HomeAutomation
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The Piper smart hub monitors and manages your home for £119
"Connected home" gadgets are all about giving you greater awareness and control over what's happening in your crib. Most "internet of things" products for the home at targeted to specific uses, such as remote surveillance or heating control. Piper is slightly different, in that it attempts to tie all types home automation and security together into the one control centre. The device initially launched on Indiegogo where it achieved its funding goal three times over. Now, almost a year later, it's ready for a European retail release.
GE promises smart light bulbs without the usual steep prices
Many smartphone-controlled light bulbs cost a pretty penny, even if you're not interested in mood-setting colors or other elaborate tricks. How are you supposed to afford enough bulbs to illuminate your entire abode? That's where GE's new Link bulbs could save the day. While you'll need a hub ($30 by itself) to get everything connected, the LED-based white lights cost just $15 to $25 each -- in contrast, Philips' upcoming Lux models are $40 a pop. There's also a kit that includes two 60W-equivalent bulbs and a hub for $50, or half as much as you'd pay for an equivalent Lux bundle.
Nest devices start talking to Google, washing machines and your car
Nest's Learning Thermostat and Protect smoke detector are now part of a much, much larger universe. The company has just launched a developer program that lets third-party apps and devices talk to Nest hardware, making it do things that aren't possible through official software. The initiative is kicking off with a whole host of partnerships in place, in many cases with feature updates either available now or due in the near future. Chamberlain's garage doors can now tell your Nest thermostat when you're home, while Mercedes-Benz lets you check the temperature on the road; Logitech's Harmony Ultimate remote can lower the heat in mid-movie, and Jawbone's Up24 fitness tracker can tell Nest when you wake up.
Logitech's universal remotes can now control your Sonos speakers
If you like to simplify your home theater with universal remotes, there's a good chance that you also like multi-room audio systems. Wouldn't it be swell if you could combine the two? As of today, it's easy. Logitech has posted updates for both higher-end Harmony remotes (the Smart Control and Ultimate) and its Harmony mobile app that let you control Sonos audio systems. All of the remotes can handle at least basic playback duties, while both the app and Ultimate also provide quick access to your favorite Sonos playlists and stations. They can steer Philips' Hue lights, too -- just in case you need to set the mood for a movie.
Apple's smart home initiative is called HomeKit
We heard it was coming, and here it is: Apple's smart home platform. Taking the stage in sunny San Francisco, Apple's Craig Federighi announced HomeKit: Cupertino's solution for the connected home. Don't expect to pick up a unified automation system at your local Apple Store, though -- the firm's foray into the field is a communication standard, not a product. Federighi describes HomeKit as a "common network protocol with secure networking to ensure only your iPhone can open your garage door or unlock your door."
Apple's smart home plan rumored to be a boring certification program
When rumors of Apple's smart home efforts broke Monday, expectations for the future of home automation began to soar. According to sources speaking with Gigaom though, Cupertino's connected household project has more to do with fragmentation and the "Made for iPhone" label portion of the initial rumor. It seems that the focus of the program is to certify those smart devices that are scattered around residences rather than building automation controls into iOS or some such. The process is said to keep both WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity alongside voice control as key items for linking all those gadgets together, but as of now, a universal control system or a list of partnerships doesn't seem to be on tap for WWDC next week.
Homey gives your living room a voice
Too lazy to flick on a light switch? There's a Kickstarter campaign you should check out. Homey isn't the first crowdfunded home automation platform we've seen, but it is one of the most personable: the entire device is controlled by human speech. It's designed to ape the computers on Star Trek, explained creator Emile Nijssen, which interact with the users using an artificial intelligence. Homey isn't quite that advanced, but early demos show potential.
Apple may enter the smart home business
Forget those rumors of an Apple smartwatch for now -- home automation may be where it's at. The Financial Times hears from sources that the crew in Cupertino is going to unveil a smart home platform at its Worldwide Developer Conference kicking off next week. While there aren't many details, proximity will reportedly play a big role; your house lights would switch on as soon as you come home with your iPhone in your pocket. Apple would also have a Made For iPhone-style program to guarantee that devices work with its system, and it would put a strong emphasis on privacy to counter fears about both its ad-driven competition and government surveillance.
Microsoft brings home automation app and devices to the Windows Store
Unlike Google with its new $3.2 billion Nest, Microsoft doesn't have a lot of home automation products yet despite some interesting research. Redmond has now made a move to stock its shelves, albeit indirectly, via a partnership with home automation specialist Insteon. The pair just announced that an enhanced Insteon app will soon be available on Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 devices. It'll feature multiple, full-screen video feeds, device control, a visitor mode to give limited control to others and Live Tile integration for status updates. In addition, Insteon will sell standalone devices in the Windows Store including a leak sensor, LED bulb and WiFi camera for $30 - $80, with kits starting at $200. Unlike Nest Products or the Philips Hue, Insteon's system uses RF frequency and your home's existing wiring (PowerLine) to communicate with devices. The app will arrive on June 1st, with the devices hitting Windows Stores in July, complete with educational demos and displays.
