Holidays, warmth and relaxation, here we are again our favorite season! Whether you leave or not, here are some tips on how to prepare your home for the sun and summer.

In summer, we all want to enjoy the sun at ma-xi-mum but without dying of heat 😝

Good news, there are a lot of connected objects to equip your house. You can enjoy the beautiful days and the looong summer evenings.

Who says summer, says wild evenings, says barbecue & cocktails at will!

Did you know that with a connected barbecue, you are alerted when your meat, fish or vegetables are ready just the right way? And, depending on the models, they can even give you recipe ideas.

For your cocktails, voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa come to the rescue. Feel free to ask them for the exact dosages to make all your precious drinks a success every time.

But in summer, we also like to enjoy the day in the sun.

If you choose a smart sunshade, you can recharge your phones with integrated solar panels. Smart! Smart!

And as a bonus, he will give you information about the weather or the UV index. Something to brown without grilling (like your steaks, on the smart barbecue, you follow?).

Once night arrives, you get a little crazy when it's (much) too hot to sleep... It's a good time to test the smart pillow. It determines the ideal temperature of your body to sleep So quiet, cool.

There are also intelligent air conditioners that detect an open window or geolocate you on the way back. Useful to limit energy consumption. And, enough to soften (a little) the criticism of these devices that drive up electricity costs as soon as the mercury flies away.

Activate your home's security mode during the summer

For a long weekend or for a few weeks, the anguish remains the same when you are away during this summer period that is conducive to burglaries.

You can leave with peace of mind with a smart home. You can simulate a presence at home by randomly switching on the lights with the Aqara Led Light bulbs.

To avoid intrusions, rely on smart locks that only open with your smartphone! No lock is 100% safe, but knowing that burglars only spend a few minutes trying to force it, they will prefer to attack a more "classic" target and therefore less risky for them.

We no longer present cameras smart and controllable remotely via your smartphone: they are among the most popular objects in home automation. You leave reassured and remain in control of your home sweet home even thousands of miles away.

It's summer, we enjoy the benefits of the sun, nature... All the more reason to take care of it.

With the heat, we tend to multiply the number of showers. Until then, don't change (especially) anything! 😉

On the other hand, don't hesitate to opt for an eco-friendly shower head! There are intelligent shower heads that inform you of the water level used. The Hydrao shower head, for example, is equipped with LEDs. They turn from green to purple when 10 litres of water have been consumed... Then turn red when you exceed 40 litres of water. If it flashes, it's high time to get out!

In summer, plants also need a good shower. Find out about the smart irrigation systems.

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Several leaks were released last weekend, we shared them on our Facebook page. The latter announce the release of a new product on July 31. Xiaomi Passion, after several searches, managed to find the product before its official release on the crowdfunding platform. It is therefore a new brand that we find and which is at the origin of this new product. For example, it was Townew that designed the new Xiaomi Mijia Townew Smart Trash. This bin arouses curiosity since there are few products of this kind. Its design seems simple and successful. Discover it immediately in our article.

This new bin comes with a standard shape and rounded corners. Its white shell is made of very high quality ABS plastic to resist shocks. It measures 240 mm x 310 mm x 402 mm and weighs 3.5 kg. Reinventing a garbage can seems complicated, but Townew has succeeded by adding an automatic bag closing device on the top. This is the main reason for its weight.

The most important part of the product is therefore not its 15.5-litre bin but as mentioned above its upper part. In order to open the bin cover, the Xiaomi Mijia Townew Smart Trash has a motion sensor for opening. Even if its size is small enough, it swallows the most common objects of daily life. Once your bag is full, simply press the front button to activate the automatic closing system. Thus, the hood lifts itself and a heating blade cuts and seals the hot bag to close it.

Inside the product there is a bag refill that unwinds alone depending on how you use it. This roll-up bag system already exists, particularly in the early childhood sector, in the form of a diaper bag. Its introductory price is 199 yuan or about 25 €.

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What good is the fastest smartphone if the WLAN in the bedroom is not enough for HD content and has to buffer constantly? Unfortunately, setting up multiple WLAN hotspots and manually switching between them is not a very practical solution.

The Dutch company Sitecom has thought of something and presented the first complete mesh WLAN in Europe at the MWC. The system is called Huddle and works basically like multi-room loudspeakers. As soon as your mobile device detects that the signal from a base station is weakening, it automatically switches to the strongest one within range.

The principle is also being used on a much larger scale for nodes on the Internet and was already implemented in a similar form for home use two years ago by Startup Eero. As with Eero, the individual stations communicate with each other at Huddle. This then ensures complete coverage with WLAN in the home.

According to Sitecom, there should be no interruptions even during video chats, even if you climb from the basement to the roof in the meantime. And that in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The range of the last one is known to be lower, but the data throughput is higher.

The Huddle app helps with the setup so that the seamless transition can not only be made by IT specialists. According to Sitecom, it does almost everything by itself and should also be easy for inexperienced users. It also shows who is currently logged into the network and which devices are connected.

Huddle also has features that have been standard on classic routers for years: Time control, so that children don't surf in bed at night, and filtering websites are just as possible as setting up a guest network.

Huddle can be ordered for moments and costs 349 Euros in the basic version with two stations, 499 Euros for three stations and 199 Euros for each additional station.

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For some weeks now we have been waiting for the new HomeKit products from Aqara, a private label of Xiaomi. Now things are getting moving.

As Cashys blog reports, the Aqara HomeKit hub will go on sale in October at Amazon Germany. We don't know the exact date or price yet. We are assuming around 45 euros, which would correspond to the current price in dollars at GearBest.

The Aqara devices are all very cheap and allow an extension of your HomeKit smart home system at a small price. It also expands your options. The Aqara Hub allows you to integrate ZigBee devices into your HomeKit network. Similar things are already being done by homee, only currently in beta stage. So you have more possibilities to replace the usually quite expensive HomeKit devices with cheaper non-HomeKit alternatives. As soon as the new hub from Aqara, which is also equipped with a night light and simply plugged into a power socket, is officially on the market in this country, we will take a closer look at this part for you.

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