It's the little things! Amazon & Sears

Sometimes announcements go under the radar, this is one of those times.

Sears and Amazon have come to an agreement whereby Amazon will help sell and market Kenmore appliances for Sears and Sears will build Amazons Alexa Smart Home Technology into virtually all of it's appliances.

Kenmore is more than 90 years old and has a wide range of home appliances including fridges, freezers, cookers, dishwashers, dryers and air-con.

"Last month, Amazon and Sears had a bit of an interesting announcement. Amazon is going to begin to sell Sears’ Kenmore appliances through its online store, and in turn, Sears will be adding Alexa to its appliances. Virtually making its entire lineup of appliances “smart.” This is a big deal, and perhaps a bigger deal than most people realize. Obviously, with this deal there are more advantages for Amazon than for Sears here. But for Sears, it’s going to help the company stay afloat, in a time where companies like Amazon, are killing off brick and mortar stores, where Sears really shined over the years.

Kenmore isn’t just a brand name, it’s a name that many people think of when they think of high-end and quality appliances. Kenmore, as a brand, has been around since 1913. Not many brands are able to stay around for over a hundred years, but Kenmore has done that. And through the years, Sears and Kenmore have produced some incredible appliances that have been high quality, and not really all that expensive, compared to its competitors. But Sears’ recent financial troubles has made it tough for the store and the Kenmore brand to exist. And that’s where Amazon comes in. Amazon is able to list these products on its website and sell them directly to customers. Saving Sears money on physical stores. Amazon also gets help from Sears who knows how to ship and distribute large products like refrigerators, dish washers and such. Something that Amazon hasn’t yet started shipping, but that’s changing with this new agreement.

On the smart home side of things, that’s where things get interesting. Sears has agreed to include Alexa into all of its Kenmore appliances. That is a huge deal. That basically gives Alexa an exclusive on working with these appliances, since they don’t yet work with Cortana, Google Assistant or Siri and there’s no word on these working in the future. It is possible that Kenmore could expand to other personal assistants, but at this point, it’s pretty unlikely. This also means that Alexa will be in more hands, and that’s something Amazon wants more than anything. With Alexa built in, users will be able to tell their oven to turn to 350 degrees, or tell the dish washer to start a load, etc. And of course there are plenty of other things that Alexa would be able to do.

The smart home industry has been a bit stagnant in recent years. It is growing, but not as much as some companies had hoped or thought it would. It’s still a fairly small market, but with the addition of smart assistants like Alexa coming in and making it easier to tie all of these products and appliances together, more people are getting into the smart home area. This doesn’t mean that people are going to go out and replace all of their appliances with smart ones. First off, that’s expensive to do, and secondly, not every appliance is smart, yet. So it’s not really feasible. But as far as the smart home goes, this is a huge deal for Amazon.

It’s been said many times before that Alexa is basically Amazon’s entry into everyone’s homes. Not so that it can collect data on you, but so that Amazon is in everyone’s home. Alexa already acts as a window to Amazon’s store, making it easier for users to buy more items from Amazon with Alexa, instead of having to go to Amazon’s website, and with the Sears partnership, that is going to become a bigger deal. But for Sears, it is just looking to survive, and perhaps turn itself around. It has started to lose out thanks to competitors like Home Depot and Lowes, who are currently the top retailers for appliances in the US. Leaving Sears in the dust, and that’s something that Sears needs to change. Even companies like Best Buy, have taken up a big chunk of the appliance sales in the US as of late.

Now while this deal between Amazon and Sears likely won’t bear much fruit to consumers, it is a big deal for both Amazon and Sears. It’s a bigger deal for Amazon as it looks to get Alexa into just about everything. And on the Sears front, it keeps its oldest brand, Kenmore, alive just a bit longer. Sears has been around for over 120 years, and has sold virtually everything you can think of, and in the past few decades, it has started to lose its customer-base, largely due to the internet. Of course, Sears isn’t the only company to fall victim to the internet. A lot of retailers with physical stores are also struggling these days. So this deal should help Sears out, perhaps transition them over to the 21st century a bit faster."

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2017/08/tech-talk-amazons-sears-deal-jump-start-smart-home.html

Spotify Music Service to go Public

Incredibly popular music service Spotify, which boasts 60 million subscribers, is to offer shares to the public via a direct listing.  The music service has proved very popular with multi room audio systems Sonos and Nuvo allowing you to for a monthly fee listen to millions of songs from just about every artist.

