SOURAJIT

Why Does The Chromecast Keep Crashing?

I can hear the audio, but there is no video on my TV

In case you are able to hear the audio but video is not visible you can do the following:

Check your TV- There is a chance that the problem lies with the TV. Check your TV to see if the power saving mode isn’t enabled. Alternatively, you can try unplugging your Chromecast device and then plugging it back in. You can repeat this for a few times to see if the problem goes away. You can also switch to cable mode on your TV and then back to HDMI mode and then check. You may also try switching to another HDMI port to ensure the HDMI port is not the cause of the problem.

If there is network congestion the signal transmitted to your Chromecast device may not be strong enough to allow for video streaming on the TV. In that case you can lower the quality of the visual casting; this may help get rid of the black screen. . If this too is not the case then you can plug the Chromecast into another TV in the house if the option is there and see if it is working fine on the other TV. If yes then your TV may be posing problems

Check the Chromecast- If the above mentioned steps didn’t help, check your Chromecast. Do ensure that it is connected to the WIFI with good signal strength. Check the power source and also the device itself is in a good working condition. You can also try rebooting your Chromecast if other points turn out to be ok.

Check your device- You may also need to check the connected device to see in case the problem lies there. Try rebooting your phone or tablet; whichever is the connected device.

Application specific issue- If you see a black screen when you try to open a specific app for instance Netflix, but the audio is there, try rebooting the app and your Chromecast device respectively. Also ensure that you are using an HDMI cable, otherwise HDCP may be making your device unable to stream data from Netflix to the TV.

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We hope you find the comprehensive guide useful and are able to get rid of the back screen and media content is streamed smoothly on your TV screen.

Why Is My Chromecast Showing A Black Screen?

How Can I Make My Smartwatch Last Longer?

Like every other electronic gadget that we use today, smartwatches have capacity limitations, they need to be charged. Just like the human brain and entire being needs sleep every night in order to get replenished, people often wonder whether it is a good idea to turn off the smartwatch at night. Some people consider this a good practice that gives the electronic setup a break from continuous cycling which provides the output that we have come to depend on during the day. But does turning off any electronic device, in particular, the smartwatch make any tangible difference in the functioning or longevity of the device?

Should I Turn Off My Smartwatch At Night?

Do you want to monitor sleep patterns?

The smartwatch has several functions most of which are carried out during the day. It almost looks like it is the device that never sleeps because it has an important function that is carried out at night while every other human or gadget is expected to be taking a break from it all. The smartwatch performs the function of sleep monitoring and measures sleep quality when you are fast asleep. So, the first thing to consider is whether you are interested in utilizing the sleep monitoring feature that the smartwatch offers.

If you are, then you definitely should not turn off your smartwatch at night. The sensors will not be able to monitor your movement patterns, or heart rate patterns and there will be no data to process to give you the suggestions that will help you improve your sleep cycle. However, if you have no problem with your sleeping pattern and do not intend to monitor that part of your lifestyle, then keep reading.

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Do you have safety concerns?

You have probably heard the popular belief that smartphones and electronic gadgets should not be kept close to you while you sleep because they can be harmful. The truth is different components of smart devices are made with a lot of metals and some of them are capable of emitting radioactive materials. The degree and amount of emitted radioactive materials are however negligible and pose no threat to human health whatsoever. You may however want to avoid having any of these devices around you and working overnight altogether if your mind is already fixated on the idea that it might be harmful.

Do you have sleep disruption concerns?

Although, the smartwatch tracks sleep patterns with the aim of helping you improve your sleep and develop a healthy sleeping habit, wearing it or keeping it functioning around you while you sleep can actually disrupt the sleeping pattern. This is because there is a tendency for you to be distracted due to the overwhelming awareness that there is a smart device around you. You might also find yourself reaching out to check and press the device when you ought to be sleeping. This is a counterproductive outcome so it might be best to just turn the device off entirely and store it away where it cannot be a distraction.

