Tag: phone app

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Shopping Smart Home

New system streamlines your smart home to a single app

Picture this: As you drive towards your home, your mobile phone turns into a remote control, switching on household devices triggered by proximity.

Your garage door will automatically open as you approach in your car, and your lights and heating will switch on for you. Your favourite music track can play as you walk through the door, and your coffee machine can already be working away. Conversely, you can switch off all your appliances from the back seat of a taxi as you jet off on your next adventure.

Smart home appliances are no longer a futuristic pipedream, and many of us now use them in our everyday lives. Controlling everything from your phone saves significant time and space, but as we add more and more smart appliances, it increases digital clutter. Instead of searching through a drawer for a remote, we find ourselves searching through pages of apps.

After several years of development, Melbourne company Brilliant Lighting have offered a solution to this problem. With the addition of a small Nexus gateway box, you can control all your smart appliances from a single app. Their gateway system works across 500 brands, such as Sony, Philips, Apple, Samsung, and Alexa, so you won’t have to buy new products to use it.

“We’ve worked for many years to develop this app, to truly put the homeowner in complete control, and finally say goodbye to those old-fashioned remotes,” says founder Norman Levin.

Brilliant Lighting has a commitment to promote sustainability and reduce our collective carbon footprint, and they see smart homes as the next step in achieving this. With the option to turn off lights and appliances remotely, you can start controlling your carbon footprint with ease.

“These easy set-up home automation systems offer control of your lighting, electrical and security smart devices – as well as many branded household appliances – all from your smartphone,” Norman says.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to benefit from the convenience of smart home appliances. During the pandemic, one in four Australians introduced smart appliances into their home. The number of us keen to embrace the convenience and cleverness of a smart home lifestyle is growing every day.

“Even if you don’t see yourself as a techie, this app is so simple to use that you’ll wonder why you waited so long,” Norman promises.

For more information.

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Design DIY RENO ADDICT Shopping Styling

Experiment with colour before you pick up the paintbrush with Dulux ColourView

Deciding on the right hue for your room can be a daunting task, but Dulux’s new digital tool ColourView (a much-anticipated update to the Dulux Colour App), aims to make that easier.

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Encouraging homeowners to experiment with colour and reinvent their homes before they’ve even picked up the paintbrush, ColourView allows you to easily visualise how a splash of colour can create impact, softness or completely transform the mood of a space. From walls and ceilings to tabletops and craft projects, revamping a room is as easy as snap, colour and view.

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Simply select the ColourView feature in the Dulux Colour App, take a photo of a room, or upload an existing one to the app, then select a Dulux colour to virtually paint a section of the image and see ideas come to life. With the ability to experiment with more than 4,000 Dulux colours until the hue is just right, the possibility of disappointment and desire to re-paint once the job is complete, is a thing of the past.

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Incredibly easy-to-navigate, the Dulux Colour App also includes a host of existing features which equip users with the best tools and inspiration anytime and anywhere. This includes the clever Colour Capture function, which easily finds the closest Dulux colour match to any colour using the device’s camera, and Browse Colour, to discover the expansive collection of more than 4,000 Dulux hues. The Dulux Colour App also provides the latest information and images showcasing popular colour trends.

Compatible with iPhones, iPads and Android, ColourView features on the free Dulux Colour App. Download it now.

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Appliances

Save up to 30% off your air con bill with smart new app

The smart upgrade for any remote-controlled air conditioner, the soon to launch Ambi Climate by Ambi Labs, is a small, sleek, personalised system that sees your smartphone or tablet become your remote.

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Yet well that in itself is useful, the real genius part is that this device also provides a tailored AC experience, by learning from your usage patterns and remembering your individual temperature preferences. What this means is throughout the day, Ambi Climate’s algorithms combine the insights from your preferences and behaviour with those collected from sensor data in order to adjust your AC settings. It even factors in the performance level of your air conditioner. The end result? More accurate air conditioning, fewer temperature fluctuations and energy and money savings.

With the ability to save you 30 percent on AC energy consumption by minimising wasteful overcooling and temperature fluctuations, the companion app also provides you with useful energy saving notifications that let you know when it is suitable to open a window and turn off the AC, or when it’s time to clean the AC filter.

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A plug and play system that makes life easier, simpler and more enjoyable, Ambi Climate requires no hardware or specialist installation, just plug it in, connect to WiFi, download the app and watch it work with your existing AC. Available to buy via their Kickstarter page for the current price of US$99, it took only nine hours for Ambi Labs to bypass their funding goal of US$25,000. Now, with over US$80,000 raised, production has begun, with early bird backers expected to receive their unit by November.

Check out this simple infographic below to learn how you can save with Ambi Climate:

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Furniture Homewares

The app that’s changing the way you shop for bespoke and vintage pieces

Sisi, Will and Fei

A Mad Men obsession combined with a need to furnish his new apartment saw Will Fan go on a mad hunt in search of an industrial 60s lamp and a Don Draper-esque office drinking cart. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t easy; eBay and Gumtree meant sifting through used mattresses and cheap imports and weekends became drives around Sydney checking out questionable leads.

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What became abundantly clear to Will, was Sydney had a very scattered group of boutique bricks-and-mortar sellers, collectors listing on eBay and standalone online craftsmen. These were people selling vibrant bespoke designs and revived vintage pieces who didn’t really have an online presence. Not only was there no go-to place for everyone to connect, there was also no easy way for buyers or enthusiasts to find them.

So, Couchelo was born. The recently launched app is a simple to use, curated online marketplace, where only the best items from the most interesting sellers are available in one place. “It is about using updated technology to help a niche market become more accessible to appreciation,” explains Will.

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Enlisting the help of friends Fei Yao and Si-Si Dai, Will and the team are self-claimed “design industry outsiders” but that’s the exact reason they wanted to create Couchelo, to help make it easy for people like them to find amazing décor.

Still in its early days, the Couchelo app is in its beta phase, but as its popularity grows, so will the complexity of the app. “What we love about it now is the simplicity of scrolling through photos of the beautiful pieces in your nearby location,” says Will. “Yet as the number of items for sale on Couchelo grows, you will start to see updates for new features including search, décor categories and even exciting recommendations.”

Sisi, Will and Fei
Si-Si, Will and Fei

While it is currently Sydney-based, Couchelo’s sights are set much higher. “We want to showcase our favourite home-grown boutiques and designers to the world. To do this, we need to start bringing all these independent creatives in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other design cities on board. We also want to work collaboratively with the 160,000 design professionals in Australia to create a curated marketplace with a collection of unique furniture and homewares.”

For more information.