"Spotify’s singular focus on music sees it adding subscribers faster than the iPhone company with a streaming app on the side. Spotify has added 20 million paid subscribers in less than a year, while it’s taken Apple Music more than a year and a half to make that progress. Spotify now has 60 million subscribers, compared to Apple Music’s 27 million (as of June).

Spotify’s ability to accelerate its growth rate despite competition from arguably the world’s most powerful company is a testament to the product and community it’s built.

Apple Music offers three-month free trials, comes pre-installed on iPhones and pays big bucks for exclusive early access to top albums. Those advantages might help Apple Music win fans of particular artists, plus mainstream listeners finally switching over from MP3s. Yet Spotify remains the go-to streaming service for music lovers.

Spotify is gearing up for what’s being called a “direct listing,” where the company intends to go public without doing an IPO. Insiders, not the company, will be selling shares to the stock market.

This is a highly unusual move and has been met with widespread skepticism. While many companies dread the IPO process, which involves bankers rounding up institutional investors and determining a price for its debut, it is an opportunity to raise money for the company.

By skipping this, Spotify is potentially missing out on hundreds of millions in proceeds from the IPO, but it could do a secondary offering to raise cash at a later date. Spotify is said to be on track to complete this before the end of the year, which was previously reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Spotify growth has been fueled by several important product developments:

Discover Weekly: Spotify’s wildly popular weekly updated personalized playlist has made it the top choice for music fans trying to find new songs and artists to love. The playlist reached 40 million users its first year, and Spotify has followed it with Release Radar specifically for new tracks. Competitors like Apple and SoundCloud have tried to copy Discover Weekly, but Spotify is entrenching itself as the full-fledged streaming service for taste makers.

Spotify recently launched QR codes for sharing music

Recruiting Hold-Out Artists: While initially stuck with a bad rap for not giving enough royalties to musicians, the payouts have grown significantly alongside Spotify’s subscriber base. The cash, plus the leverage Spotify has built as it becomes a must-have distribution channel if artists want a big hit record, has lured hold-outs like Taylor Swift to adopt Spotify. The public debut could strengthen Spotify’s standing in the music industry, and convince both artist and listener holdouts that it’s built to last.

Google Home + Spotify vs Amazon Alexa: Voice-controlled music is an incredible experience that listeners are buying access to through Amazon and Google’s smart speakers. While Amazon Alexa preferences its own Amazon Prime Music service, Spotify is one of the premier partners for Google Home. It’s already more popular for dedicated music streaming than fellow partners Pandora and Google Music, and recently Google Home began allowing control of Spotify’s free ad-supported service. The partnership with Google Home will become even more important once Apple starts shipping its own HomePod smart speaker.

The No-IPO public offering

Spotify has not spoken publicly about the expected direct listing, but some close to the company believe that it could avoid some of the initial volatility. Bankers usually recommend a lower share price for a first-day “pop,” but many companies have trouble maintaining this in the coming weeks. This could be a way around that, some theorize.

It would also avoid those “lock-up” periods, where insiders can’t sell shares for months after the company goes public. Snap’s stock has been trading down in recent weeks in anticipation of today’s sell off.  If the experiment goes well, we may see other companies replicating it.

But it’s definitely possible that Spotify’s process will create even more volatility. The company hasn’t announced specifics about how it plans to execute this, but part of the reason IPO shares are sold to institutional investors is because they are expected to hold their positions longer.

Instead, Spotify may have to rely on its cache of cool with listeners to drive public support for its share price as it pushes to fend off Apple Music’s invasion of its streaming kingdom."

https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/31/spotify-vs-apple-music/

H3 Digital New Office Update - Windows

We are currently adding some of the windows to the new H3 Digital office, Thanks to Nathan at PSD for his help with these.  Once these go in we will pour the concrete for the floor and then we can start bricking up some of the rest of the space to enclose our office space.

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The UPVC profiles should be finished tomorrow, we've gone for black colour and a dark tint on the windows to go with the outside Matt Nlack theme.

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It's really starting to take shape now, looking forward to the floor being poured and then continuing the journey to turn it into our new office.

Will.I.Am buys Home Automation company WINK

Will.I.Am's lifestyle and technology company i.am has today acquired Smart Home Automation company WINK for 38.7 Million $ and a promise of future manufacturing of 20 Million $.

WINK is the Smart Home Hub that was spun out of GE's Quirky, sitting in a similar space to Samsung's Smarththings and allowing you to control your homes Zigbee, Zwave, Blueooth and Wireless devices through the easy to use WINK App.

