A Little Surprise, A Good Buy And One Not So Good

I took a day off from blogging yesterday just for the heck of it. My plan to cut down on the frequency of posting with my new blog hasn’t exactly turned out that way as things I find interesting to write about keep popping up most days. It’s a lot better now though as I don’t feel any pressure at all to write a daily post now that I’ve broken the evil “daily blog spell”.

Here’s the ‘Surprise’ - Mason’s first steps into the arms of his excited Mama!

Mason’s first steps were captured on Carrie’s iPhone and are we ever happy about that. They’re just small tentative steps but he’s now getting more confident each day and starting to go for longer walks all on his own. Looking at the short video clip it’s plain to see Mason is quite pleased with himself but Carrie even more so. She really gets a kick out of her little boy and just loves him all to bits!

A Good Buy - Coleman Double High Queen on sale at Canadian Tire for $69

We’ve been watching for sales of Queen size air beds for a while and spotted this Coleman Queen with electric pump on sale at Canadian Tire for just $69 (reg. $120). It was the last day of the sale so Paulette and I, along with Rylie of course, whipped into Duncan and bought one. We have a single-wide Coleman already but our house is going to be full of family in a few weeks and even with the 5’er and 2 extra bedrooms in the house we figured we’d still need more sleeping accommodation.

A Not So Good Buy - Belkin WeMo Insight Switch – 2 Thumbs down on this one

If you’ve been reading my blog lately then you know I’ve been quite interested in the new crop of ‘home automation’ products like the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm. It just seems to me that these Wi-Fi capable devices could be extremely handy for us RVers when we’re far from home as they allow us to control and monitor equipment right from our smartphones or tablets. I thought I’d give the Belkin Wi-Fi light switch a try to check it out.

The WeMo app was nice and user friendly – when it could talk to the device!

A lot of companies are going to be rushing home automation products to market in the months to come to try and compete with Google’s Nest brand. Nest has quickly established itself as super-reliable and extremely stylish, which is only fitting as both of Nest’s founders worked for Apple and were instrumental in the development of the iPhone. Steve Jobs desire for functionality as well as beauty seems to have rubbed off on Nest. I’m sad to say the same cannot be said about Belkin’s Insight Switch.

Quite simply, Belkin’s switch is not ready for prime time. I bought one on sale for $39 a few days ago and returned it a day later for a full refund. I wouldn’t recommend this product to anyone right now – great concept but poor performance. According to Belkin’s promotional material:

“The Wi-Fi enabled WeMo Insight Switch connects your home appliances and electronic devices to your Wi-Fi network, allowing you to turn devices on or off, program customized notifications and change device status - from anywhere.”  I just wanted to be able to program lights to turn off and on when we’re away.

The Wi-Fi connect process was unnecessarily confusing and cumbersome. It took me about an hour just to connect the thing to my home network and even then the iPhone App still wouldn’t recognize the device. After doing 2 consecutive firmware upgrades and resetting the Insight Switch to Factory Mode all seemed well – it was working as advertised. I downloaded the iPhone App and all seemed well as the device showed up on my network and appeared to be o.k.

To test it, I plugged a lamp into the switch and I was able to turn the lights on and off using my iPhone. Next, I used the app to easily program the lights to turn on and off at times I specified. Perfect – it worked and I thought I had a winner. Not so fast! A few hours later the Insight Switch lost Wi-Fi contact with my router and was useless. Belkin’s help pages had various suggestions like “yes, this can happen so just reset the switch”.  Seriously? How about fixing the dumb thing? Two thumbs down!!

Thanks for visiting!