The smart home was once a far-flung pipe dream, but it is now a reality. Wherever you live, your home is ground zero for some of the most interesting tech available right now, and tech that’s yet to come. Best of all, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to get your home up and running with smart hardware and services.
Home security and monitoring solutions can alert you to a burglary, smoke, fire, or just simple motion activity. There are plenty of options with a range of capabilities, from smart doorbells and smart locks to indoor and outdoor cameras that can see in the dark.
Smart speakers, like the Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple HomePod each play a big role in helping you out, too. In the kitchen, they can read out recipes, or if you’re cleaning, you can call out to them to change the song on the fly. If you buy smart light bulbs, for instance, you can turn them on and off by using your voice.
The beta functionality is now available for all users of the LG-owned Homey smart home platform to track and monitor energy use from compatible smart devices such as plugs, appliances, thermostats, and EV chargers. The €39 Homey Energy Dongle is also shipping in Europe to monitor per-second home energy consumption when plugged into the P1 port of smart meters.
“You’re not overcooked, you’re emotionally complex.”
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One 3000 lumen lamp with four lights you can position independently.
An image of the unannounced Bilresa Dual Button was spotted by homewithapple. According to a post on Threads, it’s an upcoming smart switch with two individually programmable keys that use the Thread protocol over the Matter smart home standard.
Most Ikea products use Zigbee and work through its Matter-enabled hub, the Dirigera. The Bilresa (which translates to Drive) is the second rumored Ikea device to use Thread; the company recently registered the Timmerflotte, a Matter-over-Thread temperature sensor.
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The Argus 4 Pro doesn’t require monthly fees and records 180-degree 4K video indoors and out, night and day.
Excellent rant from Jeff Geerling about lazy — or worse, exploitative — home appliance companies that insist on cloud connections to enable basic features. And it’s only getting worse with initiatives like “Screens Everywhere” from companies like Samsung and LG.
This trend away from physical buttons introduces privacy and security concerns, the prospect of costly repairs, and the perfect foundation for advertisements and subscriptions — maybe not now, but certainly when profits are threatened by, oh, I don’t know... global trade wars.
It’s almost certainly not coming to the US due to deadbolt incompatibility, but Xiaomi has launched a new smart door lock in China that includes an intercom voice changer, letting you disguise your identity while speaking with someone at the door, as spotted by Notebookcheck.
The Smart Door Lock 2 Cat Eye Edition also features several different ways to unlock it including a fingerprint reader, Bluetooth, NFC, passwords, and a physical key.
Now, instead of having to go to every platform individually to ensure their product works with each platform, manufacturers can submit their Matter-certified devices to the Connectivity Standards Alliance Interop Lab and get approved for all four smart home platforms in one go.
This should hopefully speed up the process of getting Matter devices onto shelves.
[developer.amazon.com]
On March 28th, Amazon will disable an optional privacy setting that kept your voice recordings local on some Alexa-powered smart speakers.
Here’s a rundown on the changes and what you can do about it if you own an Echo Dot (4th gen) speaker, Echo Show 10, or Echo Show 15 smart display.
The automaker’s bigger EX90 EV got CarKey last year, and now Volvo is adding it to the smaller EX30. Volvo’s software rollout on the EX90 has been buggy, with features like CarPlay arriving slowly and owners complaining that their digital keys don’t work.
Panos Panay told Bloomberg they’re re-engineering Alexa devices for Alexa Plus with new designs and materials, new silicon with edge processing, and better sound. There will also be a new “signature” tier, with the first devices arriving this fall.
He confirmed upgrades to Echo Frames and Echo Buds are coming and hinted at AR glasses and a new “wrist-worn device.” He didn’t rule out a home robot or a smartphone but said they’re focusing on gadgets “that matter the most.”
[bloomberg.com]
After supporting Matter in beta since 2023, the open-source smart home platform is now officially certified as a Matter Controller. This won’t make a jot of difference for users, says founder Paulus Schoutsen, but it’s “the cherry on the cake.”
He added that certification has been a lengthy and expensive process; to certify a controller, you have to test every device type it’s compatible with. And, unlike Apple, Amazon, and Google, Home Assistant supports most Matter devices.
[home-assistant.io]