“Today marks an exciting new chapter for Wink and we wanted you to be the first to hear about it.

Wink has been acquired by lifestyle technology company i.am+.

If you’re not familiar, i.am+ was founded by innovator and music artist will.i.am and has already shaken up the wearables industry with BUTTONS – premium wireless Bluetooth headphones.

Our teams are in the process of coming together to shape our future roadmap and we can’t wait to share what we’re working on.

In the meantime, please know that your Wink app and Wink Hub will continue to operate just as they have. The acquisition doesn’t change anything with regards to the Wink user experience.

We know you depend on Wink to stay connected to your home and are as committed as ever to delivering the best-in-class smart home experience you expect.

We’ll be introducing a number of new in-app features and partner integrations in the coming months. Keep an eye out on our blog for more information (and for updates throughout this transition). ”

— The WINK Team

Certainly an interesting development, WINK has seemed to have felt though it was a bit stuck, an OK Hub, an OK App - Maybe this will help catapult it onto greater things.

H3 Digital New Office Update

Our new office is coming on, this week we have been busy adding in the concrete floorpans as a base for the office floor.  Next week we hope to add in the first lot of windows and then we can cement over the floor. 

Our office is going to be in the industrial/factory/warehouse style. we will be offering demo facilities of the very best in home cinema, audio systems and lighting control. We will also be showcasing Smart Home Automation  including Amazons Alexa, Google Home and Apples HomeKit.

Once the windows go in we can start on the task of sealing the office up, it will be a mix of cement, bricks and glass.  Once it's all sealed up we will be adding on-wall metal conduit for the electrics and lights.

iRobot's Roomba to map homes

Roomba the little Robot vacuum from iRobot may well be key to the mapping of your smart home for other home automation applications.  The little vacuum cleaner robots already are linked with Alexa and map their daily travels which can give an idea of your homes floorplan.  In future the little robot may share this information with Amazon, Google or Apple to enhance smart home functionality.

Founded in 1990 iRobot was originally involved in designing and building bomb disposal robots for the U.S. Army before launching the world's first robot vacuum cleaner in 2002. 

" Roomba vacuum maker iRobot betting big on the 'smart' home

iRobot CEO Colin Angle is pictured at iRobot Shanghai office in Shanghai, China, May 16, 2017. Picture taken on May 16, 2017. Courtesy iRobot/Handout via REUTERS
(Reuters) - The Roomba robotic vacuum has been whizzing across floors for years, but its future may lie more in collecting data than dirt.

That data is of the spatial variety: the dimensions of a room as well as distances between sofas, tables, lamps and other home furnishings. To a tech industry eager to push "smart" homes controlled by a variety of Internet-enabled devices, that space is the next frontier. 

Smart home lighting, thermostats and security cameras are already on the market, but Colin Angle, chief executive of Roomba maker iRobot Corp (IRBT.O), says they are still dumb when it comes to understanding their physical environment. He thinks the mapping technology currently guiding top-end Roomba models could change that and is basing the company's strategy on it.

"There's an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared," said Angle.

That vision has its fans, from investors to the likes of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Alphabet (GOOGL.O) who are all pushing artificially intelligent voice assistants as smart home interfaces. According to financial research firm IHS Markit, the market for smart home devices was worth $9.8 billion in 2016 and is projected to grow 60 percent this year.

Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years.

Amazon declined to comment, and Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

So far investors have cheered Angle's plans, sending iRobot stock soaring to $102 in mid-June from $35 a year ago, giving it a market value of nearly $2.5 billion on 2016 revenue of $660 million.

But there are headwinds for iRobot's approach, ranging from privacy concerns to a rising group of mostly cheaper competitors - such as the $300 Bissell SmartClean and the $270 Hoover Quest 600 - which are threatening to turn a once-futuristic product into a commoditized home appliance.

Low-cost Roomba rivals were the subject of a report by short-seller Ben Axler of Spruce Point Capital Management, which sent the stock down 20 percent to $84 at the end of June.

The company's smart home vision has helped bring around some former critics. Willem Mesdag, managing partner of hedge fund Red Mountain Capital - who led an unsuccessful proxy fight against Angle last year and wound up selling his iRobot shares - is now largely supportive of the company's direction.

“I think they have a tremendous first-mover advantage," said Mesdag, who thinks iRobot would be a great acquisition for one of the Big Three. "The competition is focused on making cleaning products, not a mapping robot.”

