Smappee and Happee!

I had plunged and got the Smppee power meter device (Described in another post) and had been using it for some time now.

Let me start with what I was not quite happy about:-) The device when shipped to India got slapped with a hefty customs duty and that spiked up the price much! Secondly the IFTTT integration is not working in a snappee:-) That, probably covers all the negatives!

The device could quickly connect to the WiFi and started reporting current usage right away. It also kept telling how much more or less power I am using each time I turned on or off any device. I had some fun walking around house switching on and off devices!

No devices got recognized immediately. Even when there were large chunk of power drawn by the geyser and microwave it did not immediately report it as a device detected. I communicated that concern to the support team (BTW, I had been bothering them constantly and they had been patiently responding to every comment I had raised. Hats off to them!) and they told me that is expected and it will take some time for the device to identify it as a DNA and isolate devices. And so it did!

Couple of days down the line, it identified my microwave and one by one it found few more. As I am not  keen in mapping all the devices right now as this is a temporary address for me, I have left it after 4 or 5 devices were identified.

I also tried my hand creating a IFTTT workflow for it. When the power shoots up beyond 1KW, I wanted my Hue bulb to light up and it did light up. Unfortunately the latency was too much, like 2-5 minutes or more at times! Is this a workflow that should have immediate response, may be not. But my Hue bulb lit up after the Geyser was turned off instead of when it was turned on!

Overall, its still a wealth of information in its charts, and in its local alerts which keeps popping up on the app. Also even on 3G, it kept reporting the current power usage kind of real time. That was cool!

Today, I have a net outage at home and had to come to office to do my work. I have the Smappee app on to see if it started reporting the real time power usage to know if my network is back! Now that is the kind of trust I have on the device on the reporting!

A week into Automatic

Automatic is a small device that connects to the OBD port of the computer and reads in data from the automobile. I managed to get one from US and was planning to use it in India.

Package arrived safe in my hand and then things started falling apart a bit. The first problem was that the app was only available in US App Store for iOS. I had to create an account there and then get the app downloaded.

Then I connected the device and started setting it up, and when I reached a point where it reads the comp on board of my car, it popped up a message, VIN could not be decoded. Manual option of entering the VIN also did not move it any further, The Setup was stuck at that point and I could make any progress further. I came to a sad realization at that point that the device was meant to US only:-(

Plunging into the User groups, I came across a suggestion from their support head that I can request to bypass this! I immediately shot a mail to the id and got a response back in a day that yes, its possible, but some of the features won't work in India, Like the emergency response and Fuel pricing and Units like Kilometer and Liter instead of the US standard of Miles and Gallons

I was OK with that. So she took some basic info from me in the vehicle and set up my VIN in their system and next time, I tried the setup, all went well!

So now I have it setup and using the Apple Maps, it reports the route I drove, the mileage I got, also rates me on the kind of driving I did, as in any sudden breaks or any sudden acceleration.

Its really cool ride as of now! I have couple of additional features I had in mind, like if it can report if my A/C is on  or not, and for how long, because that gives another aspect to what the load on  the system due to the A/C. And I understand the device probably have a Gyroscope in it, else the Phone definitely has one, and some qualifier on the kind of bumpy ride if I have one, also will be an added data that will be of interest.

When the Phone is not in the car, linked to the system, the Geo positioning goes for a toss a bit, I have my maps offset from the real trip I took for the initial few days when the connectivity was at fault. May be because it could not effectively locate the current position as well as the Phone can.

Also I am not sure how to add more tags to the trip if I choose to, may be to group all my trips organized well.

The kind lady at support also told me that there is a Beta program going to come up later and if I am interested, I can be invited! I hope that will have some of these things considered along with the regional change of units.

I am very happy about the device as of now, it just goes into the background and does all the reading for me and puts in a simple chart in the phone for me to look at. I hope new features will get added to make it more useful by the time the novelty wears off:-)

Thanks team and thanks for the prompt support!

