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The post Smart Home Automation at IFA 2018: What’s New and What’s Hot? appeared first on BardTech . It’s been years since smart technology ushered in a new age of home comfort, but the best home automation offerings at IFA 2018 are pushing things to the next level. From thermostats to security cameras and beyond, we went to Berlin to see it all first hand. In this article, we’ll keep you on top of the hottest and most interesting smart home products and announcements that we come across. Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera The Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera ( available on Amazon ) distinguishes itself from other smart security cameras in its advanced object recognition. Rather than recording all the time, or sporadically recording any time a leaf blows by, it only triggers recording when it sees people, animals, and cars. As for the recording itself, the Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera can record locally to microSD (8GB card included) or remotely to Dropbox or even your own FTP server. D...

The post What Is the Internet of Things? appeared first on BardTech . What is the so-called “Internet of things” and how does it differ from the regular internet we all know and love? What does “IoT” mean? Is it just a passing buzzword or is it an inevitable future that you’ll need to be aware of sooner or later? They’re all good questions! We’ll provide all the answers you seek and more. What Is the Internet of Things? Right now, the internet mainly consists of human-to-human actions: When you visit Facebook, you’re telling your browser to notify Facebook that you want to see your feed, and Facebook sends all that data back to your browser for you to see. Upon logging into WhatsApp, you’re telling your app to connect to WhatsApp and let everyone else on WhatsApp know you’re online. When you send a message, it passes through WhatsApp and WhatsApp relays it to the recipient. When you play Fortnite, your key presses and mouse movements are sent to Fortnite, interpreted and appl...

The post Court rules warrants are needed for cops to access smart electrical meter data appeared first on BardTech . You can tell a lot about what’s going on in a home from how much electricity it’s using — especially when that information is collected every few minutes and recorded centrally. It’s revealing enough that a federal judge has ruled that people with smart meters have a reasonable expectation of privacy and as such law enforcement will require a warrant to acquire that data. It may sound like a niche win in the fight for digital privacy, and in a way it is, but it’s still important. One of the risks we’ve assumed as consumers in adopting ubiquitous technology in forms like the so-called internet of things is that we are generating an immense amount of data we weren’t before, and that data is not always protected as it should be. How to save your privacy from the Internet’s clutches This case is a great example. Traditional spinning meters are read perhaps once a mo...