Hi,
Our heatwave has come to an end! Hope all is well in your part of the world. A relatively ‘quietish’ week on the smart home front, and here are some stories for you to peruse:
It’s Brilliant
So ‘Brilliant’ is a relatively new supplier of smart home equipment and debuted some devices at CES in 2020. Wall switches appear to be their flagship product and made some announcements this past week. To start with, they have added HomeKit support to their wall switch. On a side note, this wall switch looks really cool. In addition to ‘HomeKitifying’ their switch, they also released a smart plug, which of course is also HomeKit compliant. Seems to be only available to US customers for the moment. More details about these new devices are here?
I would assume most Apple smart home users rely on the standard Home app on our iPhones to control HomeKit devices. But there are some HomeKit nerds out there that want to push the smart home boundaries. In response to this demand, a number of dedicated Homekit app rivals emerged over the past couple of years. One of these apps is called aptly named Controller for HomeKit and has announced some app updates in recent times:
- New backup and restore process
- Performance and reliability improvements
- iBeacon support
If interested in moving away from the home app, then check out this link to learn about pricing details, etc…
Smart Lock Review
Although the smart lock industry is maturing; there are no real Nest stylish products emerging. August was one of the pioneers, but the product looks bulky when installed. There is a new contender called Level Lock on the block and they are serious. The company was founded by a team of former Apple, Nest, Google, and 3M employees. And they are designing and releasing some really nice smart lock products. This is a product line, I will be keeping a close eye on over the coming months. Check out this review to learn some more about this smart security solution.
This Weeks Blog Post
Apple is one of the major companies that provide home automation solutions to homeowners. While you might think that all automation companies provide the same solutions to users, Apple Homekit is a bit different. Nowadays, most people view Apple as the future of home automation because it provides a unique vision to homeowners. This is a more enhanced and exclusive vision than what Amazon, Google, and other automation giants offer. More people are opting for Apple Homekit for their automation solutions, and this hasn’t gone without notice. For this reason, you might ask yourself what is so unique about Homekit that most people prefer. Here are some of the benefits of a Homekit-powered smart home;
>> Read the complete article on the blog
This Week’s Words of Wisdom 😊
TVs on Fire
The Apple family of smart home technologies appear to be making their way into Apple TV devices. In particular, I am talking about Toshiba and Insignia smart TVs. So according to the blog, these TV models will support Apple Airplay 2 and HomeKit. Once the software update is applied, customers will be able to enjoy some new features including the ability to:
- Use Siri to switch the TV on and off.
- Use the Home app to change volume or switch TV inputs.
- Stream content directly from iPhones, iPads, and Macs directly on these TVs.
You can check Amazon’s full announcement for all the details if you want to read more.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command! 🎤
Alexa, did I lock the front door?
This is it for today, See you next Sunday 😉. If you have colleagues, friends, or neighbors that would benefit from knowing about smart home devices, please consider sharing them.
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– Gerard