Just to add couple of points,
I have now set up the IFTTT link and is getting all my trip details loaded into an evernote note! Thats cool!

I miss the information about the Fuel level in the app. I believe it is retrievable? If it is, it will definitely a value add.
As mentioned above, an ability to tag the trip as some specific one, will be of great use. And then when I complete a trip in the same route, if it can prompt me with the same name, it will be awesome!
I noticed that the Automatic Dashboard was not working for me in Chrome and IE. It worked well on Firefox though.
Ability to define the local fuel price, and local units, I believe will be there in the Asian version?
And Geo location is also a bit off at times, though I do not hold it too much against the team. It may be a good idea though then to give an option to drag the map around a bit:)

Apple event and some thoughts

Apple had another show packed with things. I watched it with some joy and some pain and some concern.

Apple TV opening up for App store was a breath of fresh air for me. It was too constrained as it is locking up not playing many of the media formats and not able to access a network storage to directly play content. I had to always have some iOS or Mac OS machine on for my media player to work:( But now with the Plex and VNC actively jumping into the fray to build apps, I am hoping I can soon shelf the WD TV or atleast use it else where as a second player.

The Siri Remote was interesting. I am not a great gamer so did not get intrigued by that feature. But having Siri to control home is of interest to me as you could have understood already from my blogs. What I am not clear is if the HomeKit is already baked into the puck and do I have to keep pressing the Siri button on the remote to initiate the Siri or there is some way I can have it always On. Because for a media room it may be fine to have the button pressed, but for some other a hands free mode is very useful.

Then there was the iPad Pro. I always liked the ability to digitally draw and mark things up and the Pencil is right there. But it also meant that apple is slightly forking off from Job's ideas. The large iPad and the pencil were two was probably a sign of days to come. Also we saw a bigger spotlight on Microsoft and Adobe than couple of years before. Is that bad in itself? No. But something tells me the tracks are about to shift.

It looked to me that Johny Ive is a person of great skills and being now at a plateau where there is no one to really push him, he may be a bit lost with motivation. I feel that Ive is missing Jobs to push him. Now that Jobs not around, I would hope Ive will do it to himself and continue the legacy. 

One more time

Come September 9th, Once again Tim Cook will walk on to the podium and unleash a lot of applause.

Last time, I had guessed Apple TV will be announced, but that was not to be. But this time every one is sure it will be and I am not going to question it.  My request for the features remain  what it was last time, so nothing much to add there.

I am also guessing iOS9 and El Capitan will be available for public. Now, that is a very conservative list. But I am really eager to see what the Apple TV and Homekit will bring to the foray!

View from the top

Branto Orb is a new 360 Degree rotatable and pan-able camera which probably apt to be kept on  the roof to look around for you. This alone is a great feature for a security camera. This indigogo project does not stop at that.
Unlike Canary, they are planning to allow two way communication. Both Audio and video. No, they do not have an inbuilt screen. But they support audio video streaming protocol to channel it to Airplay ready or  Miracast capable devices to stream it up to a TV or audio system.
They also add the capability for this device to send IR signals so that it can control devices in the room. Normally I do not like devices to club diverse features into one since this kills the flexibility big time. This is one exception. Since enabling the dump devices like old TVs and A/Cs which do not have WiFi and Automatable capabilities is a big plus which goes OK with the camera. If you have a security camera in a room where A/C is there or TV is there, or some other device working only with IR only remote control, this brings in the automation to them. And chances are for some time,  this will be the case in many countries.

