Plenty of stuff in the consumer electronics market out there that makes you think “What would I ever use that for? No thanks.” Then you somehow come in possession of it and it becomes the most useful thing in the world.
After having a new home built and doing the final walkthrough the builder told me “oh yeah, your garage door opener can connect to your wi-fi and you can get a cell phone app for it.” “Hmm,” I thought. “Sounds pretty useless. Why mess with an app when a remote clicker is so much easier. Oh well.” But I downloaded the free app just for the heck of it.
It’s since become one of the most useful gadgets I own. I’ve used it for the following:
-Has a lockdown mode. If your garage door(s) are left open after a chosen time of day it closes them. Keeps me from accidentally leaving the garage open all night.
-Can get open/closed status remotely. If I leave the house in a rush and can’t remember if I closed the garage door the app will tell me if I left it open. And if I did I can close it.
-Combined with my cars remote start I can warm my car in the morning from my kitchen. Open the garage with the app and start the car 5 minutes before leaving.
Can give access to my home remotely. Because the garage is attached and I leave the garage/house entry door unlocked, I can let people in when I’m not there. Had a contractor friend who was going to fix some plumbing while I was at work. Told him to call me when he got to my house. He got there and I opened the garage for him to give him access.
Same when a neighbor called while I was on vacation to say there was a large package on my front step. I opened the garage and told him to leave it inside.
Any gadgets you found indispensable but not until after you got them?
Keyless entry/start on my car. I think I posted before how stupid I thought this. Thought keys were a perfect technology - tho I had remote start on past cars.
W/ my newer car (4 years) In never have to take the key out of my pocket. Not at all necessary, but I sure got used to it. Only issue was 1x when the battery died and I had to figure that out.
Garage door openers. Never parked in a garage until the last house. With a garage door opener, garages are great.
Keyless is nice.
Little one as I’m a DIY guy. Smartkey locks by Kwikset, It allows you to install a new dorr lock and key it to match the others in the house. A huge savings over a locksmith and a huge time and frustration savings over trying to rekey a lock manually. (Yes, I’ve done that before.)
Bluetooth for pairing my phone to my car. I don’t spend a lot of time talking on my phone and even less while I’m driving. However, I was driving somewhere one day and my phone rang. I could hear it, but couldn’t find it. After a few seconds, I realized it was in my trunk (in my jacket pocket). Well, hit the ‘answer’ button on the steering wheel and I didn’t have to stop and dig it out of my trunk.
I also had one case where it was cold or raining or something when I was leaving work. When I got to my car I realized I left my phone inside. I pulled around the building so my car was physically close enough to my office (as the crow flies) for it to pair with my phone, called work and asked someone to run it out to me. The look on her face when she handed it to me and said ‘wait, how’d you call without your phone?’ was funny.
Along these lines, and this is probably more of an advantage for people that keep their phones in their purses instead of pockets, when I get into my car, I can see on the dashboard if my phone is with me or if I left it inside.
Back-up camera on a car. I always thought it was nice but totally unnecessary until my most recent car came with one. Now it is a must have for any new car I will purchase.
It’s almost scary how quickly you get used to those. I ignored mine for quite a while, but these days, on the rare occasions that I find myself driving someone else’s car, I’ve caught myself backing up and just staring at the radio or AC controls where the screen should be. I’ve also twice almost been hit by someone who was backing up using only the screen and not actually looking around the vehicle.
Personally, I try to stick to using them to get some idea if it’s safe to back out of a parking spot when I have bigger cars/trucks next to me that I can’t see around. My car (a Honda Civic) is very low to the ground and just about anything next to me limits what I can see. It’s even worse at places like Home Depot where there’s a lot of vans and pick up trucks.
I kind of scoffed at my wife buying a Magic Bullet ™ blender when we had a full-sized blender already. But over the years we have used the Magic Bullet roughly 10,000 times as frequently as we ever used the regular blender.
Question on the garage door app: can it be set up as a location thing? Like when your phone gets within x feet from the garage it will open, so it’ll be opening when you pull into the driveway.
The app I love is the Nest. I keep my house pretty cold while I’m at work, but I’ll phone the Nest and have it warm up the house while I’m driving home. (I work odd hours, so the schedule doesn’t always work.)
Texting. I was very late in the game with that. If you need to tell me something, just call me! I’m precisely the opposite now, hate phone calls.
I was an early-adopter of GPS however and I can’t imagine how I got along without it. Well, I can. I never went far away unless it was right by a major highway.
When driving, it isn’t better. However, when I’m in bed and want to check to make sure it’s closed, it’s very nice. If I want to open it for someone when I’m at work, it does that too. I don’t use it often, but I like having the option.
Latex exam gloves. I bought a few boxes early on in the pandemic. Initially I regretted the purchase, but I now wear them in the kitchen pretty often. Tossing a salad with my hands, chopping onions and garlic, making meatloaf and forming the loaf freehand, etc.
I’d almost sooner have a cooled steering wheel. I mean, I know in either case it warms/cools within a few minutes anyways. But, at least for me, I have a harder time gripping the wheel when it’s 100+ degrees rather than when it’s below freezing.
Also, the stick shift in my current car has a decorative metal cap that gets scorching hot in summer. It also gets, and stays very cold in winter. I suspect even though it’s decorative it’s screwed into something metal that goes down through the body of the car to the transmission. Even after driving for a while and the interior of the car is warmed up, that little cap stays cold.
