Image credit: Amazon
The Amazon Alexa skill Zillow Spotter is the latest addition to the Zigbrush family of Echo accessories. Anyone can create a Spotter — which is used to automatically alert you when it hears something new at your home — and it has become highly popular, recently receiving its very own article in the Wall Street Journal. The skill lets Spotter owners play air guitar in the house when things like dust mites arrive.
Lucky for them, we tested the skill ourselves and created an experiment for what we considered to be one of the places everyone loves to hate in your home: your garage. After some detailed research, we found three homes that make it a pleasure for any adult or adult-sized child to sit at the front door. Or any housewife, for that matter, could become the envy of her neighbours with her creativity.
These items we called out in our article were our $3,900, 3,200-square-foot home in the Sunset Ridge area of Phoenix.
The Zillow home in general is a miracle in the indoor environment. First off, there is the Humax HD home theater. The projector cost nearly as much as a house, which is absurd for what you get in return. The set up was a little haphazard but it made an interesting counterpoint to what is happening outside of the garage — the Corian countertops, the under-utilized faucets, the glowing surfaces in the bathrooms — a big picture projector lined in fake stone with a helpful PDA that allows you to stay connected, in case of emergency — on the display table.
The TV’s specs are a lot better than we originally imagined. The less expensive blue model includes LG and Samsung TVs from the same 2011 generation of televisions, combined with voice control. It’s hard to remember what we said about the sound when we tested the TV, because we couldn’t really tell how good the sound quality was, but it definitely captured the high-impact action on the screen in broad daylight.
In the garage, our second test property is a much more modest home. The Zillow listing calls it a “beautiful home with unique master bathroom” and lists the house’s size at 2,200 square feet. The 40-year-old concrete garage is a bit dated and has some rusty fixings, but it still holds the family of four and all of the quirky furniture — the recliner, the bookcase, the Stuffed Bears — that makes getting ready for work a joyful adventure.
These are our first impressions:
Ooh, quivering cat. Get it out of there!
On the bookshelf, there is a survival guide on the cover and it sells for about $10.
I’ll have my $5 last straw.
Under the door is the nearest Kenmore plug for an electric engine. It smells like pure electricity.