This Halloween, there are sure to be plenty of unfamiliar faces coming to your door and looking for candy. When they arrive, you can be ready to greet them with a scare and some treats thanks to some new tricks that August’s line of smart locks and doorbell cams just learned. The products now have new support for Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT.
If you’re a dedicated Android user or have a Google Home in your house, then the new capabilities for Google Assistant are sure to appeal to you. You can unlock your door for trick-or-treaters (or anyone who you might want to let in) with your voice. All you have to say is, “Hey Google, unlock the front door.” Google Assistant will ask you to confirm the security code, which you can set in the Google Assistant app. August and Google Assistant also already work together to lock the door, provide you with a lock status and a door status.
When a visitor shows up at your front door looking for some candy, you can get notified via your voice assistant of choice when you have the August Doorbell Cam Pro. If you use Alexa, the AI will announce, “Someone is at the front door” when someone rings your doorbell. Alexa can also be used to create custom routines like saying a particular message, playing a song, or changing the lighting of any of your connected lights. It makes for a great way to automate your greetings for your Halloween guests.
You can get your Google Assistant in on this feature by opening your Google Assistant app, going to Settings, opening Home control, and linking your August account to Google. Once completed, you’ll be able to activate the visitor announcement feature.
Finally, if you like setting up commands with IFTTT, then you’ll love the new integrations with the popular app for creating chains of simple conditional statements. You can create an unlimited number of automated commands with the tool and your August lock. You can set it up to trigger your lighting systems when someone rings your doorbell, or to push notifications to your phone, or even play a song on your connected sound system. The possibilities are pretty much endless.
Outdoor security cameras are not always practical if you live in an apartment or rental. Drilling into an exterior wall may be off-limits, while pointing a regular indoor camera through a window can create another problem once reflections start showing up after dark.
Baseus is trying to solve both issues with the new PrimeSentinel W1, a $69.99 security camera designed specifically to monitor the outdoors through glass. It mounts directly to a window without drilling and uses a 4K Starlight sensor with an F1.0 aperture for full-color monitoring during the day and at night.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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