Linksys and Belkin | How to Build a Smarter Home!

A Case Cringle Christmas, Day 4

Last updated on April 5th, 2021 at 12:09 am

Fun fact—approximately only 20% of this nation consists of parents, even fewer with young kids, so what kind of blogger would I be to exclude the other 80% from my contests? The last two days had a strong family focus with the cloud b and Pampers prize packs up for grabs, so I thought it nigh time to switch gears with some other goods!

Through 2015, I slowly found myself entering the world of tech blogging. There’s still more than enough that makes me drool at the thought of owning them—the GoPro Hero 4 Black; the Canon EF f/4L 11-24 mm lens… heck, even as a responsible adult, I probably won’t be satisfied until I get a Vitamix G-Series 780 to make my food and a Miele Complete C3 PowerPlus vacuum to clean my messes up—being a technophile is a constant struggle to optimize your world, and today’s prizes are right in line with the dream of living a life as sleek as possible!

Our ancestors would likely be dumbfounded by the sheer number of things we can do at the press of a button in 2015! We can watch our homes through portable screens that never leave our sides, telling intruders exactly where they can go via two-way communication. The computers that filled office floors; music recorded in expansive studios filled with instruments; and the encyclopedic volumes that once required dedicated bookshelf space to give us information at our fingertips—we carry all of this in our pockets without a second thought, constantly pushing the envelope on things we can do to improve our lives!

Today’s prizes include the Belkin WeMo Insight Switch and the Linksys N300 Wi-Fi Range Extender, a couple of items just about anyone can use to make their homes just that much better.

The Linksys N300 Wi-Fi Range Extender: Your Solution to the Problem of Endlessly Buffering YouTube Videos?

Though living space in my city is most definitely at a premium, I know that doesn’t speak for the rest of the nation.

A Case Cringle Christmas, Day 4—Building a Smarter Home with Linksys and Belkin!—Belkin WeMo Insight Switch—The Linksys N300 Wi-Fi Range Extender Explained

If you have a large enough house or live somewhere where your Wi-Fi signal’s reduced with too many walls and obstacles getting in its way, you’d be happy to win the Linksys N300 Wi-Fi Range Extender! Capable of extending Wi-Fi coverage up to 5000 square feet, it’s compatible with any wireless router, and will help solve the trouble with those pesky basement setups that don’t quite reach to the rest of the house!

The Belkin WeMo Insight Switch—Because Outlandish Hydro Bills Haven’t Gotten Any Cooler.

The second item is Belkin’s WeMo Insight Switch, a modern answer to the timers we’ve used to manage our Christmas lights for who knows how long. But the WeMo Insight Switch does a heckuva lot more than just tell your electronics when to turn on and off—it monitors energy consumption and cost; can send you notifications on status changes and usage; and best of all… you can control it all through your smartphone from almost anywhere long as you have an Internet connection! The possibilities are endless—kids watching too much TV? Shut it down. Convinced that one machine is running your bill too high each month? Measure it over time to make sure! Belkin’s WeMo Insight Switch is deceptively simple, but can give you control in ways you may have never thought possible!

Life is for Living—Don’t Waste it Overcomplicating Things with Outdated Solutions!

Why do things the old way when you can do so much better? I remember when I bought my first printer in a decade, stunned by how much it could do when I took it out of the box. The world’s given us no end of ways to make our lives easier in 2015—the first step is knowing the problems we need to solve.

The second? Knowing that out there somewhere is the tech you need you need to solve it.

Good luck to all who enter, and I’ll catch you on Day 5!

Until the next,

The second logo for Casey Palmer, Canadian Dad

Have you entered all the posts in A Case Cringle Christmas???

Disclaimer: Both Linksys and Belkin were gracious enough to contribute to A Case Cringle Christmas, helping me celebrate the holidays with my readers through swag they might not normally have access to!

You can learn more about Belkin on their site, or through their social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Same with Linksys who has their site, and their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts to boot!

If you need me, I’ve got a whole house of things yet to improve! You can catch me on my Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts!

By Casey E. Palmer

Husband. Father. Storyteller.

Calling the Great White North his home, Casey Palmer the Canadian Dad spend his free time in pursuit of the greatest content possible.

Thousand-word blog posts? Snapshots from life? Sketches and podcasts and more—he's more than just a dad blogger; he's working to change what's expected of the parenting creators of the world.

It's about so much more than just our kids.

When Casey's not creating, he's busy parenting, adventuring, trying to be a good husband and making the most of his life!

Casey lives in Toronto, Ontario.

51 replies on “Linksys and Belkin | How to Build a Smarter Home!”

Err. Not a whole lot, yet. I do use energy-efficient light bulbs. And I did upgrade to a digital box and dvr last year (LOVE my dvr). So I can’t say my home is particularly smart. But it’s getting better.

We are slowly getting into the 21st century, we have dimmable lights, a PVR, tablets and a smart phone!

I have those power bars that when the TV is off the other items plugged in are off as well. I have some lights on timers and a programmable thermostat. Not sure how smart that makes it but I know if feels a bit smug at times 🙂

I find when you get something new in tech, you have to buy something to go with it and then you have to buy something else to go with that and it never ends, until the next new techie thing comes along, and it starts all over again, have a good one Casey 🙂

We don’t really do much, my home is in no way smart :s
Energy efficient light bulbs and a dvr.. that about it.

I do have an ipad, but I have to be near the router in the office to be online which defeats the purpose of being able to use it anywhere else in the house, like in the kitchen or in the family room hooked up to the tv to stream and such.

We have installed a programmable thermostat. Does that make me smart? I hope so. Thanks for the giveaway

We bought a heat sensor for a smartphone to tell where our home was losing heat, and we have programmable thermostats.

I use a timer for Christmas lights and don’t have a smart thermostat but turn it down at night and when leaving.

Oh man, we have the “pesky basement setup.” Upstairs wifi can be spotty, so the range extender would be fab. I’m certain we could be more energy efficient, the smart switch would really help with figuring out where our usage could be managed better. I’m still gunning for the smart houses from the scifi stories – y’know, like Iron Man’s house where you just talk to it and it tells you what’s up. 🙂

we do our best to make sure we don’t have old electrical items we have changed all extention cords, and powerbars

Our apartment is not very “smart”. I wish we could have programmable thermostats, programmable lights and a smartlock that you can lock with your phone. Those features would make it quite efficient and save on costs too.

I don’t have a smart thermostat, lights or tv or anything else like that yet but I do have wireless speakers and streaming devices throughout my house.

we don’t really do a lot. we use energy efficient lightbulbs and recycle as much as possible. My family is all connected online one way or another.

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