Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Gadgets

Chromecast

We got a Chromecast back in 2014 and while I thought it was a neat device, it ended up in my old gadget box in the closet.

Now that we have Android phones, I pulled it out again. Our new phones combined with all the improvements they’ve made to the software in the last 3 years has really made a difference. This thing is awesome!

The basic idea is that when you’re watching a video or listening to audio on your phone, you press a button and it is “cast” to the Chromecast device that is hooked to your TV. The Chromecast then takes over and plays the video. You can use your phone to browse around and it won’t interrupt the video (though you can also use your phone as a remote control to pause, fast forward, etc.)

I’m amazed at how many apps support this! The obvious ones like YouTube work great, but so does Spotify, my favorite podcast app, and even our security camera app. Duplication of a computer screen to the Chromecast also works infinitely better than it used to. Chromecast doesn’t support Amazon Video (or vice versa… whatever… Google and Amazon are fighting), but I can play a video on my desktop and cast it to the TV. It works great. Granted that’s a limited use scenario since we have other devices hooked up to the TV that play Amazon Video, but it’s cool that it works.

If you have Android or iOS and you have need for an easy way to show pictures, video and audio from your phone onto your TV, Chromecast should be on your shopping list. It’s so cheap it’s almost a no-brainer.

benmartens January 27, 2017 Gadgets

Favorite Things of 2016

I looked back through my Amazon purchases in 2016 and thought I’d share a few of my favorites:

  • iVac Switch – I don’t know why I waited so long to buy this. If you use a dust collector in your shop, this is an awesome upgrade. It automatically turns your dust collector on when you turn a tool on. When the tool is shut off, the vacuum runs for a few more seconds and then turns off.
  • Truck cover – My truck should probably be on this list but that seemed a little silly. This truck bed cover, however, is a perfect fit for the list (and the truck!) I can unroll it or roll it up in less than a minute. It creates an almost waterproof seal over the bed. If you’ve fought with a tarp even one time, you’ll appreciate this purchase.
  • Amcrest 1080p cameras – We continue to build out our home surveillance system with bargain hardware and it continues to work out very well. These new 1080p cameras are incredible! The only problem is that it makes me want to replace all of my old ones.
  • Kingdom Builder – This board game is a gift we got for Logan, but it’s also available on your phone. The rules are fairly simple but the strategy is complex. I’m a wee bit addicted to this one right now.
benmartens January 26, 2017 Gadgets, Geek, Woodworking

Tasker for Android

What if your phone automatically silenced itself when you walked into church? Or what it if it turned the volume back up when you got home? Those are just a couple of the ideas I’ve been able to implement using Tasker on my phone. The app gives you a big list of states to monitor (I’m connected to this WiFi router, I got a phone call, etc) and then you can specify what action you want to take in response. The concept is simple but the possibilities are endless.

It takes a little while to understand how it works and get your recipes dialed in, but it’s a great way to get really geeky with your phone and mold your environment to your whims.

I suspect a few of you already use this. If so, I’m interested to hear what you use it for.

benmartens January 5, 2017 Gadgets

Smart Home

smartthingshubI’ve dabbled in the past with a few smart home devices like some Wemo light switches and the ecobee thermostat. One of the problems with home automation is that lots of different manufacturers are making cool devices, but they don’t all work together. There are some companies out there trying to bridge the gaps and one of them is Samsung with their SmartThings hub.

I’ve had that hub on my CamelCamelCamel price watch list for a while and one day I got a notice that it was half price so I jumped on it.

The device sits in your house and abstracts away some of the differences between the various devices. When you go through the hub, you get simplified functionality, but it’s consistent. For example, if it’s a light switch, the hub knows it can turn it off and on but it doesn’t know how to get your specific light switch hooked up to WiFi. You can kind of think of it like a universal remote.

