Smart Home

Why I care about offline-first smart home hubsI’m always testing gear with a practical question in mind: can this product do the useful stuff reliably when the internet drops out? For me, privacy and resilience go hand in hand — I want automations that run locally, sensors that report to my Home Assistant instance even if the cloud is down, and voice or remote control that doesn’t leak data. Over the years I’ve moved from cloud-first...

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I've spent a lot of time testing smart cameras across brands, and one of the most common — and frustrating — issues people bring to me is the Google Nest camera showing a black screen. I’ve seen this crop up during lab-style tests and in real homes: sometimes it’s a simple connectivity hiccup, sometimes a power problem, and sometimes firmware or app settings are the culprit. In this troubleshooting guide I’ll walk you through practical...

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