Also, most people have their mobile devices connected to their smartwatches and if you’re one of those people, it is advisable you turn off your smartwatch overnight. This is because if your mobile device is on, there is a possibility of receiving notifications on your watch from the phone during the night. You do not want this if you’re a light sleeper, the sound or flash of luminous light can be a cause of insomnia robbing you of a good night’s sleep.

Do you have battery concerns?

The truth is the major reason you are considering turning off your smartwatch at night is probably to conserve the battery life. We live such busy lives these days and we need quite a number of gadgets to get through and stay afloat. Unfortunately, a higher number of gadgets translates to a higher frequency of charging especially when you consider the interconnectivity and dependencies of these gadgets. What this means is that there is no room for any of your gadgets to be low on battery power as this can have a significantly negative impact on the overall outcome of your daily performance.

So, most people are usually planning and making schedules for charging gadgets and devices in their minds. A simple way to ensure a balance of battery capacity among your different devices is simply to conserve capacity as much as possible. After all, there is no need to charge if sufficient battery power is still available. One of the widely held beliefs when it comes to conserving batteries on electronic devices is to turn them off. When devices are turned off, they make no demands on the battery and the battery capacity is kept constant. However, when they are kept on even during the night, although there is a reduction in the demand on the power apparatus of the device, there is still a demand and this can affect available battery power.

The degree of power demand during the night also depends on whether some of the smartwatch features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, screen resolution, and others are kept on or not. There is no way of knowing how considerably larger the power demands of a smartwatch will be when the features are kept on compared to when they are not but it is higher. If you turn off these features, the battery demands are low such that is comparable to turning the device off. But since it is easier to just turn off the device, it is best to turn it off whenever it is not in use.

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Conclusion

The decision to turn off your smartwatch at night or keep it on depends on a number of factors that centers around whether you are using it during the night or not. If you are not using your smartwatch during the night then go ahead and turn it off. It does not necessarily translate to significant battery gains or savings but it is a good habit t turn off appliances when they are not in use. It will also shield you from unwanted notifications and disturbances that might make your otherwise peaceful night unbearable.

Should I Turn Off My Smartwatch At Night?

Smartwatches are a great invention that happened just at a time when wearing watches around the wrist is becoming a redundant activity. Since the advent of smartphones, nobody was checking the timepiece on their wrist to know the time anymore, so to avoid extinction, watches needed to offer something more than telling the time. The only thing smartwatches have in common with traditional watches is the fact that they are worn around the wrist. The functionality of smartwatches is diverse and an important role they play in today’s lifestyle is tracking sleep patterns.

How does a smartwatch know when you sleep?

But how does a smartwatch know when you are asleep? With most technologies, adoption is largely based on functionality and popularity, not very many people are interested in the nitty-gritty of how these things work and I get it. Our life today is immersed in so many devices and appliances that it is impractical to be fixated on something that works, as long as it gets the job done. However, there are still some people who love to uncover these things, so if you are interested in knowing how a smartwatch knows when you sleep, you have come to the right place.

Measurement of body movement patterns

Most of the smartwatches today use the measurement of body movement patterns to determine whether you are sleeping or not. Because they are worn on the wrist, they are able to tell when your body is saying still from when you are engaged in regular day-to-day activity. After an extended period of uninterrupted stillness or minimum and subtle interruptions, the device automatically assumes that your body has gone into a sleeping phase.

Motion sensor

The part of the smartwatch that is responsible for this measurement is a sensor called an accelerometer or most commonly pedometer. This motion sensor plays a dual role as it is the same component of the device that is responsible for monitoring and measuring the number of steps you take daily and responsible for detecting overall physical activity.

In some other smartwatches, in addition to the generic motion sensor, there are specific sensors that detect the slightest movement in the wrist. These sensors are capable of detecting changes in the direction and manner of wrist placement and this is a huge contributor to how a smartwatch knows when you sleep.

As simple as this sounds, it is a proven technique for detecting sleeping patterns and the field is described as actigraphy. An actigrapher is the original device that accelerometer-based smartwatches are fashioned after. The movement data collected by the accelerometer in smartwatches are interpreted to give an indication of the sleep pattern of the wearer of the device.