Second thoughts on Smart things

I always had a bias against Smartthings. May be I did not like the look of it or may be some thing else. But lately I just happened to look in detail about its capabilities and what is coming up in V2.0. I should say I am having second thoughts. The following are the main points which made me re think

1. Integration with SONOS. This is a major one for me.Having committed to SONOS in big way for my distributed audio system. What Smartthings allows me to do is to have my alerts and event responses broadcast-ed via the flexible speaker configurations that SONOS can provide. This can really give a voice to SONOS. SONOS being not very open to all the other vendors at the moment, I am not able to identify any other means this can be achieved cleanly.
2. Integration with other Automation gadgets I have. Philips Hue, August Lock etc are few which are there in the long list. This vast coverage of devices which are leading in their own capabilities is a definite plus for me. August Lock integration will be introduced in the new version of the Hub via Bluetooth. Now that does raise few questions to me as in positioning of my Hub in relation to the door etc. But that will have to wait until the 2.0 hits the shelf. Then there is the possible integration with Roomba using Thinking Cleaner face plate. This is a face plate add on to Roomba which will give WiFi Control to Roomba.
3. Cost. The cost of this hub is minimal. When this is probably not THE reason for me as its only one component we are talking about, it is definitely a reason.
4. Integration to Apple HomeKit Platform. The reason I am holding back on any hub is mainly because I want to know how HomeKit may play in the field and what does it leave open. I find Siri Integration that HomeKit brings forth a definite plus as with this and the SONOS it gives a life and personality to the Home. I am still holding back until the details of HomeKit is out, but this hub does show promise since it has capability to integrate the myriad of gadgets which  may not naively work with Apple HomeKit.

Voice your SONOS

Talked about in Many forums, I finally decided to try SONOS voice app. Its a third party app with a very simple interface and all it does it mute your music for the time you talk through the App. You can play the audio with the flexibility of the SONOS system. Any room, All the rooms or Some rooms. Upto that its sheer bliss.

The only down side I see is that the starting of the app takes a bit of time and the volume for some reason I see as low compared to the music volume.

The app takes almost the same time as the SONOS app takes to start up so you cannot really complain about it. All the discovery of speakers process may be taking time.

Volume is a bit of a let down. At 50% level I can hear the music playing in my bedroom upstairs, standing down stairs where as at the same level the audio is barely audible next room. May be issue with my voice:-)

The final glitch is the feedback. If you try to use the Voice in a room where you are trying to play it, there will be the audio feedback. The developer of the app says something to effect that its to do with  the buffering that SONOS forces on the feeds.

This is where I was wondering why SONOS them selves not updating their app to include voice into it. They have the API which others are using, they have the App. It will give a nice integrated interface. I am not even complaining why they are not giving a Karaoke when they have the technology to control the Vocals (SONOS Bar can boost the Audios and also it can drop the volume of Bass. May be this will work in only 5.1 Channel recording, I am not sure. But even simple apps are there which can identify the vocals and trip down that some what) since I think this may not be a sure hit solution, and they may not want to do a half baked one. BTW, a nice addition could be an integration with some Lyrics server and download and show the Lyrics on the app if that is possible!

So SONOS, I hope you do come up with the Public Announcement Option for SONOS!

What I would like to see from Apple Eco system this year

WWDC is just around the corner and I am sure Tim Cook will not have enough time to re plan just because I published my wish list:-) But I would put in what I would like to see so that in case it aligns with what really happens, I can feel happier:-)

1. Its anybody's guess looking at the graphics  of the WWDC that "Apple TV encircled with many objects" is the theme. So I would safely guess the HomeKit enabled Apple TV will be announced.  Tightening the loose ends on HomeKit and HealthKit will be in the cards. If we have all those individual remotes merging into a unified interface at some place, I will be very happy.
2. I would hope that media streaming options will converge. What I mean is either Apple start supporting some of the other competitions' protocols (My interest specifically on SONOS) or others align with Homekit. When Airplay does look a great way, its not the only way. So I would be happy if Apple opens up a bit here.
3. Workflow being integrated into iOS. With the HomeKit coming up strongly, ability to build up workflows will have to be native to iOS rather than a third party implementation. This way, Apple can also choose to allow certain level of integration with the Phone app and Message app. This will greatly improve the flexibility and scope of automation.
4. Siri will have to develop further. One challenge we face now is that even for operations which can be done locally, we need a connection to be active. This may not be practical if we want to use Siri for Home automation. I may be in basement and may be my WiFi is not working for internet, but I may still want to control the in house appliances; Using Siri:-) The challenge is that Siri requires a net connection to understand me in the first place. Not sure if that can be brought down in to say my Apple TV so that the local functionality can still work with out the internet round trip.
5. Apple should show some love to Indian Crowd:-) Especially in Maps. If they cannot, they should atleast allow user to choose which mapping app should be set as default mapping app. That way we can use google map when we cannot use Apple Maps.Even though I can still start the Google Maps from the App, having Siri to find my way using Google Maps is something I will be grateful to have.
Thats it for now, Tim! I am sure you can manage this! What are friends for afterall?

