Hey there, and good bank holiday Monday here in Ireland! Apologies for the email newsletter going out late, long weekend here, and busy doing lots of family stuff.
Let’s dive into what’s happening in the smart home metaverse this past week! And enjoy today’s curated news!
Home Assistant Is Coming for Your Car 🏎️
Home Assistant recently announced that they’ve already started development on Android Auto. This comes after last December Google released an update to Android Auto and finally started accepting IoT apps into the Play Store. Following these changes, the Home Assistant team wanted to get new features added immediately. Some of these features include:
- Access to devices like a garage door, lights, locks, and scenes upon launching the app
- Access to entities and their state after tapping on a category
- Ease to navigate in Home Assistant that has a location, like persons, devices, or sensors
- A binary sensor that allows you to automate when you’re in the car and connected to the head unit
Yale Release HomeKit Smart Safe in North America 🌎
Yale recently launched two products in the U.S.: the Yale Smart Safe and Yale Smart Safe with Wi-Fi. The Smart Safe is ideally designed to protect valuable belongings such as important documents, jewelry, collectibles, etc. It can be controlled using the Yale Access app, a built-in keypad, or the traditional key.
Additionally, the Smart Safe is made of steel and comes with several security features, including an anti-pry laser-cut door, two anti-saw bolts, two-layer encryption, two-factor authentication, a feature to disable the safe, and an alarm that will go off after tampering or multiple incorrect code attempts.
The Yale Smart Safe and the Yale Smart Safe Wi-Fi are available for $249.99 and $299.99, respectively.
Aqara Announced Four New Products 🤺
Aqara is planning to expand its lineup of smart products with a new sensor, smart door lock, video doorbell, and an LED strip. The Video Doorbell G4 works in combination with other Aqara smart cameras, allows highly flexible installation, supports HomeKit Secure Video, and works with Matter. It features local AI-enabled facial recognition, 7-day free cloud storage, and optional local storage via a microSD card.
The Presence Sensor FP2 is based on millimeter wave (mmWave) radar technology and can detect a person even when they’re sitting still. It enables zone positioning and comes with features like multi-person detection, fall detection, and a built-in light sensor.
The Smart Lock U100, Aqara’s first deadbolt lock, is compatible with HomeKit and supports the home key feature in Apple Wallet. It also has additional access authentication options such as
fingerprints, passwords, the Aqara Home app, NFC cards, and mechanical keys. The smart lock is based on Zigbee protocol and supports Matter via a compatible Aqara hub.
Aqara is planning to integrate Matter into its existing and new smart devices. The company has also confirmed a new lineup of Thread-based devices with native Matter support.
63% of U.S. Internet Households Own a Smart TV 🖥️
Research by New Parks Associates shows that 63% of U.S. internet households own a smart TV, indicating a 25% increase from 2015. The OTT Video Market Tracker shows how companies like Roku have transformed the role of the TV in the home by combining entertainment with connected home functions. In fact, Roku announced in CES 2023 plans to manufacture its own line of smart TVs.
The research also shows that 87% of U.S. internet households have at least one streaming service. Leading TV manufacturers and tech giants, such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung, are building smart home controls into the TV to transform the device into a home control platform.
Smart Home AI-Generated Illustration of the Week!
This is it for today, See you next Sunday morning 😉. If you have colleagues, friends, or neighbors that would benefit from knowing about smart home devices, please consider sharing them. They can sign up for the newsletter by going here.
– Gerard