Hiya, Gerard here! Back again after a number of years 🙂
Hope all is going well this weekend! let’s dive into some stories that caught my attention this week.
Do you want buy a HomePod?
No, not talking about the original and expensive iteration of Apple’s venture into the smart speaker, instead I am talking about its baby sibling the Mini HomePod. Nearly three years since HomePod took the world by storm, NOT! Although an awesome speaker, its market penetration was limited and had no real impact on smart homeers!
Macworld have posted some updates for all of you early adopters. Here’s what they had to say:
Pricing: Most importantly pricing is at $99; this now makes it an attractive voice interface if you are serious about rolling Homekit out in your home.
When can I buy: The word on the street is Mid-November for availability to buy!
And what about my smart home? From a purely smart home perspective, Mini-HomePod will double up as a hub device, that enables control of your HomeKit compatible devices over the Internet. Furthermore, you can set up multi-room music if you buy enough of these devices, and finally, And it goes without saying Siri can be used to talk to your devices.
Get the whole read here.
More about Google’s latest smart speaker from Google
According to a new episode on 9to5Google Daily, there are hints that Nest Audio speakers will be configurable to enable home theater and surround sound functionality, a pretty awesome possibility when I think back to my digital home integrator days. Furthermore, rumors are also coming in of the possibility of closer interoperability with the latest Google TV Chromecast product.
Smart devices and cutting costs!
Smart thermostats are champions when it comes to cutting heating and cooling costs for the past decade. It’s not untrue to say that Tony Fadell’s Nest was the original pioneer and the new owners have recently announced the introduction of a new entry-level iteration of the original iconic device. Rather than waffling on about the various features (lots of articles out there already), three things caught my attention, namely:
- Comes in at a nice price, $129
- Supports a technology called Soli, which enables motion sensing that can be used for all sorts of things.
- It’s a real pain using two apps for Google smart devices. For this device, device and management occur through the google home app.
- Available in a bunch of creative colors!
Check out the official announcement here.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command!
Set the temperature to x°
Until next week, thanks, Gerard