Last week when I went to send my Sunday Scene newsletter, I found out I was blocked from sending you emails. In moving to my new email setup, migrating my existing subscribers had flagged my account for additional review. So last week's Sunday Scene published on my new website, but couldn't show up in your inbox. I'm sorry for this and you can read the newsletter on my website.

On the bright side, everything should be fixed now. The new setup at Ghost makes it much easier for me to send this newsletter to you on into the future.

With the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, this was a pretty quiet smart home and Apple news week, but there are some additional updates I didn't get to from last week that I still think are worth your attention.

Avia’s Aliro Loc

On November 18th Avia announced a lock that supports the Aliro UWB standard from the CSA. This is the first lock publicly announced to support the Aliro UltraWide Band standard. Avia claims in the press release that “The Avia Aurora smart lock is currently in development, with a full product launch to be announced later this year.” Something smells optimistic about that timeline. Other companies will surely announce Aliro locks at CES, and Avia is trying to get some time in the limelight ahead of the wave.

That said, I’ve previously tested Avia’s US HomeKey lock as part of a sponsorship, and I was impressed. Whenever they are able to get this new version out to people for testing, I'd LOVE to try it and let you know more.

Aqara M200

Also from the previous week, Aqara announced the M200 hub. This is designed to replace the rock-solid, long-standing M2 hub. While the M3 has some nice upgrades around local control, I think the M200 hub will be the new one most people should buy. It’s limited to 40 Zigbee devices but can simultaneously support 40 Thread devices. This is a new upgrade over M2, which didn’t support Thread.

Hisense PT1

I just wrapped up some testing and filming for my impressions video on this projector and it looks great so far. An ultra-short-throw projector will always have a few areas where it’s not quite as good as a short or long-throw projector, like the top corners of the video frame being slightly softer. But this model’s picture is still very impressive for the price. I’m burying the lead, though. This is the first UST projector I’m aware of that supports Apple Home and AirPlay 2. It’s also still $500 off for Black Friday at $2499.

The Schedule

A week ago, I also published my round-up of Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. For this week, I have an especially spicy video in the editing phase that you will hopefully enjoy soon.

I hope you have a great rest of your Sunday,
Eric