I've used Home Assistant for years to control my smart home devices and run automations. The software is packed with features, including the ability to send notifications to your phone. I have multiple automations that send me notifications about my smart home devices.

Smart home technology can often feel far from smart. You want to turn on the lights in your living room, but your light bulbs are from one brand, and your smart lamp is from another, so you have to open two different apps to turn on all the lights.

Apple, Google, and Amazon are three of the biggest players in the smart home world. Each has its own smart home ecosystem that you can use to control a wide range of devices. Amazon Alexa and Google Home are solid smart home systems that are compatible with a wider selection of devices than Apple Home, but there are some key reasons why Apple Home is better than both of them.

When OpenAI first introduced the new 4o image generation feature in ChatGPT, the internet went crazy. People were using it to transform everything from profile pictures to popular memes into the anime style of Studio Ghibli. Even the White House got in on the action, posting a Ghibli-style image of an ICE arrest.

When ChatGPT first announced that it had added a feature allowing you to create scheduled tasks, I was excited. I had plenty of ideas of ways that this could be really useful, from birthday or medication reminders to running bespoke searches each day. However, the reality was a little disappointing.

Smart home tech can be expensive. It might cost hundreds of dollars to replace your light bulbs with smart ones. However, some devices cost next to nothing but can make a huge difference to your smart home.

I've been fascinated by eclipses ever since reading the classic Tintin comic Prisoners of the Sun. In the story, Tintin escapes death by convincing his captors that he can command the Sun, ordering it to disappear at the exact time that a solar eclipse is about to happen.