How to get started with home automation through Z-Wave
For many of us, smart homes seem like a far off concept from a science fiction novel set hundreds of years in the future. Imagine things like appliances that learn our schedules, lights that turn off after we leave a room, locks that can be remotely triggered to let yourself (or others) into your house and more. You know what though? The future is here. Engadget reader Dignan17 shows us what it takes to get started with home automation using Z-Wave compatible devices.
SAM packs full-home control into a powerstrip
Home automation gadgets that allow you to remotely turn things on and off are certainly nothing new, but SensePlug's SAM duo offers that and a lot more. The smart plug and power strip also houses sensors for tracking motion, temperature and ambient light. Alongside a companion app, this additional tech will allow you to set up "SmartRules" for the automated tasks. It's kind of like IFTTT for your house. For example, you can dial in SAM to turn on a fan when the temperature rises above 75 or flip on the lights when it starts to get dark. Heck, you can even use the motion sensors to flip on the lights if someone gets in while you're out. What's more, the SAM Plug and Strip can also measure the energy use of whatever devices you happen to have plugged in. While SAM currently has just over 30 days left to go on Kickstarter, a $49 pledge will nab you a single smart plug and $109 nets a strip -- if you happen to miss the early adopter incentives.
My connected home turned me into a spy and an addict
Like any responsible New Yorker, I've entrusted a copy of my apartment keys to a close friend. This is done mostly to ensure that, should I die home alone, my body won't be left to rot undiscovered for days. It's also primarily done so that my mail is collected and my "children" (what you would call plants) are watered and sung to every other day when I'm travelling for work. And I travel often. My apartment is also wired to the gills with SmartThings. These little, white, swappable sensors monitor temperature, motion, moisture, power and presence, and relay that data to me via an app -- a crucial fact I'd neglected to tell my house-sitting friend many months ago. A small, yet ultimately fortunate, oversight that led me to uncover my house sitter's true comings and goings. Or, should I say, the lack thereof.
Ford's Skyliner concept is like a private jet for the road
If you had $40 million to spend on a ultra-lux vehicle, you might opt for a (pre-owned) Gulfstream V. VIPs on a tighter budget could instead pick up this decked-out Ford van, which comes complete with incredibly comfy leather seats, a Crestron home (or van) automation system, a 52-inch drop-down projection screen with Kaleidescape media server, and plenty of other goodies like maple flooring, a bar with fridge, multi-color LEDs around the roof, individual reading lights (like you'd get on that private jet) and integrated WiFi. You can even add a set of matching luggage.
Droplet robotic gardener waters your plants with precision (video)
There's a new helper robot for homes called Droplet, but it has no intention of usurping Roomba's territory -- in fact, you can think of it as a Roomba for your garden. It's probably not capable of killing snakes like its badass indoor counterpart, but it can care for your plants without input. Technically, Droplet's a smart sprinkler, but it's actually more like an automated hose that aims only at plants (or anything you want) up to 30 feet away, since it was created as a means to conserve water. Of course, you'll have to configure it a bit beforehand: after adding your plants' names on Droplet's interface using a phone, laptop or tablet, you'll have to aim water at each of them, so the system can remember their locations. The robot then taps into various sources via WiFi to look up each plant's needs to determine how often and how much it should be watered. In the event that rain's coming your way, the device will hold off on doing its gardening duties, as it also gets real time data from thousands of weather stations. Droplet's creators claim it can lower water sprinkler consumption by up to 90 percent, which is huge if true, as lawn sprinklers are one of the top water wasters. They also claim that it can save up to $265 a year on water bills, almost enough to recoup your investment should you choose to pre-order a unit from Amazon right now for $300. As for the remaining $35, well, let's just say that's just the price you'll have to pay for keeping R2D2's Mini-Me as a gardener.
LG's first smart light bulb flashes when you get a phone call
LG isn't about to let household heavyweights like Philips corner the connected lighting space -- it just unveiled the Smart Lamp, its first take on the concept. The 10W LED bulb gives Android and iOS users a familiar level of control over their illumination, including a light-based alarm clock and a security mode that pretends you're at home. There are a couple of noteworthy tricks in this initial offering, however. The light connects through both Bluetooth and WiFi, letting it pull the sync-based stunts we've seen in a few other bulbs: it can flash when you get a phone call, or (with Android) pulse to the beat of the music. The Smart Lamp is more expensive than ordinary LEDs at 35,000 won ($32) in LG's native Korea, but it could be a good deal if you don't need the many-colored lighting of Hue and similar systems. Unfortunately, there's no word on whether or not it's coming to the US.
