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Curious about Smart Thermostats? Watch us walk you through a few of our favorites in Michael’s review.

Thermostat Review:

Hi, I’m Michael and I would just like to walk you through a couple of thermostats that we’ve tried actually four thermostats that we’ve tried. I love cool gadgets so the first one I’ve got was the Nest. The Nest is a beautiful piece of industrial design but in terms of a practical piece of industrial design, it wasn’t so great. When we had it in here (in our office) it’s kind of a turn device and it sticks onto the wall. I would often find it on the ground because my 65-year-old mother in law was trying to turn it but at the same time wasn’t quite sure how it was working, it kind of works like a Blackberry the old school Blackberry, and so she was often pulling it off the wall. When I took it home, my kids were constantly turning it because it’s really fun to turn and so the Nest as a learning thermostat was learning that behavior, which is obviously not something you want to have in a thermostat, you don’t want to be learning those behaviors. So learning thermostats are good, but if you’re teaching it the wrong things like my four-year-old was, not so great. We then went to the ecobee which is a Canadian product. Very very nice Wifi, smart thermostat. .We keep it on here at the office but it’s really a premium thermostat and most thermostats are ‘set and forget’ type of things, so we don’t include it in our Kickstarter, we don’t include it in what we are giving to people, because like I said most things are ‘set and forget’ so we can support it, but if you have it and you really love it, because it does look beautiful, then that’s what we would help you support. What we do supply usually and because they’re simple and they’re Z-wave and they work really well, they are very cost effective is the radio thermostat, this one works for most HVAC systems, Heating Ventilation Air Conditioner systems, and it has multiple wires that can go into it if you have a fan, a heating coil and a cooling foil and all those other kinds of things. And for the very simple things, like if you just had an electric baseboard heater, you don’t need a $300 thermostat for an electric baseboard heater we have the style pro which is a pretty common two wire electric baseboard heater type of thermostat. That’s the reason why we use these two because they’re a lot simpler, but we can support the others as well. We don’t usually supply them to people because they are cost prohibitive. Thanks for watching our review!

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If you are a host to your guest, be a host to his dog also

- Russian Proverb (via quoteoftheday)

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Do you have a smart lock? If you're considering using them in the future, tune in for our reviews. Enjoy our review of the Sesame Lock. Cheers!

For more reviews and videos check out our YouTube page: http://ow.ly/W3K030a2pob

Sesame Lock Review:

I’d like to walk you through the Sesame Lock which is a pretty cool lock it’s very similar to the August Lock in a lot of ways in that it’s very ‘do it yourself’ where you can install it straight onto your door. The Sesame which is really neat and very easy is that it’s double sided tape so in this case, I put it right on the Mortis Lock which you can’t usually do with the August. The August would require you to put it into a deadbolt like I have for the Yale here, but the Sesame is quite easy to install because it’s just double sided tape, maybe not the most you know long term solution but it works. So I threw it on and to set it the app it’s quite easy basically it’s just a little motor that’s turning the deadbolt. The app is fairly simple to use. You can see here it’s just waiting for it to connect, it’s authenticating and then this is it locking. So the one thing you can hear is that the motor is not super strong. Now you see it’s really struggling to close it and this door is actually not perfectly aligned so when it wants to go unlock the door and honestly, most locks will have this problem. If it’s not perfectly aligned it won’t lock all the way because it’s just not going all the way into the ‘pinhole’ is what I’ll call it. So overall it’s not a bad lock it doesn’t have the same problems as the August (lock) in that it’s a really big thing to turn, it’s a little bit nicer to turn it’s a little bit more similar to this (the Yale lock). Overall it’s a decent-ish lock I wouldn’t, I mean it’s plastic that’s the other thing; this is not a long-term solution lock. It’s really a fun toy that I like to play with. But that’s my review of the Sesame Lock.

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If opportunity doesn't knock, build a better door

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Slickspaces August Lock Review

Here at Slickspaces, part of our job is ensuring that the products we provide with our software will be a long term solution for clients. In response to inquiries as to why we do not use August Locks in our installations, we have decided to share our review of the August Lock. 

Hi I’m Michael from Slickspaces and we’ve got a lot of questions about why we don’t the August Lock in our installations and I’ll sort of run through why we like it but at the same time can’t really use it. 

The biggest reason is I’m at home and the lock always has it’s face plate come off. I’ll often find it on the ground and the reason is that I have small children and their hand doesn’t really fit around this nicely to turn the lock and close it or turn the lock to open it when you’re leaving. So what ends up happening is they end up taking the faceplate off and then I find it on the ground. 

The thing we do like about it though is that you get to keep the same lock on the outside so there’s no rekeying required, but for us, that’s not great because we would rather have guest access come from the outside via a keypad. This is much easier than someone bringing their phones from Germany (or anywhere abroad) and you giving them access as a guest. The other reason is as a design it’s quite smooth. It looks really good, but the problem is then trying to get your hand around it. If you had a disability it would be really difficult because it’s so smooth. From an American Disabilities Association perspective, it’s not the greatest lock. The final problem, the reason we don’t use it, is because it has to have it’s own hub in order to talk to the cloud via wi-fi. This is the wifi I have that it comes with and it doesn’t really work with any other hubs. I think it will be working with the Wink very soon, but generally, we like to pick things that are more universal and are not always working on a standalone wifi hub. That’s our reasoning thanks for listening.

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If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Napoleon Hill (via beinchargeofyourlife)

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My passion is really around sustainability and the built environment which I’ve spent most of my life in. I was really focused on trying to replicate the hotel key where you remove the key and your lights go off I was really trying to save energy. I was actually given a gift of a cleaner for my apartment and I was hiking actually on Seymour mountain in Vancouver and I had to rush from one peak to another to try and get cell phone service in order to let my cleaner into the building and at the end of it I was like this is ridiculous there’s a better way to do this So we started working on an intercom solution and by the time we finished it we realized you know there’s only half the technology that’s necessary in order to actually get someone in the suite property we still need to fix the door problem so we started then integrating both the lock and the intercom together to create a seamless experience for both guests but also people who just need to let people into their apartment on a regular basis So we’re kind of coming at it from different angles and when we brought the two products together we realized this was an amazing vacation rental or even rental management tool This is where the marketplace is going with innovative products like Slickspaces put the guest experience in their own control. They can arrive at their own leisure they don’t need to talk to someone they don’t know that they can rely on the software to get them into the building and not have to worry about it.  Slickspaces saves me time and money in that it eliminates the need to have a human being come and meet guests in person as well owners like that because when you lock the door it will turn off any lights that a guest has left on and even toggle down the thermostat that really pays for the monthly service right there. So we’d really like your support to help make this product even better for you so that you can just make a booking and everything else is automated for you in the background.

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Hello, and Welcome to Slickspaces!

We create solutions for short-term vacation rental managers. Bringing together our love of sustainability and technology integration, we are eliminating 75% of manager workloads, while reducing energy costs, increasing security, and enhancing guest satisfaction.

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