AlexaPowered

One of the biggest barriers to running a fully smart home remains the reliance on smartphone apps and voice assistants. Setting up devices and learning how to use them is one thing, but making sure everybody in your home – not to mention visitors – can access the controls, is another.There have been some strides made toward solving this, but now Amazon has released a device that – assuming you have an Alexa-powered smart home – could be the missing piece of the puzzle.The Echo Hub keeps track of all your home’s smart…

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and sometimes you just want to stay at home and drink in silence. There’s no judgment here, but a night in doesn’t mean you have to serve yourself, not when a bit of over-the-top engineering can turn a side table and your favorite voice assistant into a passable bartender.Bartending was long ago added to the list of jobs that robots could one day take over, but while we’re not quite at the point where Boston Dynamics’ ATLAS is tossing shakers through the air like…