Tag Archives: home automation

Geek Gifts for the Holidays

Hand emerging from laptop, holding wrapped gift.I am compiling my gift list for the upcoming holiday season and paying particular attention to my tech friends. New devices are being developed to provide comfort, efficiency, or just plain fun. What would be the perfect gift for my geek friends?

Smart Devices For A Smart Home

Google introduced Home last week, just in time for the holidays. It is similar to Amazon Echo as a home device that accepts voice commands and can queue up a music play list, answer questions or interact with other smart devices in the home. It is basically a voice activated internet device that is paired with home wifi to connect to cloud storage or various web sites to check weather, traffic, answer trivia questions, or activate audio from sites such as Spotify or Pandora.

Home can be paired with Nest products which are home control devices. Nest, like Google, is a subsidiary of Alphabet so devices are compatible. The internet connected Nest Learning Thermostat replaces a traditional home thermostat and can maximize energy efficiency and comfort at the same time. Indoor and outdoor cameras can also be integrated into the home system to be controlled via an app while away or Google Home while in the house. OK, Google, it’s cold in here, and what is that noise outside?

You can go one step further this holiday and add TP-Link Smart Light Bulbs to your home system. These are wifi LED dimmable bulbs that you can operate via a smartphone app, Amazon Echo and presumably the new Home. Check to make sure your lights are turned off or turn them on remotely to greet you upon return. You can also establish a timed schedule. Home automation devices have come a long way to ensure security and comfort during the holidays and the rest of the year.

Just For Fun

For the geek on your gift list there are some fun new toys. Nanotips makes a conductive paint you can apply to the fingertips of your favorite gloves so you can operate smartphones and tablets without exposing your hands. This would be great for my ski, motorcycle or biking gloves, but I still need to figure out how to make a sharper fingertip so that I can text.

The Tap A Tune Musical Gloves sound like a lot of fun. These are musical gloves that play like a piano on any surface. There are sensors in the fingertips that are fed back to the speaker/controller so you can practice the piano or compose a new tune anywhere.

Finally, for the geek on your list who also happens to be a Harry Potter fan there is the Kymera Magic Wand Universal Control. It works through gestures instead of boring buttons and provides haptic feedback so you know whether you are casting the right spell or changing the channel up or down.

Thoughts

Technology is constantly evolving and entrepreneurs are innovating exciting designs they hope will enhance our lives. Some are practical and some are just for fun. There are many products to help automate our lives and some to bring a smile or a laugh. What are you going to get the geek on your holiday list? Let me know of great potential gifts you have found.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.