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Monitoring of heart rate

In addition to measuring wrist and body movement and collecting important data related to these parameters, some smartwatches are also equipped with the capacity to measure and monitor the heart rate. This is the most recent innovation in the field of sleep-tracking devices and it is inching close to the approach utilized in standard clinical procedures. This addition to the smartwatches enables them to monitor the beats per minute (bpm) of the heart during sleep giving an insight into the stage of sleep per time. The heart rate is expected to drop during sleep and the deeper into the sleep cycle, the lower the beats per minute data recorded is expected to be.

Heart rate Sensors

Most smartwatches today are equipped with an optical heart rate sensor. In addition to being the component that calculates the beats per minute, it monitors blood flow from the heart through the arteries that pass through the wrist where the watch is worn. More precisely, it monitors the speed at which blood is flowing from the heart through the arteries on the wrist.

Measurement of Sleep in Clinical Research

Sleep quality and its measurement is an established field of clinical research largely due to the importance of sleep to the wellbeing and optimal functioning of the human body. Although actigraphy is employed by clinical scientists, a more superior approach is often preferred to accurately determine or sleep quality of a patient. One of the most common approaches by scientists is polysomnography which is a comprehensive testing procedure employed in the diagnosis of sleep disorders and serious medical examinations.

In this case, polysomnography combines a lot of factors in the measurement procedure and collects data from different body parts and activities. This includes the organ responsible for sleeping and that gives the most accurate indication of sleeping pattern or a lack thereof, the brain. Several sensors are attached to different body parts including the scalp, the chest, the wrist, and other parts.

These sensors measure the brain waves, heartbeat, movement of the eyes, body movements, and breathing patterns. As you can probably imagine there are a lot of wires and cables involved in this process and it is quite complicated but it is not invasive. You certainly do not need this if you are merely looking to live a balanced lifestyle, pay attention to your body and stay healthy.

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Conclusion

Although the movement is arguably not the most accurate measurement of sleep and additional data is required to get an in-depth interpretation of the sleep cycle and the sleep quality, smartwatches are a brilliant invention. Most people do not need the comprehensive sleep measuring devices because it is reserved for serious sleep disorders. So, if your goal is to get a decent amount of sleep around the recommended 7 to 8 hours for a normal adult then, smartwatches will work just fine. They give a pretty good indication of sleep quality that is adequate for the average person.

It is also important to remember the smartwatches do not merely track sleep, they collect data that can be analyzed to give an insight into your sleep cycle and the overall quality of sleep. These are smart devices that can interpret collected data to offer suggestions and lifestyle improvements that can guarantee improved sleep health.

How Does A Smartwatch Know When You Sleep?

A lot of lifestyle improvements that have been recorded in recent times are largely due to advancements in technology. Technology has revolutionized so much about how we live and interact with our bodies and health. One technological innovation that has contributed greatly to the prevalence of healthy lifestyle choices today is the smartwatch. The possibility of effectively tracking the duration and intensity of physical activities has contributed immensely to the rising levels of fitness awareness. Being able to share fitness progress with others on social media and the integration with the mobile phone which essentially makes it possible to control the phone gives the smartwatch an important selling point.

How Can I Make My Smartwatch Last Longer?

However, like all electronic devices and everything good, the smartwatch does not last forever. It needs to be regularly charged after prolonged use which depending on the brand of the watch can be between two to four days. This is a good timeline and battery life but the truth is nobody likes having several devices to charge and I know that if you could, you will like to have a smartwatch that functions all the time without needing a refill. Although it is impossible to not charge the smartwatch, below is a list of things you can do to maximize the battery life of the watch and cut down the frequency of charging.

Don’t overdo it

The smartwatch is amazing and it is very trendy at the moment. You are likely to see people staring at their wrists every other minute even as they walk on the street. This is simply overdoing it. The goal is not to turn the smartwatch into another smartphone that you get attached to and addicted to. The watch is supposed to inject some organization and orderliness into your daily schedule. I know that the lines are getting blurry especially with features like the eSIM and the regular SIM card slots but you have to remember not to overdo it. There is a direct relationship between use and battery discharge. The more features and apps you have on your smartwatch, the more its power requirement and the faster will be the loss of capacity and the need to recharge.

