The article discusses expectations for smart home announcements at the upcoming IFA tech show in Berlin. While companies may unveil new smart speakers, cameras and robot vacuums, the smart home remains fragmented as the Matter interoperability standard has yet to fully deliver on integrating devices. The author argues the industry needs to provide more utility than novelty by allowing different smart devices to work together seamlessly. Examples mentioned include lights notifying users of doorbell activity or a robot vacuum taking on multiple household chores autonomously. Overall, the smart home needs solutions that are essential rather than just novel if consumers are to see the value beyond the initial cool factor.
The best smart home platform before are this was home assistant. And by gosh it still is the best by a mile. The difference in functionality home assistant has to anyone else is an ocean wide win for home assistant. It’s the only thing that even comes close to the utopia idea of a smart home so many have given up on. I love my home assistant 💜
Ah the internet of infected things. Everything a mash up of open and closed source, old and new, then abandoned by the manufacturer after a few years for the next shiny.
Probably Linux based, wait to be taken over by a few botnets…
What is needed is an open, standardized hardware platform. You should be about to flash on the IoT OS of your choice that will be kept up to date.
You mean like KNX?
Which we have for 3 decades now, is totally offline if needed and can by design not leak data without the user noticing, is available both wired an non-wired, is compatible across hundreds of manufacturers and even has some open source projects, is totally backwards compatible and does not require a fancy “central component” that might stop the whole system functioning?
Seriously: The whole smart home world is a scam. 90% of all products that are new and fancy are nothing more than “voice/mobile remotes” and not truely intelligent. They are used because people refuse to do their homework in terms of smarthome.
There is a number of options, but not all hardware is flashable and some that is can be work.
What I want is autodisoverable hardware open to be flashed by owners, by law. I want it for all devices to be honest!
I understand your intentions, but there question is why add this layer of complexity. A switch that is a switch and switches everything I want no matter what because it is forced by the common standard to do so and can not send any data ever is a good switch.
And tbh, while I am an absolute advocate for OSS I rather have a switch that is not depending on a possibly abandoned OSS project (been through that) - hardware in this field has incredibly long lifetime, much longer than almost all OSS projects (remember, EIB is older than Linux!) and does it’s complete job from day one. There is no evolution in some hardware in this field and all evolution that did happened did not happen hardware side but communication wise - where we are also hardware limited. It is therefore much more important to define a common standard for communication - which we have - than have flashable components (exceptions apply,sure). We need to force legislation to get a common standard of communication or at least mandatory offline gateway availability to prevent thousands of components going to waste in a few years.
It does not help your cause when you can flash the hardware but the hardware is still talking to the wrong, proprietary communication channels.
Could you elaborate on how the room presence and positioning in rooms is done? Would love to have that.
Regular presence detectors (MDT 4 zone presence detectors, 120€ each) for the bigger rooms with some additional single zone detectors( mostly MDT as well around 75€) for some special applications (e.g. Sofa). Used those as well for some really small rooms (loo,etc.)
For the home office rooms and general presence in the bedrooms we used Steinel True Presence (around 300€ but includes air quality sensors - in the end they aren’t much more expensive if you plan on measuring air quality there anyway). They are dumb in terms of positioning in the room but superior for detecting people who do not move for a long time.
In addition to these I have normal KNX motion detectors(mostly MDT for about 90€) for some areas (as mentioned elsewhere: Next to the bed at ground level to detect your motion when you get up at night and switch on the light with 5% red so the wife does not wake up)
In terms of how it works:
Presence detectors (excluding the Steinel) are basically pimped infrared motion detectors. They detect your signature against the background and unlike motion detectors kind of remember your signature for a while. Each one has one or more “zones” it can detect you in. The “minis” mentioned above have one, the 4 zone ones have,well,four which are aimed at 45,135,225,315 degrees in case of the MDTs. This allows the detector to basically differentiate between someone being “in my right upper corner”, “in my left lower corner” etc. (Especially as detection ranges can be varied between zones but also for various applications and even day/night mode).
