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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and Chris discuss affordable Ford electric vehicles, Apple’s WWDC announcements including a new Siri and changes to Liquid Glass design, and more.
Chris mentioned Ford’s CEO being late actor Chris Farley’s cousin. Here is a picture of them:
“News Pick of the Week” with Ralph Bond
These days there’s a lot of excitement about emerging Wi Fi 7, which has a theoretical transmission maximum of 46 gigabits per second, though real world speeds are much lower. Ralph Bond says there’s an even newer technology in the works that could offer a huge data transmission speed boost.
Read more here.
Charlie in Miami, Florida asked: I have been adding smart home devices over the years, and have tried to always choose devices that I can control remotely over WiFi. The problem is some devices that I have are Bluetooth control only, and they are devices that don’t have suitable WiFi enabled counterparts. I have been trying to find for a few years now some sort of device that I can connect to my home WiFi network that I could then connect to when I am not home, and it would somehow allow me to connect to those Bluetooth devices. I have found devices that do this for IR remote controls that use IR blasters that you are able to control via WiFi, I have a Logitech Harmony remote control just for that function, but I cannot find anything similar for Bluetooth. The closest I have found is the “Geeni”, but it is limited to only Tuya/Smartlife devices. Any ideas?
Charlie first, were RADIO, so please consider CALLING next time so we can HEAR you! But what youre looking for is likely not a bluetooth device but a platform that can use it.
Bluetooth is less of an on/off thing and more like WiFi in that some specific data needs to be transmitted to the receiver. Like sending an email that says please do X,Y, and Z, rather than just turn the light on or off.
A platform that can likely help you with that is Home Assistant. Its open source, able to run on many devices, it works with apps that run on both Android and iOS, and it can run on a variety of devices including virtual containers.
If you are willing to run a server at home, it should be able to run on anything from a Raspberry Pi, or an old desktop and as long as that device has bluetooth you should be able to use it to send out the signals to others.
The bigger task will be remote access, but you can set it up if the same device also runs a local VPN. You could leave the ports open to connect as well without the VPN layer, it all depends on your level of comfort.
Check out home-assistant.io, they have a whole section in their documentation on connecting Bluetooth devices.
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