Nest, Samsung and others team up for better home automation

A group of tech companies including Samsung, Google's Nest Labs and chipmaker ARM are teaming up to create a unified system to run all of your connected home gadgets. Thread uses low-power mesh networks to run all of your devices, promising greater reliability and cloud access for every piece of hardware in your house. The name might be new, but an early version of the protocol is already used to drive Nest's thermostats and smoke detectors. The group also believes that a simple software update would enable plenty of other existing smart home products to join in the fun. Of course, this isn't the only group trying to marshal the disparate forces that are trying to make in-roads into our homes. For instance, Qualcomm and Apple all have rival platforms in various stages of development -- so perhaps the next generation of forum debates arguments will be about which connected washing machine is "better" than the rest.