All tagged Smart Home

Does it Track my Every Move? Reviewing Kickstarter-backed Connected Chess Board Chessnut Air

Life-Sparring is not a Chess website; it is a self-improvement project disguised as a blog and a podcast. However, I shared my love-hate relationship with Chess not so long ago in a blog post called "My Personal Queen’s Gambit," and Chess is for me not just a game but also a way to assess and challenge my mental capabilities.

If you follow Life-Sparring, you also know that I am a sucker for connected (smart) devices and have been multiple times dubbed into backing promising devices on Kickstarter with very mixed reviews.

My most recent Kickstarter acquisition was the Chessnut Air, a smart Chessboard connecting via Bluetooth to an iOS or Android device, and from to the two biggest online chess providers, Chess.com and Lichess.

After receiving my Chesssnut, I did a well-received spontaneous "dirty" unboxing video. The views and reactions encouraged me to follow up with a more thorough review. I try my best to cover as much ground as possible and answer any questions posed as a reaction to the unboxing video. Enjoy!

Quarantined in Stale Air? Measuring and Managing Indoor Air Quality with the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ – The Air That I Breathe Part 1

Thanks to the still rampant COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 pandemic out there, Easter is just one of the many things in early 2020 that has been moved into the safety of your home, just like Marathon running, children’s education and office work. With the time spent at home massively increased, new things start to matter: for example indoor air quality. So, I decided to dedicate one Life-Sparring Round to indoor air quality and the setup we run in our crib, using the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ air quality sensors.