Robot vacuums, Zens travel charger, & Bird Buddy review

HomeKit Insider

Lots of new smart home products, an innovative charging system, security concerns, and much more home automation news, all on this week's jam-packed episode of the Homekit Insider podcast.

This week, Level Lock introduced its latest piece of hardware, a smart video doorbell. But unlike its other hardware, this is designed for shared dwellings such as apartment buildings.

We also saw Ring settle with the FTC over privacy violations stemming from its smart home cameras and doorbells. Ring was forced to shell over $5.8 million for allowing its employees to have unfettered access to customer's recordings.

Finally, in the news, we saw several new smart home vacuums. Roborock released the new S7 Max Ultra and the budget-friendly Q Revo.

Ecovacs wasn't being left out with its new Deebot T20 Omni which will be available later this month and is the first product from the company to include a mop that will automatically rise when a carpet is detected.

We took some time to review two products in this episode, both the Bird Buddy — a bird feeder with an integrated camera — and the Zens MagSafe 2-in-1 travel charger.

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Based in Columbus, Ohio, Andrew O'Hara has spent the last eight years embedded in all aspects of the digital space from leading digital marketing teams to front-end web development and design. He started producing vid...