Thinking About a CDMX Tech Makeover (Premium)

We’re heading to Mexico City (CDMX) tomorrow (Sunday). This will be my fifth trip there in 2022—and the sixth trip for my wife, who visited separately with our daughter—end-capping a whirlwind year in which we uprooted everything and made a sudden and unexpected new bet on our future: as I’m sure you know, we bought an apartment in Mexico City’s Roma Norte neighborhood in May after first seeing it during a January trip.

Anyone interested in what we’re doing there should check out the Eternal Spring YouTube channel or the related blog that my wife and I created: neither is really updated all that often, but we wanted to address the low quality of the content we found while researching Mexico City. Here on Thurrott.com, I’ll be focusing solely on the tech-related aspects of this new apartment. And as we prepare for our final visit of 2022, I have some thoughts about where we might take things in 2023.

First, however, let me recap what we have done. In many cases, there will be changes down the road.

Internet. One of the first things I wanted to accomplish was getting Internet access into the apartment, and I was delighted when the building’s architect offered to get this set up for us right away. And less delighted when I discovered it only offered 100/10 Mbps speeds. We can—and will—upgrade this to a faster connection, but it’s worked out well so far. One oddity of our account is that we have to get some form of TV and a landline in addition to the Internet, but we’ll never use either. And the Wi-Fi network is just Wi-Fi, so I’d like to upgrade that to something more modern too.

More Mobile setup. When we closed on the apartment in May, I left behind a complete computing setup, in keeping with my shift to More Mobile configurations. This consists of an older HP ZBook Firefly Ultrabook, a Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard and Mouse, an HP Thunderbolt Dock G4, and the Nexstand Portable Laptop Stand I’d had for years. Obviously, I’ll always travel to Mexico City with at least one laptop, but having this setup there means I can get work done normally, as I do at home, and there’s always a backup computer. I could see replacing the HP dock with a USB-C dock like the one I travel with, however.

Podcasting setup. And it’s not just the computer: I also left behind an Audio-Technica ATR2500x-USB Cardioid Condenser Microphone for podcasting. I need a decent arm mount for it, but it’s good enough as-is. I will likely bring a Full HD webcam there on this trip and leave that behind just in case, but the built-in webcams in most of the laptops I review these days will offer even better quality.

Mobile accounts. We do have a Mexican phone number via an AT&T Mexico account, but it’s one of the weird bills we have where we haven’t figured out a way to pay it unless we’re in the country. So we pay the bill when we arrive and it works for a month, and then it goes away when we miss the next payment. We’ll figure that out in time and get two permanent numbers. For now, this is better than nothing. (Semi-related, I’ll be looking at pay-as-you-go eSIM options in Mexico City on this trip, but that won’t solve the phone number issue.)

During our August trip, we purchased a 58-inch Hisense smart TV to which I attached a 2021 Apple TV 4K. This TV solves a lot of problems, and it is compatible with AirPlay 2, Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant, so that’s great. But I’d like to pump up the sound with at least some kind of soundbar in the future and possibly more.

Looking to the future, I’m using our experience with smart home gear here in Pennsylvania as a guide, but balancing that with the needs of a place that is very different and much smaller. I don’t even recall if I had some overreaching plan for Pennsylvania, but it’s fair to say that some things stuck—Philips Hue smart lights, for example, and Sonos audio equipment—while others did not. In many cases, the complexity of smart home gear is problematic: my wife enjoys the Hue light and Sonos speakers, but she only knows how to use the latter.

When we first bought the Mexico apartment, I figured we’d go light on smart home technology. But the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to believe that we’ll actually go in the opposite direction. And that’s guided, in large part, because we won’t ever live there full-time. We will want—if not need—some things in place to ensure nothing bad happens there while we’re gone.

To be clear, I’m not worried about theft: Roma Norte is very safe, and our building has 24/7 human security. But I am thinking about access—we want people to visit the place, especially when we’re not there—and detection of things that could be problematic, like water and gas.

A smart door lock with a number pad and, preferably, a physical key option for when the battery dies is my biggest concern. (Most wireless smart locks let you open the door by connecting a 9-volt battery so you can operate the number pad, which is OK.) This would make it easier for others to visit there while we’re gone, and maybe that will help with Airbnb if we ever go in that direction. But they’d still have to get through the front door of the apartment building; we have a fob for this, but the doorman will open the door as well.

Water and gas detectors for the laundry room are next. I’m worried we’ll be gone for months at a time and some leak will wreak havoc before it’s otherwise discovered.

While I’m not a fan of security cameras, I think having at least one interior camera isn’t a bad idea. There was a major earthquake a month or so ago in Mexico, and Mexico City experienced shaking. We called the building manager and asked him to check on our TV, which is just sitting on a stand and is easily toppled. And he did so, a day later, and it was fine. But a camera would have provided an immediate answer. Ideally, this would not be permanently mounted so that anyone visiting could easily disconnect it.

In addition to improving the Internet speeds, I will be upgrading the Wi-Fi router to something based on Wi-Fi 6 or 6E. The nice thing about the apartment is that it’s small, so we won’t need an expensive mesh system as we have at home.

For the TV, I’m currently thinking of a Sonos Beam soundbar and maybe one of those smaller new Sonos Sub Mini subwoofers, though I worry that might be too much for anyone below us in the building. I could see adding a pair of Sonos One speakers for rear channel surround sound either way. Not exactly a huge priority, I know.

We have a Google-powered smart display in our house now and we love it because of the photo slideshow capabilities. So I could picture getting something like that for Mexico too. Right now I guess I’d stick with Google because that’s where our photos are, but I suppose uploading them to Amazon would be easy enough. It’s a problem for another day.

We need some basic lamps for the living room and the bedsides, but once we get in front of that I’ll at least start thinking about Hue smart lights. We really like the atmospheric Hue Bloom lights we have in the corner of our sunroom and the light strip behind the TV, and I could picture doing something similar in the apartment. And something for the balcony as well, mimicking our outdoor lighting here at home.

It’s fair to say that most of that is not necessary and is thus not a rush. Which is convenient, since we can’t afford most of this now anyway. But over time, starting next year, I think we’ll start building it out.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.