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Operational Settings

The smartwatch is similar to the smartphone, so there are some settings that can optimize power consumption.

Limit the number of notifications – you don’t have to receive notifications from every app that is installed on your device. Again, this is not your phone and notifications should be reserved for only important apps.

Limit the number of apps – I know the excitement that comes with unwrapping your new smartwatch, reading the manual, and discovering that it is capable of so many things. The fact that you can connect and sync the watch to almost everything on your phone does not mean that you should. If you do though, you will pay for it with faster battery deterioration.

Change the brightness level – low brightness levels consume less power. Depending on the environment, whether you are outside or inside, you can adjust this level to optimize power capacity.

Turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections when not in use – these are probably the most power intense applications on the smartwatch. You will notice that your watch often gets heated after prolonged usage of these features. It is a testament to the amount of power that they drain from the battery, so if they are not in use, turn off the features and do not sync with your phone. The reduction in temperature after this is also good for your battery.

Use the resources available for battery health – there are features like battery-saver that should be turned on automatically after a threshold has been reached. Also, the device gives an indication of the applications draining the most power from the battery, use this feature to monitor the battery health.

Charging and Discharging

Charge and discharge are the wear and tear process for the battery. These processes contribute to the deterioration of the battery life and close attention should be given to them. It is important to not overcharge your smartwatch. I know that leaving the smartwatch plugged into the power supply at night when you sleep is one of the easiest and most convenient ways of charging but it is not the best. Prolonged charging after 100% capacity of the battery has been reached can result in the disruption of the chemical makeup of the battery. Ultimately, this affects the lifetime of the battery.

Discharge should also be closely monitored. Under no circumstances should you allow the battery of your smartwatch to be fully drained before you recharge. Generally, it is advisable that you do not continue to use your device after it has approached 5% battery life as this can place a strain on the battery.

Turn off your watch at night

Except you are using the watch to monitor your sleep pattern, there is no need to keep the watch on throughout the night. Electronic appliances not in use should be turned off overnight. This will improve save battery life and keeps it at a constant level by the time you turn it on the following morning. If you leave your smartwatch on through the night, the battery charge level will drop. This is because even though you were not actively using it, there are some background operations going on in the watch that needs to be powered.

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Conclusion

It is important to note that a lot of these observations and suggestions are not rigid at all. They might not have dramatic battery life savings but they will keep your device healthy and the lifespan will not be unnecessarily reduced due to carelessness. While it is true that the effect of overcharging once in while or leaving your watch on throughout the night a couple of times is not hugely significant. However, the aggregation of all these factors over time will in no doubt result in poor battery health for your smartwatch device and ultimately affect the longevity of the device.

So, it is important to be a decent device user and not use the smartwatch carelessly. The fact that you cannot see the immediate effects of carelessly handling and unnecessarily overusing the smartwatch does not mean it is not happening.

How Can I Make My Smartwatch Last Longer?

Can Wearing A Smartwatch Cause Health Problems?

Technological innovations for lifestyle have been driven largely by connectivity. The need to organize the human day-to-day activities to achieve some sort of synergy is strong and it is playing out in the design of the personal designs in use today. Smartwatches exploit this connectivity to make themselves more valuable and highly desirable among upwardly mobile young people and professionals. The innovation with smartwatches is really great because the original idea of a watch is that of a fashion item that helps to tell the time. Since the advent of mobile phones that eliminated the need for the original idea, smartwatches have evolved and continues to find ways to remain indispensable and desirable.

The consciousness of the number of hours spent staring into a laptop or a smartphone screen is growing rapidly. A lot of people are looking for ways to cut back on screentime as soon as possible and one of the ways is to find ways of having no reason to interact with the phone. Smartphones are great, they make our lives easy and we can’t live without them but they are also very addictive. Smartphones and everything that is available through a simple swipe or tap on their screen are the foundations of all distractions today. Most people don’t intentionally seek out their phones to get distracted, it starts with notifications like a phone call notification. You pick up your phone to answer a call and before you know it, thirty minutes have passed and you’ve been on Twitter or YouTube the entire time. It then became necessary to find ways to avoid unnecessary interaction with the smartphone to prevent unwanted interactions.

