NEWS – Who doesn’t love coming home to find nice lines in the carpet and the debris from last night’s reverie, or the pet’s ongoing hair exodus all tidied up? iRobot, probably the best-known name in home cleaning robotics, is bringing Roomba technology to your lawn.

The Terra robot mower promises to make lawn care work a thing of the past. Terra differentiates itself from competitors like Husqvarna’s Automower 315X in a few ways.  First, the Husqvarna, and others, requires you to bury perimeter wire around the boundary of your lawn to prevent the mower from going cross-country.  The Terra will use a new wireless communication system based on standalone beacons to define the cutting perimeter, eliminating the need to dig mini-trenches all around your yard.

Second, it will use iRobot’s smart mapping technology to define the cutting area. Other mowers cut in essentially random directions, more or less continuously.  This is based on the theory that over time, the mower will cut the entire yard.  The Terra will mow the entire yard in one mow.  If it needs a recharge, smart mapping will allow it to go home to charge, and then just pick up where it left off, completing the job.  The Terra will mow in nice, straight lines, in a more efficient, and aesthetically pleasing pattern, making the OCD sufferers among us happy.

If you have a Roomba, you already know how to use a Terra.  Both robots are controlled via iRobot’s HOME app.  You can change cutting height, and cutting start times right from the app.

The Terra is ruggedized and weatherproof, which is a good thing, given that it will live outside all the time.

Terra will be available for sale in Germany later this year and enter a beta program in the United State later in 2019 or early 2020.  Pricing has not been announced.  For more information go to iRobot’s mower page.

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iRobot brings Roomba technology to your lawn originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 31, 2019 at 10:00 am.

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NEWS – Netatmo is working on their own version of a smart doorbell: the Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell. What’s so special about it? Well, it doesn’t require a subscription service, it can tell when a detected motion is a person (not facial recognition) so that you don’t receive useless motion alerts, it notifies you instantly when someone attempts to deactivate it, and…

…you receive a video call immediately when someone rings your doorbell. It seems like this will address all of my pet peeves with our current video doorbell!

The Netatmo doorbell uses the wiring of your existing doorbell (thus, it requires a wired doorbell and chime to work), connects to your home WiFi network (802.11 b/g/n – 2.4GHz), and uses a microSD card to locally store your videos (up to 32 GB). You can also set it up to automatically save your videos to your Dropbox or personal FTP server.  It has a 160 degree 1080p camera with HDR function to adjust to sudden changes in lighting, has infrared night vision, has a built-in microphone and speaker, works with Apple HomeKit, and it provides an encrypted connection to protect your data.

Unfortunately, the Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell is not available for purchase yet. It will hopefully be available in late 2019 according to CNET.

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The Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell: an alternative to those with subscription fees originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 30, 2019 at 10:00 am.

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