The Smart Home Gadgets to Amp Up Your Curb AppealI tried the battery version, which does require you recharge it every couple of weeks, but the wired-in version is the top recommendation on our guide to the Best Video Doorbells.
A Better Birdhouse
I had a new-to-me problem this spring: bird invasion. A little bird made a nest in my front-door wreath without us noticing. One evening, my sister opened the door, and the bird flew out of the nest and straight into our house. After a 30-minute battle to get it outside again (and keep my cat from eating it), it wasn’t until we saw the bird fly off the door again the next day that we realized it was calling our home its home, too.
If this is a common problem at your house, our resident bird-gear tester Kat Merck has a solution: a smart nesting box. Birdfy makes a few different smart bird feeders we like for bird-watching, and the Nest Duo is a birdhouse that lets you watch the birds while they nest inside of it. It’s a slim, attractive box that will add to your front yard’s style while also packing two solar-powered cameras (one facing the entrance, one focused inside) so you can bird-watch from multiple angles. It comes with different hole sizes to appeal to different species, metal predator guards to prevent chewing around the hole, and a remote control to reset or recharge the camera without disturbing your feathered neighbors.
Stylish Smart Lights
Govee
Outdoor Clear Bulb String Lights
I’ve liked Govee’s smart outdoor string lights before, usually for my holiday decor, and have previously recommended something similar with a bistro-light-like look that happened to be smart. These clear bulb string lights are part of Govee’s current lineup and have a contemporary twist with a triangle in the center instead of the wire filament. These are a fun option for outdoor lights you can enjoy on warm nights, and they can do every color and shade of white without looking as bulky as permanent outdoor lights. (Added bonus, these lights are also Matter compatible!)
Fresh Bulbs
Cync
Smart LED Light Bulb, PAR38
If you have light fixtures you want to remote-control, add an outdoor smart bulb. There are tons to choose from, and you can usually find one from any brand you already have at home. The only downside is that outdoor-rated smart bulbs are usually 4.75-inch-diameter PAR38-style bulbs, so they’re best for downward-facing floodlights on your porch or balcony. They’ll likely be too big to fit in a wall fixture as a replacement for a normal-sized bulb. Don’t just grab any smart bulb—not all are outdoor-rated. Check for mentions of outdoor use and waterproof ratings to make sure they’re safe to use. I’m a big fan of Cync bulbs, and the brand has an outdoor version of the Cync Full Color bulbs I like to use indoors. You’ll be able to add fun colors as well as shades of white, so you can turn the porch a spooky orange or red for Halloween, pink for Valentine’s Day, or the colors of your favorite sports team on game day.
Remote-Controlled Garage
If your garage is the centerpiece of your home’s curb appeal, you can control it as easily as a smart door by adding a smart controller. You can do two different styles: I have the Chamberlain MyQ professionally installed smart garage opener, which means the device that controls my garage has these smarts built into it (plus a camera, but I find it doesn’t work great with how far the device is from my Wi-Fi router), or you can get a smart garage controller that can add smart features onto an existing garage door. Both let you check whether the garage is open or closed and operate it remotely, and you can add a video keypad that doubles as a video doorbell and can let you open or close the garage without your phone.
Smart Shades
The front of my home faces west, so it’s absolutely baking at the end of the day. What I need to add are some of our favorite smart shades to automate closing the shades on that side of the house at the right time of day. These also give your home a nice, cohesive look and immediate, controllable privacy from the outside world. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends the SmartWings shades as his top picks, and Lutron’s Caseta shades if you’re looking for a more upgraded look.
Invisible Swaps
Looking to add some smarts without touching your existing setup? These switch-ups can make your front door and yard smart without being visible.
Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.
#Smart #Home #Gadgets #Amp #Curb #Appealsmart home,shopping,household,buying guides,how-to,yardware upgrade
I tried the battery version, which does require you recharge it every couple of weeks, but the wired-in version is the top recommendation on our guide to the Best Video Doorbells.
A Better Birdhouse
I had a new-to-me problem this spring: bird invasion. A little bird made a nest in my front-door wreath without us noticing. One evening, my sister opened the door, and the bird flew out of the nest and straight into our house. After a 30-minute battle to get it outside again (and keep my cat from eating it), it wasn’t until we saw the bird fly off the door again the next day that we realized it was calling our home its home, too.
If this is a common problem at your house, our resident bird-gear tester Kat Merck has a solution: a smart nesting box. Birdfy makes a few different smart bird feeders we like for bird-watching, and the Nest Duo is a birdhouse that lets you watch the birds while they nest inside of it. It’s a slim, attractive box that will add to your front yard’s style while also packing two solar-powered cameras (one facing the entrance, one focused inside) so you can bird-watch from multiple angles. It comes with different hole sizes to appeal to different species, metal predator guards to prevent chewing around the hole, and a remote control to reset or recharge the camera without disturbing your feathered neighbors.
