These three technologies will kick off the next smart home age
Image courtesy University of Washington We’ve spent five years since the last big breakthrough in the smart home. When Amazon added home control to its Echo speakers in March 2015 it created a new user interface and platform that brought more devices together. Since then Amazon has made plenty of improvements to Alexa while Google and Apple have joined the fray with their own digital assistants.
Bu t until we have some big new breakthroughs, we’ll see more of the same in the smart home space: More integrations, a move towards local control of voice commands and marginally improved products based on chip and radio technology advances.
This is pretty boring as someone covering the sector. So I can’t help but look for the next big technology that will usher in a new wave of change. Here are three.
Presence detection is still hard to find
I’m almost surprised that the mainstream smart home doesn’t yet detect who is where in the house. We have GPS geofencing for when you’re at, near or away from home and the concept is essentially the same. Why can’t another radio technology do the same at the local level?
Presence detection will bring a more personalized smart home experience as devices in the house will change based on exactly who is in a room. I may want a specific lighting and music scene when I’m sitting in the family room, for example, while my wife would prefer different light colors and no music. Presence detection can make that an automatic reality.
The best approach I’ve seen so far is from Intellithings whose RoomMe product I reviewed last year . You place a few RoomMe detectors on your ceiling in different rooms.
These detectors look for the Bluetooth signal of your phone and triangulate where you are in the house. With that data, you can then create automations with your smart home systems such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri: RoomMe also just added support for IFTTT and Hubitat earlier this week.
In my testing, however, I found the implementation to be a little short of the vision. The product didn’t work consistently enough or quickly enough for me.
But I do like the concept of using the Bluetooth radio of a phone or even a wearable tag, and sensors around the house to “see” where each person is and have my home act accordingly. My hope is that the RoomMe experience improves and that others create similar products. One recent entry here is Inlo , which plans to sell Bluetooth satellites similar to the RoomMe product.
Device discovery and integrations are still a patchwork
We’ve seen a veritable explosion of new products and brands entering the smart home market since 2015. And while that’s a good thing, it’s also a bit of a bad thing. New companies and products entering the market sometimes use proprietary approaches, either in their radio stack or in the APIs and software used to manage and connect...
