Gadgetory

hello and welcome to see nuts the fix the show about DIY tech and how to's I'm dong bell and i'm sharing back in this week it's all about the smart home wireless connections that allow us to control our appliances lights and other comforts of home from just about anywhere it offers a lot of convenience and there's also some pretty cool tech involved we're gonna start off with a DIY trick on how to control things around your home using your smartphone let's check it out this DIY is all about taking an otherwise boring piece of furniture and making it a whole lot smarter we're making a smart night stand with built-in power wireless charging and NFC and that NFC or near field communication will allow me to tap my phone to the nightstand and automatically turn on my philips hue light bulbs so i chose this night stand because it's super affordable i think i paid like 30 bucks for it and it's just the right size and build for this project but one thing i did modify was the table top it had a metal top and i swapped in a wooden top but the first thing we want to do is install this built-in power so i've got this power strip which is awesome because it's got your regular plugs but also two USB ports since the drawer is made of metal the easiest waited here this thing is with magnets and these should set in about 10 minutes and we should be good to go now we want to add wireless charging what I've got here is a nokia wireless charger and the nexus 5 so what i want to do is mount this charger right underneath the surface and because this tabletop is so thin it's still going to be able to charge the phone we indicator light should turn on and then boom our phone is charging okay now let's get to the brains of this nightstand we're adding NFC so I've got this NFC tag and what we're going to do is adhere it to the bottom underneath the table top so that when I tap this tag it turns on my philips two light bulbs now the Philips hue app on its own can't do this so I've downloaded a third-party app called lampshade dot IO and what that lets me do is write a tag that completes that action so a launch lampshade NFC turn on our light bulbs then I'll hold the tag to the back of the phone it detects it hit right to tag and our tag is safe so this will go right underneath the table top okey doke so our smart nightstand is complete let's put this guy in place and take it for a spin so we will tap our NFC tag lights turn on and then set it over our wireless charger and get this thing dream stuff and our smart nightstand is complete now this thing really works because of these Philips hue light bulbs they're smart Wi-Fi connected bulb so when we tap that NFC tag it pings the Wi-Fi network and tells them to turn on in that app that we use we've even got options for random so hit the random button and you never know what color you're gonna get these lights are awesome you can even program those NFC tags to automatically launch an alarm clock a music playlist there are so many customization options there that sounds like it's a worthwhile investment in some NFC tags sure is alright we're going to a quick break but then we're talking about new tech gadgets that alert you about what's going on at your house even when you're not there that's right I'm gonna show you how to use sensors around your home to monitor light motion sound and all that's gonna communicate directly with your smartphone that's coming up next you welcome back we've been talking about the connected home and in this next how to returning your ordinary appliances into smart appliances with high-tech sensors that are also affordable you think of the home of the future and you think of the fully automated home of the Jetsons well we're not there yet but we can make our home a little smarter with some inexpensive sensors right here I've got the quirky spotter a fifty-dollar sensor and a little more expensive over here are the twine little geeky or two but both of these are essentially doing the same thing they're going to measure light sound vibration and temperature and communicate that information to your phone so first up we're going to show you how to use the quirky spotter to accomplish one of the most loathsome and common things in your home the laundry now the first thing we're going to do is program our spotter it sounds like it's complicated but they've made it pretty easy there's an app we need to install called the wink app open that thing up you're going to tell it your Wi-Fi login and password and then it's a little bit of magic happens where it communicates that password information to the spotter by blinking on the device itself let's go to a countdown start the countdown I'm gonna hold the screen over the spotter there it goes hey successfully connected that's what we wanted success alright the next screen we see here is a screen that shows off the four different sensors that are built into the spotter temperature light sound and motion now for being all to detecting the dryers now I'm gonna make use of its motion detector i'm going to set up a new trigger i'm going to say that when it detects that movement is stopped it's going to send me a notification now hit done save says give the spotter a double tap ok put that guy up on the dryer let's give it a test slow this thing up some laundry alright everything's rumbling around drying my towels now hopefully if everything is working right it's going to text me when everything's done and there I go says that the motion has stopped my laundry is done Oh towels life just got a little smarter all right for something with a little added flexibility little geek out capability we've got the twine now twine is more expensive is $125 instead of fifty dollars for the spotter but with that you get a lot of addons you can do in this case I've i purchased the add-on moisture sensor and I'm here in the basement so what I'm going to do is going to have this program so that it can detect water in my basement before the whole thing floods now to set that up I'm going to go to the twine website and create a rule set to tell this thing that whenever it detects water to email me right away all right so setting up a rule is pretty basic here we're going to set up so when it detects moisture in my basement then I'm gonna have an email me and here I can make my message I can customize that I can customize the subject line message is your basement is and I can even fill in the automatic condition of it being wet or dry and I'll let me know it saved to twine gonna ask me to turn it over here it goes so now the information is being transmitted over to the twine and then we'll get to test it out alright all done now let's give a test now I need to do is dip this down into the water I can't even see from the sensor itself here that it is getting a message it's probably going to turn this up into an email let's check that out checking for mail email message from my twine saying your basement is wet I now have an automatic sensor looking out for my basement moisture so there you go those are two ways to add relatively inexpensive sensors to your home to get you a little closer to that smart home Jetsons future you know what else is cool about the twine it can tweet what they would have thought well we've shown you some innovative and inspiring ways to integrate technology into your home but up next we're gonna get really techie we're going to show you the ins and outs of what really makes this stuff tick hey everyone welcome to the breakdown i'm eric franklin and this is where we explain the details behind your technology now you may have seen the letters NFC on some of your electronics devices and maybe you know what that is and maybe you don't but today I'm gonna explain it all to you NFC is near field communication it's a communication standard for transmitting data to the compatible devices it starts when device one creates an electromagnetic field in order to communicate with device number two however in order to make that connection the two devices have to be very close to each other they have to be within a few centimeters or very near the reason behind that is because NFC uses very short radio waves to make the connection and by using short radio waves instead of long radio waves used by both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi NFC requires much less power to make a connection so now you know whether or not you have NFC but what's it going to do for you what are the practical applications of the technology well there are three that you should know about the first one is peer-to-peer now this occurs when you have to power devices both with NFC you want to share data between them let's say a photo so I have a nice photo of tech shop right here I want to get this phone close to the phone with the photo make the connection tap the send and now it's sending now this is using Android Beam which uses NFC to establish the initial connection then it switches to bluetooth in order to make you actual transfer and now it's received and there's a photo that i just sent pretty cool stuff the second is one-way communication used by advertisers a lot the NFC tag is programmed with the data the manufacturer wants to share without a really cool thing about that set the NFC tag doesn't run his own power it simply waits for an NFC device to get close to it that device creates an electromagnetic field which powers the NFC tag with enough juice to share the data it's really crazy but really cool and finally mobile payments for instance Google Wallet allows you to use your smartphone instead of your credit card to make purchases at a store you simply tap and pay and the appropriate amounts adduct it from whichever credit card you have set up right now only a few retailers are using this technology but hopefully we'll see more soon that's it for this week's show thanks so much for watching if you have any ideas for us or any feedback you can reach us online i'm at donald on twitter and i'm at sharing back hit us up we'll see you next time on cnet the fix