Smartwatches provide one of such avenues to prevent prolonged unwanted interactions with the smartphone. With your smartwatch, you can get phone call notifications from your phone and you can answer them without recourse to the smartphone itself. You can turn your smartwatch into an extension of your phone such that you can receive phone calls on it, make phone calls and even reply to text messages. To have all these functionalities, however, you need to connect your smartwatch to your smartphone. This connection can be via a Bluetooth connection or a sim card if there is a sim card slot on your smartwatch.

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Connection with a smartphone via Bluetooth

This is probably the most common way of answering calls from your phone. For this to work, your smartphone and smartwatch need to be in sync and connected with Bluetooth. The syncing is done through an app that must be installed on the smartphone. It is through this app that the smartphone will be granted access to the phone’s contact details. It is also important that the setup is correctly done and the Bluetooth connection allows audio and calls.

Perhaps a downside to this kind of approach is that you cannot leave the phone behind because both devices have to be in close proximity to each other to maintain the connection established via Bluetooth. In fact, the smartwatch should be within 10meters of the phone otherwise the connectivity will be lost and you cannot make calls on the watch anymore.

Standalone Watches

Some smartwatches do not need a phone to answer or make calls because they have sim card slots, so the watch makes and answers calls directly. With this type of watch, you eliminate the risk of distractions due to smartphone usage completely since you don’t need the phone. So, now you can have a session of complete focus and immersion in the tasks of the day. Leave your phone behind and insert the sim card directly into the sim card slot on the smartwatch and you are good to go.

It is important to note that the sim card slots on the smartwatches are suitable only for nano-SIM cards and or micro-SIM cards in some cases. This should not be a problem because most smartphones have exactly the same SIM card compatibility. These smartwatches that can make and receive calls as well as receive and send text messages on their own without connection to a mobile phone are called standalone smartwatches.

eSIMs

Some standalone smartwatches do not have sim slots but rather function alone based on what is called the eSIM. This is a type of inbuilt SIM card that comes with the smartwatch. With this feature, you do not need to worry whether your fingernails are long enough to pry open the tight SIM slots and force your SIM card in. you also do not have to keep transferring SIM cards from your phone to the smartwatch. An eSIM with the same phone number as the physical SIM card on your phone can be created and used on your smartwatch.

Benefits

It is super convenient. This is practically wearing your phone on your wrist. Although smartphones are getting increasingly stylish and sleek, they still need to be carried or held. They can sometimes feel like an extra load especially when you are making a quick errand around the office or neighborhood. Having a smartwatch that can take over some of the functions of the phone is super convenient.

Not having to deal with your phone all the time is definitely going to improve your focus and prevent distractions. You can conclude tasks on time and this will improve your productivity.

It is easily accessible. One of the most annoying things can be hearing your phone notification and then going out of your comfort zone to check the phone only to find out that it is an unwanted disturbance. With the smartwatch, you can easily filter calls without expending the energy that is usually required to locate your phone.

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Conclusion

If you live in a fast-paced world, the smartwatch is the best companion you can have. With the device at your wrist, the possibility to further automate and organize your daily actions are greatly improved. It will also improve your productivity as you have fewer devices to deal with. In fact, you will be dealing mostly with the device offering the most minimal opportunities for distraction.

Can You Answer A Call On A Smartwatch?

The life we live today is powered by devices, lots of devices. It is not uncommon for someone to have more than four or five personal electronic devices which often include; a smartphone, a personal laptop, an iPad or tablet, a Bluetooth headset, and a smartwatch. The proliferation of personal gadgets implies that you have to take turns charging them since they are all electronic devices. The truth is most of these gadgets are complementary and your day will not be the same without any of them, so the fear of forgetting to charge a gadget is a real and understandable fear.

Can I Leave My Smartwatch Charging Overnight?