Know your own power

I had been looking around for a device which can measure the power consumption at home and which can report back as much detail as possible. More than taking away the shock Electricity Bill delivers, I wanted to be aware of the power consumption as it happens and may be some of the event triggers can be utilized too. Like when say the power draw crosses a point when I do not expect it to.

There are solutions which requires you to plug in your appliances via the device into the mains and it in isolation or in conjunction reports the data. These works out cheaper. But then there is no triggering any action based on it. There is no consolidation. And there is the pain of having multiple plugs all to be connected all over the house. With multiple layer of adapters the connections across the house becomes painful.

Then there are other devices which could measure the consumption based on the current drawn from mains using CTs. This was less intrusive and could be done in one place. The device also had ability to set alarms for levels of consumption to alert you of you exceeding quota of usage.

This was a definite improvement to what I started off with. But then came Smappee. A much smarter device which can measure the consumption using the CT like the device I talked about before, but also could report it as triggering actions using IFTTT integration. And it is going to work with Homekit too!

This itself was a big leap for me! But the fun does not stop there. What I was missing in the previous solution of not able to know which device is drawing the power immediately, is taken care of in Smappee! They use some complex algorithm internally to understand the power usage signature of different appliances from the entry point. Then they report the power consumption split into these buckets of appliances. Well, they cannot do it to all individual points, as some DNA of power consumption is indistinguishable, but they can do a fairly good job. (Is it my personal experience? No. I have not used it. Its right from the site and other reviews! But I intend to find out!)

Its available in India, and it can work with Solar panels also! Which means, they can report how the power is being used from the power generated on the Solar end of my supply! That is now the icing on the top. If it all works the way it is stated to work, I will be a happy camper!

Only time can tell!

Ray the remote

There had been universal remotes from quite some time. Some which needs us to map key by key and some which allows us to map using a device ID. There had been some with Digital display and some which were apps lying on your iOS/Android devices.

I have tried a few. Some worked fine with limited capability. Like the STB remote for the Satellite TV which allows me to map my TV remote also into it, and Universal Remote, a device from gear4.

The STB remote worked fine, though with a bit of effort, when I had the TV remote from which the universal remote could learn. But recently when I had to connect to a TV for which the Remote was not working anymore, I ran to a dead end.

The Universal Remote, Unity remote from gear4 would have worked well (even though the app was not very good) provided they had used WiFi in place of Bluetooth. Now the challenge is that the batteries get drained so fast and by the time you are ready to use it ,

I hear there are other remotes which work well, but end of the day I feel the flexibility lacks in a fixed keyboard remote as you have to have a lot of keys there.

This is the area where Ray is relevant. Ray tries to have some of the common functions as physical buttons as volume control etc and the rest all as soft buttons. It also tries to integrate some of the old Google TV into the remote. With support for many STBs including what is in India, they are making it extremely interesting for the subcontinent. So now you can see detailed program guide as well as additional information about the program. It can learn from your choices and suggest more programs for you. (Some of the wish list items I had in another post in this blog:-)

I also happened to see a demo given by Ray to recode which showed some stability issues with the remote which may be a deterrent if that slips into the final product. May be a little too early to start worrying about it.

