Hi,
Morning everybody from this part of the world, hope all is good. No major news here, we do have a ‘bank’ holiday weekend, so tomorrow is a holiday, which is great! Hoping for some good weather. Here are this week’s smart home stories:
And More Thread Smart Devices 🧵
Yep, I am going to keep on flying the Thread flag here in the newsletter. So Eve is emerging as a leader in terms of Thread announcements has come to the market (EU initially) with a Thread enabled smart switch. Aesthetically, it looks similar to the previous versions; but includes both Bluetooth and Thread router capabilities. Did think it was a little pricey. You can learn some more on the Eve website.
Chips and Vinegar! 🍟
There is no doubt the smart home is a little complicated nowadays! In addition to all the vendors, there is a mix of protocols in use that enable communication between devices. In recent times, a bunch of smart home product vendors has joined forces to create a pathway towards a standardized smart home. The name of this path is CHIP, short for Connected Home over IP. If you want to read some more, here is a link to an article on the blog. So I will get eventually get to the news part! It appears that CHIPs-enabled devices will ship later in 2021. Not a huge amount more to say at this stage, but be prepared for lots more Smart Home CHIPs in the coming months and indeed years.
New Blog Post
Your smart speaker is equipped with powerful Artificial intelligence. It’s built with a solid and expandable foundation. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi circuits are churning all day long while contacting natural language servers in the cloud. Simultaneously, the same communication modules are streaming music, fetching weather forecasts, reading football scores, and pulling up the next episode of your weekly podcast. Then, while these actions ping-pong back and forth, a localized processing thread is dealing with your expanding Smart Home. It makes an opening move by downloading a few Skills, Routines, or Actions. The downloads finish, the wireless instructions alter subtly, and your home listens.
>> Read the complete article on the blog
This Week’s Words of Wisdom 😊
Apple TV Announcement
As part of Apple’s myriad of tech announcements for its loyal iOS fan base, the Apple TV caught my attention. Not only, does it support 4K, but the company has added a Thread chip to the new hardware. This is important because it demonstrates Apple’s ongoing commitment to the CHIP project and by inference the smart home. One other noteworthy mention is support for Wi-Fi 6, the latest and greatest version of this popular wireless networking technology. Check out one of the many blog articles on the subject here.
A Pico Competitor – Kinda
Here is a product announcement for those of you who have embraced Belkin Wemo smart home devices. It’s a physical button-type device that can be used to control different scene types. Pressing a button can launch different scenes, which can be very convenient if you’re not on talking terms with your smart speakers. Reminds me a lot of the Lutron Pico remote control. Here are the product details.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command! 🎤
Alexa, Set my reading scene
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– Gerard