Hiya, and how’s it going? Really nice Sunday morning here and running out the door to drop my son over to a scouting event. Otherwise, no more major news, all’s well in the smart home world, and here are a few nuggets of gossip to check out today:
Z-Wave Bridge 🌉
It’s been a while since I wrote about the famous Z-Wave. Shameless plug! there is some great video content about the protocol in week four of the Certified Next-Generation Smart Home Installer (NGSHI) Professional Program Training Program. Let me get back on track with the news that a company called Thinka has unveiled a Gateway device that bridges the world of Z-Wave with Apple HomeKit. This is good news in general for the smart home space, there are literally millions of Z-Wave products located in smart homes around the globe. From a practical perspective, this new bridge or gateway device brings hundreds of smart switches, thermostats, dimmers, doorbells, speakers, curtains, fans, dimmers, and various sensors into the HomeKit smart home ecosystem. Apple Insider reports right here on the subject.
Matters for Aqara 📅
Aqara, a popular smart home device provider, has outlined its intentions to support the mother of all smart home standards! – Matter. Specifically, a firmware update will be delivered to its hubs sometime in 2022. The timing I’m sure will depend on when the Matter specification is completed. According to Apple Insider, both the Aqara M1S and M2 hubs will receive the upgrade via an over-the-air download.
This Weeks Blog Post ✍️
It’s a big question. Fortunately, it’s hard to go wrong, particularly if you’ve read the earlier pages of his electronic document. Two mainstream options are out there right now. Amazon Echo has been around the longest. It was released into the consumer wilds in the middle of 2015, although this release was limited to the U.S. Interestingly, Alexa’s faithful carriage is also across the world. Her language changes to reflect these expanded offerings, so her voice now sports either a UK English accent or a German voice. The second smart speaker model that must be placed on nearly the same level of voice-activated excellence as the Amazon Echo is Google Home, a wireless speaker that’s dominated by the Google Assistant smart platform.
>> Read the complete article on the blog
Home Assistant Plans Mainstream 💁🏼
This is kinda exciting for those of you into the DIY smart home space. Basically, there are a few open-source smart home solutions knocking around for years. In general, you need to be reasonably tech-savvy to deploy. But in recent years, the founders behind these systems are attempting to make adoption more mainstream. According to the verge the company behind the Home Assistant software has launched a new hub based on a Raspberry Pi – and no that’s not a smoothie 🙂 Some important technical features, include both Zigbee 3.0 and Matter support. To grab one of these hubs, drop over to Crowd Supply.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command! 🎤
Hey, Google, play with or without you from U2
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