Stylish Smart Lights
Govee
Outdoor Clear Bulb String Lights
I’ve liked Govee’s smart outdoor string lights before, usually for my holiday decor, and have previously recommended something similar with a bistro-light-like look that happened to be smart. These clear bulb string lights are part of Govee’s current lineup and have a contemporary twist with a triangle in the center instead of the wire filament. These are a fun option for outdoor lights you can enjoy on warm nights, and they can do every color and shade of white without looking as bulky as permanent outdoor lights. (Added bonus, these lights are also Matter compatible!)
Fresh Bulbs
Cync
Smart LED Light Bulb, PAR38
If you have light fixtures you want to remote-control, add an outdoor smart bulb. There are tons to choose from, and you can usually find one from any brand you already have at home. The only downside is that outdoor-rated smart bulbs are usually 4.75-inch-diameter PAR38-style bulbs, so they’re best for downward-facing floodlights on your porch or balcony. They’ll likely be too big to fit in a wall fixture as a replacement for a normal-sized bulb. Don’t just grab any smart bulb—not all are outdoor-rated. Check for mentions of outdoor use and waterproof ratings to make sure they’re safe to use. I’m a big fan of Cync bulbs, and the brand has an outdoor version of the Cync Full Color bulbs I like to use indoors. You’ll be able to add fun colors as well as shades of white, so you can turn the porch a spooky orange or red for Halloween, pink for Valentine’s Day, or the colors of your favorite sports team on game day.
Remote-Controlled Garage
If your garage is the centerpiece of your home’s curb appeal, you can control it as easily as a smart door by adding a smart controller. You can do two different styles: I have the Chamberlain MyQ professionally installed smart garage opener, which means the device that controls my garage has these smarts built into it (plus a camera, but I find it doesn’t work great with how far the device is from my Wi-Fi router), or you can get a smart garage controller that can add smart features onto an existing garage door. Both let you check whether the garage is open or closed and operate it remotely, and you can add a video keypad that doubles as a video doorbell and can let you open or close the garage without your phone.
Smart Shades
The front of my home faces west, so it’s absolutely baking at the end of the day. What I need to add are some of our favorite smart shades to automate closing the shades on that side of the house at the right time of day. These also give your home a nice, cohesive look and immediate, controllable privacy from the outside world. WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends the SmartWings shades as his top picks, and Lutron’s Caseta shades if you’re looking for a more upgraded look.
Invisible Swaps
Looking to add some smarts without touching your existing setup? These switch-ups can make your front door and yard smart without being visible.
Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.
![Scientists Built Amphibious Cyborg Cockroaches and We Regret to Inform You They Work
The humble cockroach: depending on where you live, they’re variously the bane of apartment dwellers, a tasty snacc, or a source of political inspiration. The cliché is that they’d be the only creatures to survive a nuclear apocalypse, and whether or not that’s true, you probably wouldn’t put them first in line for further enhancements to their already legendary ability to survive. However, it seems that no one’s told that to the folks at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, because a group of researchers from the university’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recently published a paper describing the process of fitting a cockroach with a diving suit. As the paper’s abstract explains, “The suit integrates a miniaturized oxygen generation module with a flexible waterproof shell, enabling continuous oxygen supply and isolation from surrounding water.” Or, in other words, the suit successfully allowed the insect to breathe underwater, turning it into a sort of nightmarish amphibious cyborg. If this sounds like a terrible idea at face value, console yourself with the knowledge that these cyber-roaches are designed to be used for benevolent purposes. As per the paper, said purposes include pipe inspections, “object transportation,” and, apparently, search-and-rescue missions. (Smash cut to 2031 and Elon Musk ranting about a “pedo roach”.)
Research into the creation of cyborg insects has been a thing for some time, both in academia and in the world of tech. On the latter point, readers may remember the RoboRoach, a 0 DIY kit for creating your own cyborg cockroach that was funded via Kickstarter in 2013. The kit is still available, and these days it seems to be marketed as a fun activity for kids—on the manufacturer’s website, it’s labelled as being for “Grade 9+” and “[Requiring] supervision.” If the idea of a bunch of 15-year-olds performing surgery on cockroaches makes you kinda queasy—supervision or not—well, you’re not alone.