Can you imagine getting on the train or driving to work and realizing that your Bluetooth headset has zero battery percent capacity? Or realizing that all your efforts to achieve your daily steps and physical activity target by avoiding the elevators and using the stairs are not documented because the smartwatch is out of battery capacity? It is simply a disaster that has the capacity of being a mojo killer and simply derail your day.

One easy way to deal with the charging demands of your electronic gadgets to make sure they are all fully charged during the day is to leave some of them charging overnight. An easy choice of a gadget to be charged overnight is the smartwatch. Since it is wound around your wrist all day, it is almost impractical to find time to charge it. But is it safe to leave the smartwatch charging all night long? Are there any significant risks to performance and longevity? All of these questions are answered in this article.

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Smartwatch battery

Like most other modern electronic appliances, the smartwatch uses a Lithium-ion battery. It is the most advanced rechargeable battery and it is the same battery type found in smartphones and newer laptops. One of the reasons for the wide and growing adoption of this battery type is that while all rechargeable batteries tend to lose capacity over time, the Li-ion battery can reduce the loss of capacity over some time significantly.

Trickle Charging

When you plug your smartwatch into a power outlet overnight, the normal charging process occurs until a 100% charge is achieved. After the achievement of the 100% charge, trickle charging commences. According to Wikipedia, trickle charging is the process of charging a fully charged battery at a rate equal to its self-discharge rate. What this means is that the battery will remain at a fully charged state for the entire time it remains plugged to the power supply point since the device is not put to use and hence the charge is not extracted.

Now, in some batteries, the setup is configured in such a way that it can regulate the amount of electricity absorbed from the charging system. This is often not the case with Li-on batteries which are present in the smartwatches. Generally, the Li-ion battery’s setup is not configured to regulate the electric charge flowing through the charging system even after the state of full charge has been reached. The implication of this is that the same amount of charge is flowing through the charging system to the battery both at points of zero or low charge and full charge state. This excess flow of charge despite the lack of demand for the charge due to the lack of activity on the device will then translate to heat and this is responsible for the overheating that is commonly observed when devices like smartwatches and smartphones are charged for prolonged periods. Overheating is not good for the health of your smartphone’s battery.

Duration of Charge

Depending on the state of charge, whether the capacity is fully drained (not advisable) or just at a low point, an average battery takes between one and two hours to reach a 100% charged state. The recommended daily sleep duration for an adult human is between 7 to 8 hours. Let’s assume that you are sometimes distracted by social media and Netflix, hence you don’t go to bed on time and end up getting 6 hours of sleep on average. If you plug your smartphone to charge overnight, you will be charging it for an extra four hours, above and beyond the required two hours. This means overheating the device for four hours.

Battery life

Most smartwatch batteries have a higher capacity and consume less energy compared to the smartphone because of the lower demands. These batteries can last from anything between two to four days, so they are not one of your gadgets with a high charging requirement. You can simply charge them every other day or every three days and they will be just fine. This makes it easier to plan for their charging as it does not have to be the last minute and urgent thing such that you will have no choice but to plug them in all night.

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Conclusion

Overcharging results in overheating which leads to instabilities in the composition of the chemicals present in the battery setup. This can result in quicker aging of the battery cell, that is it will hold less and less of it’s charge capacity over time and ultimately the lifespan will reduce.

Apart from this reduction in the lifespan which is a huge consideration for most users of smartwatches, have you forgotten about climate change? The world is big on sustainability right now. There are frantic calls and proposals urging people to conserve energy and protect the planet. Ultimately, all the present-day energy sources including renewables take a toll on the planet in the long run and we have gone too far already in not caring so much that every little action that conserves the most seemingly inconsequential amount of energy counts. It counts especially because of the habit-forming tendencies which will be transferred to other aspects of life. So, right now is not the time to be leaving devices plugged to charge overnight.

Most smartwatches and chargers are equipped with fast-charging technologies that can achieve 100% charging capacity within a really short time. There is no reason to leave a device plugged overnight when it can be fully charged in 45 minutes after you wake up.

Can I Leave My Smartwatch Charging Overnight?