smartsensor
Latest
Ecobee's Family Accounts put limits on smart home control
Ring isn't the only company giving you better smart home privacy controls. Ecobee is trotting out a Family Accounts feature that lets up to 15 people in your household control thermostats and other gear without having to hand over your sign-in details. They can steer devices and invite other people to the same group, but they can't add or remove devices, make account changes or sign up for Eco+ like the master account can.
Ecobee smart thermostat with glass display pops up on Lowe's website
Ecobee is reportedly working on a new SmartThermostat and SmartSensors. The items haven't been announced yet, but they're listed on the Lowe's website. The specific product pages have been removed, but Zatz Not Funny managed to spot the details before they were scrubbed.
Oppo promises stable photos from smaller smartphones
Numerous smartphones have image stabilization, but they're usually large, chunky or both, and for good reason: The optical (lens-based) stabilization they typically use chews up a lot of space. Oppo, however, believes it has a better way. Its new SmartSensor brings sensor-shifting stabilization to phones (reportedly for the first time), giving you blur-free shots without the usual bulk. Moreover, it fixes some of the chronic problems with OIS. It's much faster when correcting shots, uses about 50 times less power and accounts for rolling motions and other kinds of shaking that optical stabilizers usually can't correct.
Parrot's Flower Power monitors plant's environment, sends data to the cloud
For a company that usually makes Bluetooth audio products and quadcopters, this sure is a weird product coming from Parrot, but we dig it (pun intended). The French company has announced its Flower Power at CES, and as you can probably guess from the name, 'tis a smart sensor that you can insert into a pot to monitor the plant's environmental variables: sunlight, humidity, temperature and fertilizer (but no acidity?). The data is sent to the cloud via Bluetooth Smart for analysis before coming back to your mobile device, and you'll be able to look up Parrot's "library of thousands of plants" for the extra care for your herbal friends. No price has been announced for the Flower Power just yet, but it'll definitely be out at some point this year. Update: Official video added after the break. Update 2: During our stage interview, Parrot CEO Henri Seydoux confirmed that that the Flower Power can also measure the soil's pH level, so all is good. Update 3: The pH detector has been removed from the final specifications. Sorry folks. Follow all the latest CES 2013 news at our event hub.
