I wanted a doorbell that respected my privacy: livestream on demand, local recording I controlled, and no mandatory cloud subscription. What I ended up building is a privacy-first smart doorbell using a Raspberry Pi that serves an RTSP stream locally, records video to a local drive, and integrates...
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How-to
I recently had to consolidate three different Google accounts' Fit histories...
Reviews
I tested a bunch of budget true wireless earbuds and dug into the real-world...
Reviews
I spend a lot of time on the road testing chargers, cables and laptops, so...
Wearables
I get asked a lot whether you can cobble together hospital-grade SpO2...
I spend a lot of time on the road testing chargers, cables and laptops, so I’ve learned what actually matters when you’re trying to charge a MacBook Air quickly without trashing the batteries in your phone and tablet over a multi-day trip. The...
I get asked a lot whether you can cobble together hospital-grade SpO2 monitoring at home with a cheap fingertip pulse oximeter and a budget smartwatch. As someone who spends more time than is strictly healthy testing wearables and measuring accuracy...
I get this question a lot: can you reach your Home Assistant instance from outside your home network without handing your keys to a cloud vendor or paying for a managed VPN? Short answer: yes. There are several practical ways to do it that keep...
I spent a week carrying a Pixel Fold as my primary photo-editing workstation to see whether a modern foldable can actually replace a laptop for a full, desktop-grade photo workflow on the go. I’m talking RAW capture import from an SD card or...
I spend a lot of evenings crouched on cold grass, phone mounted on a cheap tripod, trying to squeeze usable night-sky shots from devices that were never designed as dedicated astrophotography tools. If you’ve got around £300 to spend and want the...
I’ve been carrying the Google Pixel Fold as a daily device for several weeks now, and one question keeps coming up in DMs and comments: can the Pixel Fold handle pro-level photo editing and layer-based workflows on the go? I pushed the Fold...
I’ve been wearing both a Garmin Epix Gen 2 and an Apple Watch Ultra for weeks, pushing them through multi-hour trail runs, long Alpine days, and multi-sport sessions that include laps in open water and hours on gravel. If you’re deciding which...
I run a lot of camera tests at Wcetesting Co, and one question keeps coming up: how can you keep local, private backups of your Arlo and Nest cameras without paying for cloud subscriptions? I’ve worked through this by combining honest checks on...
I wanted a private, low-cost way to store footage from my smart home cameras without paying for cloud subscriptions or trusting a third-party service. What I ended up building is a simple local backup server using a Raspberry Pi and inexpensive...
I get asked this a lot on Wcetesting Co: can a refurbished iPhone 12 still deliver reliable battery and camera performance after two years of heavy use? I spent the last month running a hands-on evaluation of a refurbished iPhone 12 that had been on...