9 Smart Gadgets and Devices for Your Home

Lately, more and more technologically advanced innovations are taking shape in handheld or mobile gadgets. Smartphones aren’t the only smart gadgets we use these days. We have the smartwatch, smart TV, smart cars, and more. But not all gadgets that carry the label “smart”, are actually smart, it just means that it is connected to the smartphone via an app or via Bluetooth.

Keeping that at the back of our heads, we dug around for gadgets with above-average smarts, the kind that helps make our life easier. We found a few items that can help you keep track of your things, a very smart lock that can also help save your life as well as a pen that will change the way you work online. Let’s take a look.

Arlo

Installing security cameras in your home means fussing with wires, receivers, and settings. However, Arlo comes with the easiest installation you can ever find in surveillance cameras. Simply connect it to your WiFi and do all the monitoring from your mobile phone with its app.

Arlo is equipped with a fully magnetic mount, as well as a waterproof container that protects it from rain and heat so your house stays secure all the time.

Arlo is capable of recording 720p video with angles up to 110 degrees giving you high detail output. The camera starts recording once it detects any movement with its motion alert feature. Connect up to 15 cameras and monitor up to 4 cameras simultaneously.

TrackR Stickers

TrackR is a coin-sized sticker, however, it does a job much bigger than its size. You can attach it to your keys, wallet or pet, so once you lose any of these, simply use the TrackR app to ring on on them and track your items instantly.

It comes in three variations: the coin-sized TrackR Stickers, the flat and rectangular TrackR Wallet (for keys), and the waterproof, engrave-able TrackR bravo (for pets).

TrackR is capable of ringing at 85 dB if triggered with the smartphone app and can also use Distance Indicator and Crowd GPS for accurate coordinates to your missing valuables. It also works in reverse, meaning you can find your phone simply by pressing TrackR’s button.

Fever Smart

Fever Smart is a patch thermometer that connects to your iPhone, allowing you to monitor a patient’s body temperature taken under the armpit. This tool is useful if you want to monitor somebody’s temperature without physically being there.

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Fever Smart can also be helpful for healthcare professionals to keep watch of their post-operative patients or to monitor critical patients with the possibility of sudden high fevers, so treatments can be administered quickly. The team is releasing an Android app for Fever Smart soon.

More Smart Health Gadgets here.

Livescribe Smartpen

Some of us like to work with pen and paper, but it’s quite a work to convert your hand-written stuff to a digital platform. With the Livescribe Smartpen, you can sketch, doodle, draw, write notes or plot novels on a piece of paper, then have all your scribbles transferred to digital form via Bluetooth or via the pen’s built-in memory.

With the Smartpen, you can share your writing through social networks, and sync your files with Dropbox or Evernote across multiple platforms. The software will convert your handwriting to editable text, enhancing readability.

It has a good battery life of 8 hours use between charging, which is done via its charging case. Equal Smartpen also works with multiple languages like traditional Chinese, Japanese, Koren and more.

Bolt

Bolt is a smart bulb which illuminates your room with a variety of colors through a single bulb. Its efficient LED technology gives it a 20-year usability life (3 hours a day, 7 days a week) with a two-year warranty.

With the Misfit HomeApp (for both iPhone and Android), you can dim the lights or adjust the colors according to your mood. Bolt also uses dynamic Lightscapes, but you can create your own Lightscape or use your own photos. Interestingly, you can also use it to set as an alarm to wake you up with beautiful shades of light.

Bttn

When many smart devices can be controlled via the phone or computer, bttn does this in a different way. It is a physical button that gives you access to a service, or to control an internet-enabled device by simply pressing it. Think of it as an IFTTT with you “pushing the button” as the trigger, for instance, a bttn can be configured to let you know when your kid is home from school.

You can set bttn as a trigger for services such as Zapier, OpenHome, SmartThings, Twitter, Facebook, email, or SMS messaging. Bttn connects to the internet using WiFi or mobile data with a micro SIM card, powered by a couple of AA batteries.

Keen Home

Keen Home is a smart vent that’ll help keep the temperature of your rooms uniform and balanced. You can manually open or close the vent via its mobile app, or let it work automatically based on settings that you prefer. It will open and close to adjust the hot and cold temperatures into a comfortable range, allowing you to conserve energy and save on the electricity bill.

The vent designs are available in Herringbone, Arbor and Wave (coming soon), and it can run for years on just 4 AA batteries. There are four measurements available: 4″ by 10″, 4″ by 12″, 6″ by 10″ and 6″ by 12″. Just remove to present vent installation in your home and plug Keen Home faceplates in. ($109.99)

See More Smart Home Devices here.

Fitbit Flex 2 Activity Tracker

Fitbit Flex 2 is made of 18K gold with beautiful precious stones but we’re not here to talk about jewelry, right? Fitbit Flex 2 has the ability to notify you when someone calls you on your mobile phone. It uses 4 vibration patterns and 5 blinking colored LEDs to give you different types of configurable notifications.

The configurations can be done on the Ringly smartphone app with which you can set how you want Ringly to notify you on calls, texts, emails, calendar alerts and various social applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. ($125)

Ellipse

Ellipse is a Bluetooth-enabled lock that functions with the Sky Lock smartphone app. You can even choose to unlock it by proximity (via Signal Strength Indicator). Apart from that, it can send crash alerts to people in your trusted network, in case it detects that you met an accident. It will also alert you if it is being tampered with by a theft attempt.

The beauty of Ellipse is that a fully charged battery can last 6 months without a recharge, and it is powered by sunlight, meaning that if you take your bike out for a ride, Ellipse gets continuously charging. Alternatively, it can be charged with the micro-USB port.