Honeywell's evohome puts a smart heating system in every room, is now available in the UK
You don't need Google to tell you that fancy, net-connected and smartphone-controllable heating setups have caught on, blazing a trail for other home automation tech and the mysterious internet of things to follow. UK energy merchant British Gas launched its own wireless thermostat not too long ago, and now Honeywell's upping the stakes with its evohome multi-room system (a bigger, badder version of an old evohome product sold for "specialist installations."). In addition to the main controller that pairs with your boiler, you can also pimp your radiator valves with wireless nodes to create up to 12 different "smart zones" that can be managed independently. As you'd imagine, this means you can concoct some pretty elaborate schedules using the tablet-like touchscreen remote or via the Android and iOS apps. The system will also learn things about your crib, like how it long it takes to heat up and cool down, so you're only using energy when you need to. And, if you've left a window open, any nearby radiator module will know as much and shut itself off in protest of your wastefulness. Available in the UK from today, the basic Connected Pack (sans valve nodes) will set you back £249 without installation, which can't be any more complicated than rigging up a Sonos, can it?
Nest promises not to force any privacy changes on customers after Google's takeover
Google's acquisition of Nest prompted more than a few privacy concerns, legitimate and otherwise -- will you have to share temperature data with advertisers? You won't, as long as CEO Tony Fadell has his way. He told those at the DLD Conference that there aren't any plans to change Nest's current privacy policy, and any changes will be both transparent and opt-in; your smoke alarm won't start posting Google+ updates without permission. It will be a while before we see how well the company lives up to its promise, but it's good to know that Nest's ideal connected home won't be too connected. Check out Fadell's privacy remarks in the video below at about the 12:49 mark.
Enblink dongle now lets you control your home appliances using voice commands
In case you've never heard of Enblink, here's a one-sentence primer: it's an $85 dongle that plugs into your Google TV box, allowing you to control any Z-Wave-enabled appliance (door locks, lights, etc.) using an app. Got it? Good. Anyway, as of a few days ago, you can control everything using voice commands (Google TV still required). Basically, once you've gone through the trouble of creating so-called scenes, like dimming your living room lights, you'll need to go into the settings menu of the app and add a voice widget to the main screen. From there, you can use commands like "lamp on," "TV off" and "dim." The three-minute video below breaks it down nicely -- and serves as a helpful introduction to folks who had never heard of Enblink before today.
SmartThings shows off the ridiculous possibilities of its connected home system
Sure, we had to hop in a cab and take a rather expensive ride out into the boonies. But we had no option -- SmartThings had no official presence on the CES floor. Thankfully, the 45 minutes we spent in transit were not wasted. The company rented a rather opulent McMansion far from the strip and tricked it out with sensors, connected light bulbs, smart locks and cameras. It looked like the sort of place that was probably used as the set in a porn at some point, but on this day it was the location of a rather impressive connected home demo meant to showcase its new Labs program. SmartThings announced Labs during CES, which gives users early access to third party apps and devices. Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, and Sonos are the first three partners to join, and many of the demos in the home revolved around those products. For example, they built a "wake up" routine triggered by a Jawbone Up24. When the wearable is taken out of sleep mode, it tells SmartThings to turn on the lights in the kitchen, start brewing a pot of coffee and fires up NPR news on a Sonos Play1. In other examples the Sonos was used as an alarm or virtual guard dogs. A more fun example had a motion sensor attached to a hammer inside a piano. When that particular key is hit, it tells a Sonos to playback a file, allowing founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson to mime his way through a rather challenging classical piece. Obviously, there isn't much practical purpose to rigging up your piano with sensors (at least not that we can think of) but it shows just how versatile the young ecosystem already is. We don't want to ruin all the surprises, so just check out the video after the break, in which Mr. Hawkinson gives you tour of SmarthThings' CES headquarters.
Ivee Sleek is a voice assistant that controls your connected home via WiFi
By this point, most of us are accustomed to being able to talk to our laptops and phones to get them to do what we want (some of the time, at least). Now, Ivee Sleek is here to give you the same control over all those WiFi-equipped lightbulbs, thermostats and door locks we've been seeing lately. Sleek looks like a standard alarm clock, but when hooked into your home network it taps AT&T's Watson voice recognition technology to give you voice control over your abode. It's not quite natural language speech system, but Ivee's CEO Jonathon Nostrant informed us that, while direct commands like "make the temperature to 72 degrees" works best, you can also tell Sleek "I'm hot," and it'll turn on the A/C, too. The device is also compatible with Z-Wave devices from Iris and Staples Connect thanks to those platform's WiFi gateways. We got to see (hear?) Sleek control a plethora of devices in Ivee's booth here at CES, and came away impressed. To get Sleek listening, Ivee pulled a page from Google's playbook -- a simple "Hello, Ivee" gets you started (there's a physical button that accomplishes the same thing). Commands were interpreted correctly without fail and the fact that Sleek lets you know with audio cues when your message is received we found to be a nice touch. However, during our demo, there was a few-second delay between speech, recognition and execution. When we asked about the delay, Nostrant told us that the wireless interference in convention center was the culprit, but he assured us that the Sleek works much more quickly in residential settings. As for the device itself, build quality looks to be pretty good. Black and white versions are available, with soft touch plastic surrounding the thing and uniform seams all around. Should Ivee have piqued your interest you can pick one up today for $199 at your local Staples.