In India especially the demography of people who watch the TV may find it a little too techie to start with, but if the device really simplifies the remote by adding snap shots of the program and name in native language etc, it can really be an interesting product to have. I will keep a watch on this to see if I want to get one. As I said earlier, a lot may depend on what Homekit finally grows on to be.

Kitchen Farming and technology

I love the concept of harvesting your vegetables from your own backyard. Why I do not do that already? Well, one is you have to spend some time with the plants, water them, understand them better, prune them in some cases, feed them and generally tend to them. Isn't that fun? Yes it is. Will you be able to do it every day? I am right on the fence on that. Not that I want to ignore, but I can forget. I can be away, I am down right lazy.

You have to remember is I am not talking about doing farming as your primary source of Income or even any source of income. Its not even going to be your only source of food. Far from it. Its about having a basket full of vegetables and fruits freshly plucked from your garden sitting on your kitchen slab atleast once a week.

I am sure many are there in my league. Now what all these can technology  address?
To start with, first thing there are quite a few sites which talk about what can be planted and how and when. There are, if you are in India, agriculture offices across the country which can help you. Or you can ask the grandma or grandpa who had done it successfully!

You can get the seeds/saplings, plant them with a small spade or some sharp stuff if its handy. You can pour the first doze of water, and you are on the way.

Watering the plants is one major act. This has to happen regularly. The drip irrigation system  can reduce the amount of water you send into each sapling enhancing its absorption. You can set an alarm which can remind you to open or close the tap. Or you can have a gadget do this for you. There is a DIY version explained here. Or you can go for one from Parrot which is a bluetooth sensor which can read four parameters like humidity, fertilizer, sun and wind and report it back to you. It can cover a small bed of plants provided they all have comparable conditions.

There are also self contained techno green house solutions in the making like Niwa of which I have my own reservations:-)

There are many others which will make you feel gardening can be easy. But the fact remains that controlling the pests and caring for the plant is a lot more personal and that is what makes it fun.

SONOS, Will you listen to these others?

SONOS, I am so used to them  playing some audio around now. Its a great feeling to be able to just search a track and play it quickly. (Inspite of the Bridge being there, I still get some drops of signals. May be due to the Internet is dropping intermittently. Slightly larger tracks are not streaming at times)

I move them around once in a while, And it comes up on play quickly again. I like that flexibility and ease.

With a lot of home automation planned, I was checking out how easy it will be to automate SONOS. When I say automate SONOS, I do not mean just play and pause a track planned before. What I mean is play the alerts through SONOS if possible dipping the track voice. Being able to use my iOS mics to announce something across into some room of choice.

SONOS Voice is an app which caters to the second use case some what. So I will have a PA system with a small app loaded into all my iOS devices. Not sure how reliable the app is, but for the time, it will do.

For the first one, things are not that easy. There is no quick way to automate SONOS. I went all over the net and some sites have some promising options. But there are none which will immediately solve it and not meant for non programmers mostly.

There are Hubs which already built in automation of SONOS into their workflows, Ninja Sphere for one.

Apple and SONOS do not have a good working relation in the past, But I do hope when the Homekit takes off, SONOS will implement the required hooks for Homekit into their App. That will make a world of difference to people who are using SONOS.

Pick your friends and foes

When you are into Gadgets, you tend to buy all sorts of stuff. Like me, I have couple of Bluetooth headsets (Bluetooth never worked for me well) One projector, A Handy Doc Scanner, A Livescribe pen, a Belkin OBD adapter, and the list goes on. Most of these, I do not use anymore. Some, I am happy I picked up.

I picked many of these stuff for not just its geeky value. I picked because I had a plan. I had a plan to use them in a business when I decide to switch. But the challenge was, until then, they had hardly any use. And some of the products had some short comings.