Military Roots

Founded in 1990, iRobot saw early success building bomb disposal robots for the U.S. Army before launching the world's first "robovac" in 2002. The company sold off its military unit last year to focus on the consumer sector, and says the Roomba - which ranges in price from $375 to $899 - still has 88 percent of the U.S. robovac market.

iRobot headquarters is seen in Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S. in this recent photo released July 20, 2017. Courtesy iRobot/Handout via REUTERS
All robovacs use short-range infrared or laser sensors to detect and avoid obstacles, but iRobot in 2015 added a camera, new sensors and software to its flagship 900-series Roomba that gave it the ability to build a map while keeping track of their own location within it.

So-called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology right now enables Roomba, and other higher-end Robovacs made by Dyson and other rivals, to do things like stop vacuuming, head back to its dock to recharge and then return to the same spot to finish the job.

Guy Hoffman, a robotics professor at Cornell University, said detailed spatial mapping technology would be a "major breakthrough" for the smart home.

Right now, smart home devices operate "like a tourist in New York who never leaves the subway," said Hoffman. "There is some information about the city, but the tourist is missing a lot of context for what's happening outside of the stations."

With regularly updated maps, Hoffman said, sound systems could match home acoustics, air conditioners could schedule airflow by room and smart lighting could adjust according to the position of windows and time of day.

Companies like Amazon, Google and Apple could also use the data to recommend home goods for customers to buy, said Hoffman.

One potential downside is that selling data about users' homes raises clear privacy issues, said Ben Rose, an analyst who covers iRobot for Battle Road Research. Customers could find it "sort of a scary thing," he said.

Angle said iRobot would not sell data without its customers' permission, but he expressed confidence most would give their consent in order to access the smart home functions.

Another Roomba risk is that cheaper cleaning products are what consumers really want. In May, the New York Times' Sweethome blog dethroned the $375 Roomba 690 as its most-recommended robovac in favor of the $220 Eufy RoboVac 11, saying the connectivity and other advanced features of the former would not justify the greater cost for most users.

Short-seller Axler's June report caused a stir mostly with its prediction that value-priced appliance maker SharkNinja Operating LLC could launch a robovac by year's end. SharkNinja declined to comment.

One potential iRobot bulwark against these new competitors: a portfolio of 1,000 patents worldwide covering the very concept of a self-navigating household robot vacuum as well as basic technologies like object avoidance.

A handful of those patents are now being tested in a series of patent infringement lawsuits iRobot filed in April against Bissell, Stanley Black & Decker (SWK.N), Hoover Inc, Chinese outsourced manufacturers and other robovac makers. The litigation is the most significant in iRobot's history.

A lawyer for Hoover declined to comment. Lawyers for Bissell and Black & Decker did not respond to requests for comment.

The patents are a "huge part of our competitive moat,” Angle said. “It is getting really hard not to step on our intellectual property.”"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-irobot-strategy-idUSKBN1A91A5

Home Automation - What is it?

It may seem obvious but Home Automation actually encompasses a wide range of systems that are designed to make life simpler around the home.

Wikipedia states That Home Automation is;

"Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. It involves the control and automation of lighting, heating (such as smart thermostats), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and security, as well as home appliances such as washer/dryers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers.

Wi-Fi is often used for remote monitoring and control. Home devices, when remotely monitored and controlled via the Internet, are an important constituent of the Internet of Things.

Modern systems generally consist of switches and sensors connected to a central hub sometimes called a "gateway" from which the system is controlled with a user interface that is interacted either with a wall-mounted terminal, mobile phone software, tablet computer or a web interface, often but not always via Internet cloud services."

Which although correct is quite a verbose, technical way of describing something that can be summarized in a much simpler way.

Home Automation is;

• Automating mundane or repetitive tasks with the use of home technology, sprinkler systems that operate themselves, lights that come on after dark and switch themselves off in the morning.
• Using your phone, tablet, computer, voice or an intelligent keypad to control various parts of your home, such as; lights, air-con, music systems etc...
• Timed or scripted events for your home, such as turning on the lights at 8pm or playing your favourite music as you arrive home.  When X happens then do Y.

So there you have it. Home Automation is available to everyone, no matter the budget - If you are in Thailand and would like to discuss Smart Home Automation in more detail then please get in touch. We install in Phuket, Chiang Mai, Hua Hin, Bangkok and overseas.

Home Cinema Handover - 75" 4K TV

Today we handed over on a nice home cinema in the East Coast of Phuket.  An unused storage area was extended and turned into a plush home theatre room.

