Howdy!
And how’s it going; heading to my native County of Cork this morning and looking forward to some time meeting family and hanging out on the beach 🏖️. This weeks smart home news was dominated by some Apple announcements at their annual event, and is further evidence of how Apple is starting to double down on its plan to dominate the smart home space. Enjoy the latest news and touch base again next week.
SmartThings App Revamp 📱
Bit of a fanboy of SmartThings some years back and even created a dedicated course on the subject. In recent times; I felt that it seemed to have lost some momentum. Don’t get me wrong it’s a hugely powerful platform and powers thousands of homes worldwide. Every so often we get a trickle of news from its new owner (Samsung), but in general nothing significant has happened for a while until this week! So they have given their app a fresh look; which is welcome. For those of you who use SmartThings here are two notable features:
- The UI looks fresher and is chopped into five separate areas.
- Will run on a windows PC.
That’s all the gossip from Smartthings; looking forward to seeing the new app and more importantly its support for the Matter standard.
If you’re looking to dig in deeper, check out this article over at the Verge.
This Weeks Blog Post
Automating your home has never been easier. Nowadays, you can control the functionalities of your smart devices anyhow you want. It can be via a mobile app, a smart speaker, or a digital voice assistant. Voice assistants have become increasingly popular among homeowners because of their ease of use and their interpersonal relationship. Three digital voice assistants stand tall, namely Siri by Apple, Alexa by Amazon, and Google Assistant by Google. So which is the best virtual assistant among the three? This article will provide a detailed breakdown about the different categories in which either digital assistant prevails over the rest;
>> Read the complete article on the blog
This Week’s Words of Wisdom 😊
Big Apple Smart Home News 🍏
Since its release a number of years ago, the HomeKit smart home system has made steady progress. During this period, the big question on people’s minds was; will Apple stick with the smart home? And, based on WWDC 2021; the answer is a resounding YES! Here are the big announcements:
- The Matter standard will be supported in iOS 15. This means that products from other vendors will now play nicely with the HomeKit smart home ecosystem.
- HomeApp updates include the ability to view multiple cameras feeds on an Apple TV.
- Another important snippet of news was the re-positioning of Siri from cloud to local. This approach will remove the need to send audio commands over the Internet, and instead, the commands will be executed via local devices.
- And finally, Apple is expanding into the smart lock industry.
All in all, some great news from Apple and demonstrates a commitment to the smart home in the coming years.
Apple Air 😮💨
And our final story this week is also Apple related and has got to do with air purifiers. Never really dived into this product category, but does appear to be getting popular. If you are building out an Apple smart home, and looking to at air purifiers then check out the latest device from Sensibo. Not going to get into the main features, only to say that it’s compatiable with HomeKit and is controllable within the Home App.
All the details about can be found at companies web-site.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command! 🎤
I’m home!
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– Gerard
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