The default setup is already useful. There are pre-loaded apps and routines to let you do things like “when you see motion on this device, turn this other device on”. That’s good but of course I wanted to dig in more and one of the reasons I picked this device is because they have a pretty good developer API.

You develop apps for the hub through a web interface in a language called Groovy. I wrote an app that logs events from my house (light switches on and off, etc) and another app that turns lights on and off in relation to sunrise/sunset with some randomness built in. It took me a while to figure out the available commands and learn the Groovy language, but it’s quite the interesting toolset once you get the hang of it.

My favorite use case right now uses the fact that our hub recognizes our Android phones as location sensors. So when Tyla and I are both out of the house, our thermostat automatically turns down a few degrees and when we get close to the house, it turns the thermostat back up. I think that one is actually going to save us money because we regularly forget to do that ourselves.

If you like to tinker with home automation, I recommend the hub. If you’re just a user who’s not going to write code, it’s probably worthwhile too, but honestly, if you’re not willing to tinker with your setup, then home automation probably isn’t your thing yet. We’re getting a lot closer, but the technology still has a way to go.

benmartens December 19, 2016 Gadgets, Geek

Great Northern Model Train Review

My parents have an O-gauge model train running around their tree. It’s a relatively new purchase, but it was there when we were home with Elijah and he LOVED it. Tyla and I have always thought about getting one for our tree so we decided to pull the trigger this year.

I was visiting Eastside Trains with Elijah a few weekends ago to kill some time and I saw the Great Northern Mountain Mover set. Great Northern is the railroad that ran the caboose that we stayed in earlier this year. I liked that it was related to a family vacation… and I also liked that it was deeply discounted. Tyla and I often do a family Christmas present instead of giving each other gifts so we decided to make this the family gift.

As we expected, Elijah LOVES it. It came with just enough track to get around the tree but that’s plenty to keep him entertained. The box says for ages 14 and up, but he has been good enough with it that we have let him play with it unsupervised a little bit. It takes a lot of coaching but he’s a pretty responsible little kid.

Once he’s old enough that we trust him to not destroy Tyla’s big Christmas village, we’ll set that up with the train. The train should be the right scale to match the village and we’ll have a nice little Christmas display every year.

christmastrain

benmartens December 2, 2016 Gadgets

Android App List

androidapplistI’ve written plenty about the pros and cons of Android vs Windows Phone, but one undeniable pro is that there are a lot more app choices available on Android. (I guess it can also be a con because there are a thousand apps to do every task, but at least I have a choice.) Logan just picked up a Galaxy S7 too and was asking what apps I liked. I figured it would make a good post. Obviously this won’t be a full list of every app on my phone, but it’s some of the ones I think are a little bit interesting or the ones for which there are many available options. If you think you have a better app for a category, I’d love to hear about it.

That’s probably a good list of the apps that had lots of choices. And then of course I have various TV channel apps, smart home apps, game apps, app-kabobs, app creole, app gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple app, lemon app, coconut app, pepper app, app soup, app stew, app salad, app and potatoes, app burger, app sandwich. That- that’s about it.

benmartens November 25, 2016 Gadgets

Android Pay

androidpayOur new Galaxy S7 phones support Android Pay. It’s one of a few competing standards out there, but thankfully it’s one of the big ones so it’s supported at a lot of stores. The concept is simple: you add your credit card info into the app and when you approach the credit card machine, you just tap your phone on it. Your phone will then ask you to authenticate the purchase and in our case, that’s just a thumbprint verification. It’s very convenient. The app can also be used to keep store loyalty cards. To use those, you just display the barcode in the app and have the cashier scan it.

Usually added convenience includes added risk, but in this case, it’s safer. The store gets a one time code that is linked to your account so if the store gets hacked, the number that the hackers get is useless.

