As home automation creeps into the mainstream, most products are still designed to solve individual problems, without an overarching control layer. There are lots of terrific one-off products, but they don’t play together. There’s no standard to which they all adhere.
There’s the terrific Nest thermostat and smoke detector. A number of door lock and alarm systems. Lighting systems, smart home appliances. Lots of great ideas, all paving their own, non-connected, way onto the internet of things.
Some might argue that there’s no need for a control layer or hub. Perhaps. But to me, this is one of those areas where Apple would shine, bringing something into our lives that changes our experience for the better but which we didn’t even realize could exist.
One effort comes from office supplies retailer Staples, which used CES to show a significantly expanded number of companies whose products work with the Staples Connect system for home automation, which it launched late in 2013. The system centers on a $99 “hub” that connects to a person’s Internet router and allows a Staples smartphone app to control thermostats, light bulbs, and security systems.
At CES, Staples announced that products from an additional nine companies’ products would be compatible with the system. They include the Goji’s smart door lock and one from Withings, a company that makes Internet-connected health devices such as scales, and which at CES launched a new sleep-monitoring system called Aura.
I see this in much the same way as I saw the early MP3 players. A step in the right direction, but not quite the right solution. Interesting article, worth reading.
Huge agree here. I have a Nest Thermostat, an internet connected garage door, and some other odds and ends around the house that allow me what could basically be considered as remote control for my whole house. The problem is that they’re all on completely different systems. Yes, they can all be controlled on my iPhone, but it’s still all on completely separate apps and networks. There is no centralization at all.
Yes, it’s kind of a first world problem to have, but it would be really cool to have something a lot more unified.
Doing something like that seems distinctly un-Apple. I don’t think they would do anything except create a system that controls their own devices, not others’.
Nest’s ultimate goal is to do that. Don’t look at Nest as the thermostat and the smoke detector and that’s it. They will eventually have a full line of locks, and light switches, and everything else. It’s just going to be really expensive and take a long time.
And, there are already systems out there that control the multitude of vendors’ products, but they’re decidedly not very consumer friendly. You very much need to either be a system integrator to make them work or a hacker/tinker type.
SmartThings looks interesting. I haven’t used it myself yet, but they seem to be trying to draw various different home automation tools together under one system to control the lot.
I posted some thoughts along these lines last year.
http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/userforum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9752
As home automation creeps into the mainstream, most products are still
designed to solve individual problems, without an overarching control
layer. There are lots of terrific one-off products, but they don’t play
together. There’s no standard to which they all adhere.
While there is no one single overarching control layer, note that there are broadly three of them that most HA products use one of (these days).
WiFi/IP, ZigBee, and Z-Wave.
Nest is an outlier in that respect; many other thermostats have integration, typically ZW. (Nest claims they’ll put in integration in the future, which will have to be IP for existing models, as they lack the right radios for ZB or ZW).
I, for instance, have a new “SmartThings” hub I found on Amazon at Christmas, which does ZWave pretty well, and claims to do ZigBee, though I have no devices to test it with.
I don’t have experience with the rest of the “new wave” of user-friendly HA systems, but the SmartThings one trades ultimate flexibility for ease-of-use in normal use-cases (and lets the power user write custom apps in a scripting language); I expect most of the competition will be more or less equivalent.
(I was looking hard at a Mi Casa Verde system, but it was both more expensive and far more finicky, if more powerful.)
And on the latter part of your post, well, Apple could “do it”, but probably won’t.
Because they can’t improve over the generic case enough to make the costs worthwhile (compete with GE making light switches? No, thanks.) – and if they try to use Everyone Else’s Hardware via the “standards”, they’ll get bit by the edge cases.
People expect Apple stuff to Just Work – which it can’t if it has to support every random piece of HA kit people already have.
It’s trivial to make something that “talks zWave or zigBee”, but it’s hard to make it “talk to each piece correctly and use its specific capabilities just right“, which is what we’d want from an Apple-Grade piece of kit.
They could probably support the Big Names (Phillips Hue, zWave for general locks and thermostats, Nest, etc.), but I don’t see them being able to reinvent the market in the Apple Way.
im not sure i see the problem, software wise…i have one controller for them all — iOS devices. whats the difference between tapping to a different operations mode in the same app, vs clicking the home button and tapping another app? i cant think of it.
hardware wise, i do see a problem in that multiple systems may require multiple hubs on the router. my Hue has one, and i dont want another.
Here is the difference. When I come home, I want to say (or tap) “I am home” which unlocks front door, turns hallway lights on, adjust thermostat accordingly, turn TV on, etc. Having to launch different apps or even bunch of taps on the same app is almost useless. It’ll probably be easier to do them manually instead of fiddling with the phone for 5 minutes..But if I can tell my home, “I am home” or “Goodbye” or “Going to sleep” or “Watch a movie”, etc. and it takes care of all of those command automagically. wow!