Let’s get back to the Nanyang Technological University, where the experiments are presumably not being conducted by middle-schoolers. If you’ve ever wondered how a cockroach breathes, the paper explains that “like most terrestrial insects, [they] breathe through thoracic spiracles that take in oxygen directly from the air.” The “diving suit” is basically a flexible waterproof shell into which a miniature oxygen generator pumps oxygen, effectively creating a tiny breathing bubble around the insect’s air-intake thingamajigs. This allowed the insect to breathe underwater for up to three hours, although it seems there were some initial, um, design issues to sort out: “Dorsal mounting of the oxygen generator on the cockroach created significant water-resistance during underwater locomotion… causing postural instability and rollover.” Once this issue was resolved, it seems the roaches got on just fine underwater, exhibiting “stable and smooth underwater walking without rollover.” The researchers conclude that the idea is a winner, and that it could be “potentially extended to other terrestrial cyborg insect platforms, such as [other] cockroaches, locusts and beetles.” Amphibious locusts! What could possibly go wrong? #Scientists #Built #Amphibious #Cyborg #Cockroaches #Regret #Inform #Workcockroaches,cyborgs](https://i0.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/cyborg-cockroach-1280x853.png?ssl=1 "Scientists Built Amphibious Cyborg Cockroaches and We Regret to Inform You They Work
The humble cockroach: depending on where you live, they’re variously the bane of apartment dwellers, a tasty snacc, or a source of political inspiration. The cliché is that they’d be the only creatures to survive a nuclear apocalypse, and whether or not that’s true, you probably wouldn’t put them first in line for further enhancements to their already legendary ability to survive. However, it seems that no one’s told that to the folks at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, because a group of researchers from the university’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recently published a paper describing the process of fitting a cockroach with a diving suit. As the paper’s abstract explains, “The suit integrates a miniaturized oxygen generation module with a flexible waterproof shell, enabling continuous oxygen supply and isolation from surrounding water.” Or, in other words, the suit successfully allowed the insect to breathe underwater, turning it into a sort of nightmarish amphibious cyborg. If this sounds like a terrible idea at face value, console yourself with the knowledge that these cyber-roaches are designed to be used for benevolent purposes. As per the paper, said purposes include pipe inspections, “object transportation,” and, apparently, search-and-rescue missions. (Smash cut to 2031 and Elon Musk ranting about a “pedo roach”.)
Research into the creation of cyborg insects has been a thing for some time, both in academia and in the world of tech. On the latter point, readers may remember the RoboRoach, a 0 DIY kit for creating your own cyborg cockroach that was funded via Kickstarter in 2013. The kit is still available, and these days it seems to be marketed as a fun activity for kids—on the manufacturer’s website, it’s labelled as being for “Grade 9+” and “[Requiring] supervision.” If the idea of a bunch of 15-year-olds performing surgery on cockroaches makes you kinda queasy—supervision or not—well, you’re not alone.
Let’s get back to the Nanyang Technological University, where the experiments are presumably not being conducted by middle-schoolers. If you’ve ever wondered how a cockroach breathes, the paper explains that “like most terrestrial insects, [they] breathe through thoracic spiracles that take in oxygen directly from the air.” The “diving suit” is basically a flexible waterproof shell into which a miniature oxygen generator pumps oxygen, effectively creating a tiny breathing bubble around the insect’s air-intake thingamajigs. This allowed the insect to breathe underwater for up to three hours, although it seems there were some initial, um, design issues to sort out: “Dorsal mounting of the oxygen generator on the cockroach created significant water-resistance during underwater locomotion… causing postural instability and rollover.” Once this issue was resolved, it seems the roaches got on just fine underwater, exhibiting “stable and smooth underwater walking without rollover.” The researchers conclude that the idea is a winner, and that it could be “potentially extended to other terrestrial cyborg insect platforms, such as [other] cockroaches, locusts and beetles.” Amphibious locusts! What could possibly go wrong? #Scientists #Built #Amphibious #Cyborg #Cockroaches #Regret #Inform #Workcockroaches,cyborgs")
![Scientists Built Amphibious Cyborg Cockroaches and We Regret to Inform You They Work
The humble cockroach: depending on where you live, they’re variously the bane of apartment dwellers, a tasty snacc, or a source of political inspiration. The cliché is that they’d be the only creatures to survive a nuclear apocalypse, and whether or not that’s true, you probably wouldn’t put them first in line for further enhancements to their already legendary ability to survive. However, it seems that no one’s told that to the folks at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, because a group of researchers from the university’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recently published a paper describing the process of fitting a cockroach with a diving suit. As the paper’s abstract explains, “The suit integrates a miniaturized oxygen generation module with a flexible waterproof shell, enabling continuous oxygen supply and isolation from surrounding water.” Or, in other words, the suit successfully allowed the insect to breathe underwater, turning it into a sort of nightmarish amphibious cyborg. If this sounds like a terrible idea at face value, console yourself with the knowledge that these cyber-roaches are designed to be used for benevolent purposes. As per the paper, said purposes include pipe inspections, “object transportation,” and, apparently, search-and-rescue missions. (Smash cut to 2031 and Elon Musk ranting about a “pedo roach”.)