Here is Rob Hobbs our Systems Designer presenting our handover pack to the customer.

The project features a 75" 4K TV, Nuvo in-wall speakers, Roth surround Speakers, Polk Subwoofer and Onkyo amp - Lighting is cleverly done by Philips HUE GU10 bulbs and it's all controlled via a Harmony Elite.

Our customers are so happy they've asked us to propose Philips Hue lighting and another zone of audio for their Master Bedroom.

We also supplied a music system with a Nuvo P200 and in-ceiling speakers for the gym area next door.

Further photos to follow once the seating goes in next week.

What is Dolby Atmos?

Dolby Atmos is an audio format for surround sound that includes a height channel in addition to the surround speakers typically found in a 5.1 or 7.1 channel setup.  This gives movie soundtracks a more natural 3D effect as sound effects and voices can come from or pass overhead.

How Does Dolby Atmos Work?

• Basically adding an overhead dimension allows film makers to add a new sensation of height to immerse you in the action, realistically depicting objects and sounds above you.
• That helicopter that hovers overhead in the film will now really sound like it is directly over you, the sound of dripping water from the roof of caves comes from above now.
• This added dimension of sound helps involve you in the film, you feel a part of the movie, that the action is happening right there with you as a part of what is unfolding.

What will I need for Dolby Atmos?

• You will require an AV Receiver that supports and powers a Dolby Atmos channel, these are marketed as such.
• One or two pairs of overhead speakers, either in/on the ceiling (preferential) or ones that fire upwards and reflect sound from the ceiling back down towards the seating position.
• Dolby Surround Source such as Netflix, Amazon prime or BluRay.

Is it worth it?

You bet, the increased immersion makes viewing movies on your home cinema considerably more enjoyable.

Microsoft make a Play for the Smart Home market

Microsoft appears to be making headway into the Smart Home market announcing a partnership with Johnson Controls to build a smart home thermostat. They will be using Windows10 IoT Core and Cortana on the Azure cloud service on the software side.  On the hardware side they will be using a very cool translucent glass touchscreen display that lets you alter room temperatures, check energy usage and air quality, and see calendar information.

Heating and cooling account for roughly 48% of the energy use in a typical U.S. home, making it the largest energy expense for most families. In the commercial building sector, the cost is approximately 40%. Johnson Controls, one of the leading providers of HVAC, Fire and Security systems in the world, is changing how spaces are viewed and controlled. As the inventors of the first thermostat, Johnson Controls has innovated once again with GLAS.

Utilizing Windows 10 IoT Core, Cortana voice services, and Azure Cloud, GLAS is a simple to use, elegant thermostat that brings leading energy savings and air quality monitoring to everyday spaces. Johnson Controls is reinventing the thermostat and our lives.

There's no launch date yet but visually this is one of the most elegant pieces of smart home technology I've seen - looking forward to what else Microsoft can bring to the market going forward.

BlueTooth Mesh upgrade for Smart Homes

It's been around a while now, some 20 years or so, Bluetooth is about to get a significant upgrade so it can use Mesh networking.  The idea behind this is to make it much more usable for Smart Home and IOT applications.

"Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short-wavelength radio waves) from fixed and mobile devices, and building personal area networks (PANs). Invented by telecom vendor Ericsson in 1994, it was originally conceived as a wireless alternative to RS-232 data cables"  from Wikipedia

So what is mesh networking? it's simply whereby each point or node (thing if you like) acts as a potential relay unit for network data/signals.  It was invented by the military to make sure that if one node or point was destroyed data could still pass through the network.  basically each piece of hardware acts as a mini-router, data can take the fastest way through the network and doesn't matter if pieces of the network are missing.

Verge have an article on the upgrade;

"There’s a long-running fight between wireless standards to be the one and only to connect all the smart devices in your home. And with an upgrade today, Bluetooth is making a good case for itself.

Bluetooth SIG, the group that oversees the Bluetooth standard, is today releasing the specification for Bluetooth Mesh. If you’re familiar with mesh networking, Bluetooth Mesh is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: it allows low-power Bluetooth devices to create and act like a mesh network.

If you’re not familiar with mesh networking, here’s what it means: most wireless communications go straight from one point to another — say, from your router to your laptop and back again. If your laptop is too far out of range, then you’re just out of luck.