The Projector from Axxa was a very handy one with LED projection technology. But the built quality was very poor and soon it started having issues with connectivity. The HDMI failed first. And the color did not come through well when I connected the iPad using their connector any more and soon it started gathering dust some place.

The bluetooths, one from Plantronics, the loop broke. So I ended up not using them, and the battery lost its life and it does not charge any more to any usable state. The same issue happened with my Jaybird over the head headset. Both these had Bluetooth and had charge retention  issues after a while. May be things are better now with the Bluetooth 4.0, but as of now, I am scared off from the bluetooth headsets:)

The Handy scanner was a neat stuff which says you can scan all sorts of stuff when you are on the move. It sucks in the doc from one end and spits it out from the other and in the process scans the document. It had issues soon after I got it. The scanning  head used to get dirty and the scanning used to be all patchy. And the software accompanied also did not give too good a result.

Livescribe pens I did use for some time. But like any device with chargeable battery, it died since I stopped using it for some time in between. The specialized refills were to blame as I had to get it from US and during that time, it just stayed in  the draw.

Now, I have changed my strategy a bit. When I make large investments, I pick a platform. It has its own merits. Evaluate your platform well, and pick a product which does one thing, and that one thing well. And also see how it is open for integration to the whole story if you need it to, later.

SONOS, Philips HUE, Apple, all fall into my plan thus. There is a bit of Microsoft as in XBOX and a bit of Google as in well, google:-)

I am looking to identify one platform for my Security cameras now. There are many out there but I am not convinced about any at the moment. iSmartAlarm is very  high in the list with their iKeepCamera, but as I said, yet to take the plunge. I have looked at other products too, like iSmartThings, DropCam, Canary, (all in paper, never tried hands on yet) some are still presenting their case and some have fallen short. (DropCam for the simple reason of the heavy netusage. I do not have a 50GB upload bandwidth to plan for just a camera. Not yet)

Microsoft HoloLens

The latest and greatest from Microsoft is out and its a 3D Glass to create an Augmented reality interface for you to interact with a system to best of my knowledge.

The first impression I got is, its a good Gaming interface. The Kinect and XBox together makes a good gaming environment to me as I hate having to carry wands in my hand. Imagine now the TV also removed from the mix and the objects all hang around you, With the aptly lighted room, you can probably have a much better experience with may be part of the image on the screen and the rest of the strip spread out infront of you in virtual reality. Much more live experience. And possibility for accessories like Boots and gloves to give you feedback on contact with  other objects! The experience can be good, geek worthy, atleast!

In a real world, where do I use it? I can think of designers, Scientists, using it, with imaginary objects flying all around us as in Iron Man Design room. Again, pretty snazzy at that! e-Commerce also has a potential use.

Will I be thrilled to have a normal computer screen and windows floating around me in virtual field when I want to use it to say send a mail or deal with files like in Mission impossible or Minority Report? May be not. Again, for a social interaction scenario like Skype call or facetime call, it may be interesting. Not so much for facebook!

I understand these interfaces also can change if we have new methods to interact with the ether world. At this point, I do not fancy myself having to wear some dorky glass and acting crazy trying to grab or nudge invisible objects!

Another reason I am not betting with this is that, Microsoft do not have a history of making something like these a success. XBox was a pleasant surprise to me. And they have a very bad history of stretching their timelines beyond reason.

Google glass has come and withdrawn for the time. Not sure if it will resurface. Only time can tell where these products will lead us. If not Microsoft, lets hope that this will kindle some ideas elsewhere where it will come out as a usable product!

Wake up in a brief!

Voice Brief is an app that can read out some of the things you otherwise will be skimming through in your morning routines. I had downloaded this earlier and stopped using since I am no CEO and did not fancy my mails and facebook posts read out loud to every one around.

But that does not take away anything from the app and the idea itself. You cannot discount the easiness with which you can have the stuff read out to you when you take a bath with out having to touch your iOS device with your soapy wet hands often!

