Morning everyone, hope all is good, getting ready for a long drive to my native county of Cork to watch our second youngest daughter play some sports. The weather is good and looking forward to the day ahead. Grab a coffee and enjoy some of the smart home stories that I reviewed this past week,
Generac Bye Ecobee 🐝
One of the best if not the best smart thermostat companies out there was bought this week. The buyer known for its prowess in the generator space is new to the smart home space. They paid $770 million to acquire Ecobee. The smart thermostat space has become more competitive in recent years and only time will tell Generac’s plans for Ecobee. You can check out this article to read some more about the acquisition.
Smart Turkeys 🐔
Smartifying the kitchen is an ongoing theme within the smart home space. Within the smart kitchen, appliances vendors are continuously adding smart features to their devices. In line with the upcoming holiday season, has added ‘turkey mode’ to its line of smart ovens. If you are lucky to own one of these high-tech connected ovens, then expect to see an over-the-air software upgrade over the coming weeks to enable this new feature. For the rest of us, we will continue to drop the turkey in the oven and hope for the best 🙂 Click here to read the official announcement.
This Weeks Blog Post ✍️
When you’re setting up your smart home, besides comfort and convenience, you’re thinking about the affordability of the home automation platform to use.
As much as there are many home automation companies nowadays, some offer relatively expensive smart products compared to others. This is a factor that most homeowners might be skeptical about since they want efficient smart products at an affordable price. Home automation will elevate your lifestyle and home’s functionalities but you might not want to break the bank for it. Founded in 2016, the China-based Meross is one of the most prominent companies in the smart home industry known for providing affordable home automation solutions.
The company manufactures a wide range of Homekit compatible smart products such as smart switches, light strips, smart plugs, smart lights, and many others.
Although Meross smart products might now work with Thread, Zigbee, or Z-Wave networks, they do work well when connected to your home Wi-Fi. It’s understandable for anyone to be skeptical about connecting your most important smart devices to their home Wi-Fi network due to the security implications it possesses. However, this is not a major problem when using Meross smart products since you can always opt for the Homekit variants. This is a lot safer for your data because the Homekit variants do not require using the Meross app or giving Meross your home Wi-Fi password. Also, when using the Homekit variants, your data is safeguarded by Apple’s strict encryption protocols. This assures you that your data is secure and out of reach of any hackers.
The best thing about going the Homekit variants way is that you’ll never need to use the Meross app at any point as everything can be configured via the Apple Home app. To add the Meross devices, you also go the Homekit way since you have to scan the Homekit code on every smart device and assign an easily memorable name to you on the Apple Home app. Here is everything you might need to know about setting up the ideal Meross-powered smart home. ;>> Read the complete article on the blog
New Nuki 🔑
Of all the smart home device categories, smart locks still remain the most lackluster in terms of adoption. Apparently, only 1.5 percent of doors in Europe have a smart door lock installed.
A digital lock company called Nuki is looking to change that trend with the launch of new iterations of its smart lock. The latest versions of the companies flagship smart locks include some notable features:
- Installed a base of 200,000 households in Europe.
- Battery-powered.
- Affordable
- Supports new accessories, namely an external door sensor, a universal cylinder, and a bridge device.
- Supports Wi-Fi for remote access.
- Operates with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home smart assistants.
- Works with a plethora of smart hubs.
Watch the following video to find out some more details.
Hey Sonos 🎼
I have mixed feelings about this rumor. The word on the street is that Sonos has a cunning plan to release their own voice assistant. The source of the speculation originates from a Reddit post that found some code that supports a new voice assistant. I assume the new functionality won’t be positioned as a competitor to the mighty Alexa, Hey Google, and Siri. Instead, I expect this platform if it does come to fruition to be much more specialized. Tesla has their own voice assistant, and a voice assistant dedicated to music control is not beyond the realms of possibilities.
Weekly Smart Home Voice Command! 🎤
Hey Siri, Adjust the brightness downstairs to 50%
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