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Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Senior Reviewer, Smart Home

Senior Reviewer, Smart Home

    More From Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

    I tried the tech that makes hands-free smart locks actually work

    Powered by ultra-wideband, the next generation of smart locks will turn your phone into a key — that you never have to use.

    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    JetBlue is the first airline to take Venmo paymentsJetBlue is the first airline to take Venmo payments
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Matter plans to fix your home Wi-Fi.

    The Wi-Fi Alliance and Thread Group have revealed they’re working with the CSA on several solutions to make sure your Wi-Fi router plays well with your smart home devices:

    These include features like IPV 6 and multicast discovery, which we want to make sure are consistent and reliable across routers ... The way routers implement their multicast discovery can be broken, and that leads to a pretty bad experience for users ... We need to make Wi-Fi work reliably for all of the IoT use cases.

    I’ve experienced network issues setting up Matter devices and keeping them online, and I’m not alone. If Matter can fix Wi-Fi routers, all will be forgiven.

    Matter will be better in 2025 — say the people who make it

    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Here’s another use for that Thread radio in your iPhone.

    In an interview with The Verge, Vividh Siddha, director of engineering at Apple and president of Thread Group, shared another use case for the Thread radio in newer iPhones.

    As well as allowing setup of a Thread device when you don’t have a Thread border router, the Thread radio in the iPhone lets you control devices when the power is out:

    But the other important factor is the ability to use your accessories, and some important ones, like your front door lock when there’s a power outage. If you have no infrastructure — your Wi-Fi router is down, your Thread border router is down — and you still want the ability to get into your house or do other things that might be smart home related. Those are some use cases that it’s explicitly designed for, but it’s not limited to that.

    Matter will be better in 2025 — say the people who make it

    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    mmWave tech is set to take motion sensing to the next level in the smart home.

    The radar-based technology can detect movements as slight as breathing, so it won’t turn the lights out on you when you’re sitting on the couch.

    Superior to PIR sensing, mmWave is seeing fast adoption, with Samsung seemingly poised to add it to its appliances. Here’s a great explainer from The Ambient on how the tech could help your smart home.

    What is mmWave, and what does it mean for your smart home?

    [The Ambient]

    Matter will be better in 2025 — say the people who make it

    The CSA, Thread Group, and Wi-Fi Alliance say they’re working to fix the biggest problems with the smart home standard. In this exclusive interview, I ask them how and when.

    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Samsung is bringing ambient sensing to SmartThingsSamsung is bringing ambient sensing to SmartThings
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Here’s the tech that could turn millions of Zigbee light bulbs into motion sensors with a single updateHere’s the tech that could turn millions of Zigbee light bulbs into motion sensors with a single update
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    These POE smart shades are the first to work with Matter.

    SmartWings, one of the first to offer Matter over Thread smart shades, has another first. Today, the company announced its Matter over Ethernet smart shades, which use a single cable to provide power and connectivity — no batteries, Thread, or Wi-Fi required.

    Matter compatibility means the shades, which come in roller, zebra, and woven styles, will work with Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings, Alexa, and other smart home platforms.

    SmartWings’ new Matter over Ethernet shades have a CAT 6A Inline coupler to connect to a port on a compatible router or switch for power and connectivity in one cable.
    SmartWings’ new Matter over Ethernet shades have a CAT 6A Inline coupler to connect to a port on a compatible router or switch for power and connectivity in one cable.
    Image: SmartWings
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
    You can now control your LG appliances with Homey.

    The electronics giant has followed through on its promise to open the APIs for its ThinQ appliances, and Homey, which is owned by LG, is one of the first platforms to implement it.

    The LG ThinQ app for Homey is available now for both cloud-based and hub-based setups and lets you add connected LG washers, dryers, TVs, and more to Homey and control them directly or with automations.

    LG appliance integration with Homey allows users to set up automations like this one, which will dim the Philips Hue lights and close the Aqara curtains when the LG TV turns on after 8pm.
    LG appliance integration with Homey allows users to set up automations like this one, which will dim the Philips Hue lights and close the Aqara curtains when the LG TV turns on after 8pm.
    Image: Homey

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