Tech companies have been trying to make robots part of a smart home setup for years. Asus introduced Zenbo in 2016, but it never really took off. Amazon’s Astro has been around since 2021, but it’s still an invite-only device. This year LG is demonstrating a (sort of) bipedal robot at CES, while Samsung is […]
smart home
Lilbits: LG’s smart home robot, Microsoft’s next-gen Surface devices go big on AI (and ARM)
Smart speakers were supposed to usher in the era of ambient computing, where you’d be able to just speak a question or command from anywhere in your house. But that only works if you put enough speakers throughout your house to ensure that there’s always one nearby. Or you could get one that moves. Asus […]
Lilbits: Signal drops SMS, Microsoft launches Surface Studio 2+, more Apple services coming to Windows, and Intel layoffs ahead?
Thanks to falling demand for PCs and increased competition from rival chip makers, it looks like Intel may be planning to layoff thousands of employees soon.  In addition to the introducing the new Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 today, Microsoft has unveiled a Surface Studio 2+ for creative professionals… but it’s a kind of […]
Raspberry Pi-based Home Assistant Amber lets you build your own smart home hub (crowdfunding)
Home Assistant is free and open source home automation software that allows you to control and interact with smart home gadgets. You can install the software on a single-board computer or in a virtual machine on a Windows, Mac, or Linux PC. But soon there may be another option: the Home Assistant team is running […]
Lilbits: Amazon Echo Wall?
Amazon’s new Echo Show 10 smart display with a screen that moves so that it’s always looking at you like a pair of eyeballs from one of those creepy paintings is set to begin shipping later this month. But it might not be the only new Amazon Echo device coming this year. Bloomberg reports that […]
Lilbits 396: Smart home… at a cost
Wink sells a line of smart home products including hubs, motion sensors, door and window sensors, and chimes. The company’s systems also work with third-party smart lights, cameras, doorbells, and other accessories. And up until recently, you could use Wink’s products for free after paying for the hardware. Then this week the company announced it […]
Amazon teaches Alexa a bunch of new tricks, turns it into a security system (and more)
Amazon’s Alexa voice service already lets you get answers to questions, listen to music, news updates, or weather forecasts, play games, or control smart home gadgets with your voice. But in addition to launching a bunch of new hardware today, Amazon unveiled some upcoming Alexa features that could make the company’s voice assistant technology even […]
Mozilla Offers a Slick New Way to Control Your Smart Home
Mozilla may have put Firefox OS for smartphones on ice, but they didn’t just walk away from the operating system completely. They went looking for other places to put its code to good use. Smart homes seemed like a good fit. What they cooked up was Things Gateway. It’s an open source home automation control […]
Roku to launch voice assistant and whole home audio support
Roku makes some of the most popular media streaming devices for TVs, and for the past few years the company has also been licensing its software to TV makers so that you can buy a TV that has Roku functionality baked in. Now the company is getting ready to expand its licensing program with a […]
Cortana learns to speak to smart home devices
Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant is built into every PC that ships with Windows 10. You can interact with Cortana by voice or by typing a question or request. And it does many of the same things other voice assistants including setting reminders, providing news or weather updates, or telling jokes. There’s also support for third-party […]