and say to yourself, one day... I will print some photos and hang them on the wall. Maybe your friends have one of this amazingly organized walls full of family pictures and you think, how? So much measuring, ordering, sizing and then printing photos. Like this (this is a picture of our wall):

Well, I have a solution for you that is pretty easy, modular and expandable. I put together the above with two Picturewall kits and about 30 min of time.

What is it?

The Picturewall is a "kit". Everything you need (including pictures) to occupy a decent amount of space on any wall.

For many years I had a few tasks on my todo list that looked something like this:

1. Buy some picture frames
2. Print some pictures
3. Hang them on wall
4. Make it look awesome

Years and years went by without much progress. Then one day, I came across the Picturewall system. This was made for people who just want to go from idea to finished. Here is how it works.

1. Buy a Picturewall kit (or more)
2. Print photos in standard sizes (I use SmugMug to print my photos, PicPlum is another great option)
3. Insert photos into frames
4. Hang using Picturewall system

Picturewall is basically the following:

1. A box of frames
2. A template you hang on the wall
3. Some picture hangers you insert into the wall

That's it. They have this ingenious template system that allows you to create many different layouts.

The system has the benefits that you can also easily remove a frame, replace a photo, and slap it back on the wall.

You will pay a pretty penny for this convenience though. These things aren't cheap. I bet you the same could be done by going to Ikea, making your own template, and hanging the frames yourself. Remember my story about my todo list?

Why did you get it?

I basically explained this above. I had a desire to put some of the tends of thousands of pictures I have on our wall.

How has it made your life better?

I walk by this wall almost every day. It's a fantastic way to look back on your most cherished memories. Our kids love it too! And it's a hit with guests and relatives! Especially when you change out the photos with new ones.

Are you going to keep it?

Already have. It's on the wall, so it's not going anywhere. I'm thinking of getting some more.

Newsletter

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