Research into the creation of cyborg insects has been a thing for some time, both in academia and in the world of tech. On the latter point, readers may remember the RoboRoach, a $200 DIY kit for creating your own cyborg cockroach that was funded via Kickstarter in 2013. The kit is still available, and these days it seems to be marketed as a fun activity for kids—on the manufacturer’s website, it’s labelled as being for “Grade 9+” and “[Requiring] supervision.” If the idea of a bunch of 15-year-olds performing surgery on cockroaches makes you kinda queasy—supervision or not—well, you’re not alone.
Let’s get back to the Nanyang Technological University, where the experiments are presumably not being conducted by middle-schoolers. If you’ve ever wondered how a cockroach breathes, the paper explains that “like most terrestrial insects, [they] breathe through thoracic spiracles that take in oxygen directly from the air.” The “diving suit” is basically a flexible waterproof shell into which a miniature oxygen generator pumps oxygen, effectively creating a tiny breathing bubble around the insect’s air-intake thingamajigs. This allowed the insect to breathe underwater for up to three hours, although it seems there were some initial, um, design issues to sort out: “Dorsal mounting of the oxygen generator on the cockroach created significant water-resistance during underwater locomotion… causing postural instability and rollover.” Once this issue was resolved, it seems the roaches got on just fine underwater, exhibiting “stable and smooth underwater walking without rollover.” The researchers conclude that the idea is a winner, and that it could be “potentially extended to other terrestrial cyborg insect platforms, such as [other] cockroaches, locusts and beetles.” Amphibious locusts! What could possibly go wrong? #Scientists #Built #Amphibious #Cyborg #Cockroaches #Regret #Inform #Workcockroaches,cyborgs](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/cyborg-cockroach-1280x853.png "Scientists Built Amphibious Cyborg Cockroaches and We Regret to Inform You They Work
The humble cockroach: depending on where you live, they’re variously the bane of apartment dwellers, a tasty snacc, or a source of political inspiration. The cliché is that they’d be the only creatures to survive a nuclear apocalypse, and whether or not that’s true, you probably wouldn’t put them first in line for further enhancements to their already legendary ability to survive. However, it seems that no one’s told that to the folks at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, because a group of researchers from the university’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering recently published a paper describing the process of fitting a cockroach with a diving suit. As the paper’s abstract explains, “The suit integrates a miniaturized oxygen generation module with a flexible waterproof shell, enabling continuous oxygen supply and isolation from surrounding water.” Or, in other words, the suit successfully allowed the insect to breathe underwater, turning it into a sort of nightmarish amphibious cyborg. If this sounds like a terrible idea at face value, console yourself with the knowledge that these cyber-roaches are designed to be used for benevolent purposes. As per the paper, said purposes include pipe inspections, “object transportation,” and, apparently, search-and-rescue missions. (Smash cut to 2031 and Elon Musk ranting about a “pedo roach”.)
Research into the creation of cyborg insects has been a thing for some time, both in academia and in the world of tech. On the latter point, readers may remember the RoboRoach, a $200 DIY kit for creating your own cyborg cockroach that was funded via Kickstarter in 2013. The kit is still available, and these days it seems to be marketed as a fun activity for kids—on the manufacturer’s website, it’s labelled as being for “Grade 9+” and “[Requiring] supervision.” If the idea of a bunch of 15-year-olds performing surgery on cockroaches makes you kinda queasy—supervision or not—well, you’re not alone.
Let’s get back to the Nanyang Technological University, where the experiments are presumably not being conducted by middle-schoolers. If you’ve ever wondered how a cockroach breathes, the paper explains that “like most terrestrial insects, [they] breathe through thoracic spiracles that take in oxygen directly from the air.” The “diving suit” is basically a flexible waterproof shell into which a miniature oxygen generator pumps oxygen, effectively creating a tiny breathing bubble around the insect’s air-intake thingamajigs. This allowed the insect to breathe underwater for up to three hours, although it seems there were some initial, um, design issues to sort out: “Dorsal mounting of the oxygen generator on the cockroach created significant water-resistance during underwater locomotion… causing postural instability and rollover.” Once this issue was resolved, it seems the roaches got on just fine underwater, exhibiting “stable and smooth underwater walking without rollover.” The researchers conclude that the idea is a winner, and that it could be “potentially extended to other terrestrial cyborg insect platforms, such as [other] cockroaches, locusts and beetles.” Amphibious locusts! What could possibly go wrong? #Scientists #Built #Amphibious #Cyborg #Cockroaches #Regret #Inform #Workcockroaches,cyborgs")
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