It was only a matter of time, really, before Google positioned itself in the connected home market. Today, they’ve taken a huge step towards doing that with the purchase of Nest, one of the most consumer-facing, market-ready connected home technology companies: they already have a best-selling thermostat, and recently introduced the networked Protect smoke alarm. Conceivably, Google will interface the technology into its existing digital networks to make the connected home connected to Google. As Nest already has a best selling product, expect developments to come quickly with this purchase.
Tag: connected home
LG Appliances Integrate With Messaging App LINE
Yes, you heard it right. LG will be debuting LINE chat capabilities integrated into their smart appliances, so you can chat with your dishwasher or fridge. The partnership works to let users command their appliances within the popular messaging app, thereby embedding the internet of things into their daily routine. I chat with my friends letting them know I’ll be out of town in one thread and tell my washing machine that it should go into energy saving mode. It works a bit like Siri for text, interpreting commands using natural language processing.
The decision for LG to work with Line opposed to only a proprietary app, for instance, is an interesting one. Instead of creating new systems, LG is bringing itself into the products and service you already use, making them more natural and seamless.
Qualcomm’s AllSeen Alliance Unifies Internet Of Things
The power of the internet of things is that these objects can talk to each other. In the connected home, your lightbulbs turn off because they are aware that the door has shut or your oven just received a cooking instructions from a recipe you saw on TV. The power is in the connectivity which has long been a promise of the future of the home, albeit a mostly unrealized one.
Enter the AllSeen Alliance. The consortium, spearheaded by Qualcomm, aims to create an open framework that lets device communicate to one another. The beauty of the Alliance is that it is device agnostic and works across various forms of communication, whether they be bluetooth, NFC, wifi or Zigbee. With a large player like Qualcomm in the mix, expect some serious advancements in the connected home space in the coming year.
Connected Home Fuels Anticipatory Computing
SmartThings, a developer of software and hardware powering the Connected Home, released some surprising data points based on their network of 10,000 users. According to the startup, those active homes generate 150 million data points a day. Currently, those data points are being used to inform the smart home devices, but imagine a world where that data could inform auxiliary products and services. This would create a world of anticipatory computing, where your lights dim when you start Netflix or your oven logs all the recipes you’ve seen on TV.