With a bit of clever positioning e.g. my presence detector in the kitchen has four zones: at the stovetop, workspace one and workspace two and “entry”. The detector sits on the ceiling right where these zones meet (which is not the middle of the room in this case!)
If anyone registers a presence the normal light goes on (when it’s dark enough). If you go into workspace one (where most cutting is done) the under-kitchen-cabinet light goes on. The sensitivity for that is much smaller as I don’t want it to go on if you just pass through, though. Additionally the sensitivity of the “entry” is smaller as I don’t want the light to go on if someone just passed the kitchen in the hallway.
The Steinel works a bit different as it is radar based and has only one zone, but is therefore able to recognise ones breathing movements/minimal movement while e.g. working. Otherwise it works the same.
The additional ones I use are there to recognise people better, e.g. my living room is fairly big and I want the system to specifically recognise people being on the sofa so the mini looks straight down only - while the big 4 zone detector is only able to see if people are “in the direction of the sofa”.
Hope that describes it somewhat, let me know if you have any questions!
I have yet to see a “smart home” feature that’s worth the potential problems, let alone the cost.
Yeah, a well-integrated smart home can do some pretty cool stuff, but it also means putting my trust in corporations even more than I already have to. Plus, I’ll have to worry about each major appliance I own possibly being bricked due to a buggy software update or a malicious hacker.
Keep my home nice and dumb. Thanks.
If it works for you and you’re happy with it, then ignore the haters (like me) and enjoy! 👍
You can easily have a smart home without any data leaving your home network.
You need three things:
- Home Assistant software (free and open source)
- ZigBee (also free and open source) smart devices made by companies that comply with the ZigBee protocol
- Most importantly, a ZigBee controller.
There are several options available (Deconz Conbee II, etc), and this device gets plugged into the same machine Home Assistant is on, and it allows HA to control your ZigBee devices directly. No “hub” sending your data to a cloud server, everything is done on your local network. If the devices comply with the protocol, you don’t need their hub, even if they say it’s required.
I use Hue bulbs, but have no Hue hub. I use many Aqara devices, but don’t have an Aqara hub. It’s pretty great and works very well!
All valid concerns, but if you really wanted to, you could roll your own home automation setup using something like a Raspberry Pi, and optionally Home Assistant, and keep it all offline so that it’s safe from hackers.
Yes, you can, but it can be a lot of effort and a lot of time spent researching and tinkering.
It’s fine if you want that to be your hobby, but it can be a heavy lift for the average person.
It’s surprisingly easy with Home Assistant. You really don’t need much tinkering, if any, to get the basics working quite reliably.
Will Apple sell more devices if they fully support the standard? Will Google?
If not, there’s your answer.
Apple isn’t really a good example, they’re pushing the standard. I don’t know of any smart devices they make themselves besides the homepod.
Will Apple sell more devices if they fully support the standard?
I stand to the question. Apple is pretty famous for saying what people want to hear, and not actually doing much.
My cynical interpretation of the right-to-repair announcement is: we know Europe is gonna cram this down our throats, so let’s try and get control of the narrative while there’s still time.
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A year ago at Berlin’s IFA tech trade show (think European CES), Verge reporter Jon Porter witnessed a Google Nest Hub control an Apple HomeKit smart plug.
Despite being developed by the biggest names in the industry — Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, and more — Matter has yet to deliver on its main promise.
We’re expecting news from robot vacuum giants Ecovacs and Roborock, and smaller smart home players such as Eve, Nanoleaf, SwitchBot, Aqara, Aeotec, and Yeelight are all on the show floor.
But what’s more important is the long and boring task of getting them to seamlessly work together to create a home that’s actually smart, not just a collection of disparate gadgets that solve specific problems.
The smart home standard introduces a secure, basic communication layer that allows for interoperability and local control.
It moves us away from proprietary protocols, dubious security standards, and cloud dependency to the point where — if appropriately implemented — we can feel comfortable allowing technology intimate access to our homes.
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