It does not give the full feel of seeing the video or image spilled all over in the social carpet, but nonetheless its an easy and quick way if you are in a hurry.

Now that I have committed myself to a SONOS for my whole home audio, I wanted to check if I can get this audio coming out of the SONOS speakers. (Even before that,  Can I have a SONOS speaker in the bathroom. I was not all in for having a speaker in the bathroom, but sometimes, it may prove to be useful, especially if you plan to have a whole house announcement system or if you do not want to miss out on any of your audio programs or would like to listen to Music in bathroom)

Straight answer is since I have a work around to airplay, I can. And Play 1 is designed to be Humidity resistant. And I understand SONOS trying to keep their service focus clearly defined.

Given all this one clean solution I would look for is to have a service which can stream audio to SONOS with this capability so that choosing that channel will give a clean solution.

I am yet to come across with such a channel, and not sure how to create one if I require to. Anyone got any ideas?

Update: I found the following two sites which gives some possible approach to this. One which tells me how to add a streaming URL to the SONOS and one which tells which is a free Streaming server. Hmm, now its about how to build a stream from your sources to read out. Will Mac have a work flow to read out all my latest mails and facebook posts and stuffs like that?

Phew! Now I have the Hue!

I was just wishful thinking about the Hue from Philips and inquired with my Co-Bro(Who has links to Philips) if we can source Hue from Singapore as it is not available in India. (Sourcing from US had its own challenges as the voltage will not match-Update: I came across some post which said Philips Hue Bulbs are 110-240 Compatible. Not sure.) He said that its not easy. I left it there as I was not fully into buying it anyways.

Then a few days later, I was told to travel to Singapore on an official matter! Hue was again getting some traction and I went and did some research. The price was double that in US as with many stuffs in Singapore is, But then I decided to take the plunge and got the starter kit!

Back in India, I connected and tried it. The kit comes with three bulbs and one connector hub which is a mandatory requirement for you to control the light except for on and off. (Was not aware of it before, But Luckily I went for the starter pack and the decision paid off) The Hub need to be connected via Ethernet port and you have to have it plugged into the power. I am not sure if this will end up having some issue if I distribute the bulbs now in the house as the individual bulbs I am not hooking explicitly to the WiFi. Some research is required to find out. Will update if I have some info on this, later/

The device worked as promised. I could turn it on and off at will, change colors using the app! A nice touch is that there is widget available to put the functionality on to the Widget screen of iPhone! I tried one of the music driven app from the app store but that did not seem to work. I might have missed out some thing so once again, will need some research on it. If it does work, it will be great if we plan any party! Disco music lights! 

Play Bar and Play Five

When I decided to go with SONOS for my distributed music, I had a long list of Speakers added to my wishlist in Amazon and I used to look back at it and wonder if I will ever get them. Now, few months down the timeline, I have most of them and they have helped me to improve my music listening practice much!

The Play1s I got first was joined by the 2 Play 5s and one Play bar recently. I connected the Play Bar to the TV and the voice was not coming:-( Then the SONOS told me to check if the Digital Audio on the TV was on. Changed the Digital Audio from Auto to PC and the audio started coming out of the Power Bar! What a relief!

Then I realized I can channel the audio from the TV to any room I want! So if I want to just push the audio when the news is playing to another room or when a song is going into yet another, it was all possible! That was an interesting feature!

I did not have the SONOS Base as I was not fully convinced of the need. Now having seen all the speakers, may be I will get one of those too some day!

Mean time, I had some challenge with the network in a room upstairs as the repeater there was dropping the connection intermittently. And I had exhausted the budget with all the other components. So I dropped a note to the Sales Head and promptly came the replay that they can ship me a Bridge free of cost! And that gift came in last week! (Thanks a lot, folks, your service is also as good as your products!) Now the network issue is kind of gone, (Unless the stream itself is slow due to my network capacity limitation)

Overall, a wonderful experience! I am so happy I went the SONOS way!