It is true that your number is now in your phone but to use it, the hackers would have to figure out how to spoof your disk encryption and/or your thumbprint. And they’d have to do all that before you realized your phone was gone and wiped it remotely. I put that risk about equal or less than me losing my wallet and someone else finding my credit cards so I’m not too worried about it.

benmartens November 22, 2016 Gadgets

Keep Android Unlocked

androidsmartlockPhones contain more and more high value, personal information. If you don’t have some kind of a password lock on your phone, you probably should consider it. Tyla and I both use a password and with our new phones, we also do a thumbprint. That being said, there are some times when you know that you’re the only one who will be touching your phone and the unlocking step is annoying. Thankfully, Android has a feature for that. It’s called “Smart Lock“. You can tell Android to unlock your phone based on location, connected Bluetooth devices, and a couple others. (I’m surprised that WiFi network isn’t on there, but maybe there’s no good way to identify a specific WiFi network since someone else could set one up with the same SSID and MAC address.)

Obviously this feature should be used with care, but it’s nice to not have to unlock my phone sometimes.

benmartens November 8, 2016 Gadgets

Windows 10 And Android SMS

windows-10-cortanaDid you know that Windows 10 has as built-in feature that will allow you to receive SMS messages from your Android phone and reply to them right from your desktop? This feature is fantastic when I’m at work because I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to pull my phone out of my pocket and reply. (I’ll just have to remember to disable it when I’m in projecting on the big screen in meetings!)

To get this going, you need to have Cortana set up on your phone and on your desktop. There are plenty of websites that cover this, but here are a couple tips:

  1. On your desktop, make sure that Cortana is enabled. In the settings, turn on “Send notifications from devices.”
  2. On your Android device, install Cortana. From the settings, go to “Sync notifications”. Enable App notifications sync and make sure she has access to your notifications. Then go to Choose which apps to sync and make sure you enable only the ones that you really care about (I chose my SMS app and Facebook messenger.)

Now when you get a text, you should get a toast notification with the contents of the message and you can reply right from that box. You can also open up Cortana on your computer and type (or say) “Text Joe Blow Will you bring beer to the game tonight?” Note that after I set this up, it took 5 or 10 minutes before it started working but now the messages show up on my desktop within a couple seconds of my phone buzzing.

benmartens November 7, 2016 Gadgets

Android Thoughts

cortana-androidThis isn’t my first post about my new Galaxy S7 and it probably won’t be the last, but I have some more thoughts about the phone and about Android in general:

  • Using Android has made me appreciate how much thought and effort went into Windows Phone. People scoff at it, but it really was a great OS. Windows Phone may be failing in the American market for a lot of reasons, but the OS isn’t one of them. Android isn’t terrible, but it’s not nearly as polished or consistent. The plus side of that is that you can customize everything.
  • I love the processor and graphics power in this phone. I can easily do live 1080p streams from my security cameras. I don’t know why but my old phone would choke on those streams.
  • The cameras are terrific. The regular camera on our old phones was ok but the front-facing one was horrendous. Now we can using the front-facing camera without fear. I can also get RAW images from the cameras which make post-processing in Lightroom very nice.
  • I didn’t even know this existed but we have “HD calling“. When we call each other, the call quality is way better than a standard telephone. I’ve also gotten the HD calling when calling to an iPhone.
  • The microSD storage is a very nice feature. We put in some very fast 64 GB cards but it goes all the way up to 256GB.
  • Android has gobs of nice features like Do Not Disturb hours so that we don’t get woken up when east coasters are texting us. We can either let specific people through at any time or set it so that our phones will ring if you call twice in quick succession. (Note: we have the latter so in an emergency, just call us back right away.)
  • I was disappointed in the reminder functionality baked into Android. It’s there, but it’s sub-par. Thankfully, Microsoft has made Cortana available for Android and she has excellent reminder technology. The UI is great and the reminders sync to my Windows 10 computers too. By the way, if you do use the Google Now reminders, did you know you can access them from your desktop Chrome browser? Just search for “my reminders” and see what pops up.

I’m still finding more cool features so stay tuned!

benmartens November 4, 2016 Gadgets