DEVICES CAN WORK TOGETHER TO SEND DATA A LONGER DISTANCE

But mesh networks have a useful trick to help data travel longer distances: communications can hop between devices. So if a signal can’t reach its destination on the first try, another device on the network can re-transmit the message, sending it out even farther in hopes of finding the device it’s trying to get in touch with. And this can happen again and again, until the message finally gets where it needs to go.

This is particularly useful for smart home tech, because it allows a device in one corner of the home to send a message that reaches smart devices in all the far nooks and crannies of a house. So a garage door opener, for example, could send a message to turn on the upstairs bedroom lights when you arrive home from work, with the message hopping from one smart light to another in order to reach the distant bulbs.

Mesh networking is also important because many of these devices need to run on very little energy. Sending out a fast signal that stretches from one side of a house to another requires a lot of power, but mesh devices can send out lower-power signals because they’ll get picked up and repeated. That’s important for a device like a battery-powered temperature sensor, so that it can stay running for longer without needing its batteries to be replaced.

Bluetooth SIG is accounting for a bunch of different types of devices using Mesh. It won’t require all devices on a network to rebroadcast signals, for instance, so that they can save even more power. In some cases, really low-power devices may only wake up every few hours and ping a “friend” device (say, a temperature sensor reaching out to a thermostat) to receive any pending messages, like an update to the temperature range it’s supposed to track. The Mesh standard also requires all communications to be encrypted.

BLUETOOTH MESH DOESN’T REQUIRE NEW HARDWARE, BUT YOUR DEVICE MIGHT NOT GET AN UPGRADE

Unfortunately, your existing Bluetooth devices aren’t going to suddenly get these abilities overnight — or, potentially, at all. Bluetooth Mesh can be added to any device that already supports Bluetooth 4.0 or 5.0, which is good because it means new hardware isn’t required, so a lot of devices can get support. But whether current devices receive it depends on if their manufacturers release an update.

Bluetooth SIG says that it usually expects to see new Bluetooth standards starting to enter the market about six months after they’re released. In this case, it expects Bluetooth Mesh to show up even sooner, since new hardware isn’t required. So there’s a good chance your next Bluetooth device will support mesh, but there’s no guarantee your current ones will.

That said, Bluetooth SIG is preparing for some devices to not get an upgrade. It’s allowing some mesh devices to act as “proxies,” which allow other Bluetooth products to connect to and control devices on the network. That way a phone might be able to connect to a mesh proxy and tell some lights to turn on.

BLUETOOTH WON’T BE THE ONLY STANDARD, BUT IT COULD BECOME AN EVEN MORE POPULAR ONE

While these changes make Bluetooth far more useful for smart home devices, that doesn’t mean they’re going to end the standards battle anytime soon. For one, we have to wait for a good number of mesh devices to arrive to make the feature useful. Then, we have to see how well Bluetooth Mesh actually works — though Bluetooth has improved in recent years, it’s had reliability and connection issues in the past. If that’s the case here, then Mesh will be a nonstarter.

On top of that, Bluetooth still isn’t perfect for everything. It’s not trying to replace Wi-Fi for high-speed connections, so some devices will still support that. Other products, like Philips’ Hue lights, rely on mesh networking standards, like ZigBee, that are already in use, albeit with far less name recognition and widespread compatibility. Meanwhile, the group that creates Wi-Fi is working on a low-power spec to start going after Bluetooth’s turf, continuing the fight.

It’s never seemed like there would be one and only one wireless standard, no matter how hard these standards groups try. But with the addition of mesh features, Bluetooth is becoming a significantly better option for smart home devices. And thanks to its name recognition and already popular use, there’s a real possibility that Bluetooth will start to push out the smaller mesh standards that are already in use."

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/18/15988362/bluetooth-mesh-networking-standard-released-smart-home

Zigbee and Zwave are some other low energy mesh network technologies that are used for Smart Home Automation, also SonosNET the Sonos wireless protocol is a wireless Mesh Network of their own design.

More than Half US Homes to be Smart by 2021

The IOT (Internet Of Things) is key to homes becoming smarter in the future, these networked appliances offer a much more affordable, plug and play, home automation ecosystem than last generation control systems.  New research estimates that within just 4 years smart home technology will be present in over 73 million US homes, that's 55 percent of all homes.  Simple to add technologies from Philips (Hue), Amazon (Alexa), Google (Home) and Apple (HomeKit) are making it a breeze to automate homes with voice control.

"According to fresh analysis by market research firm Berg Insight, the number of smart homes in the U.S is expected to reach 73 million by 2021, which represents around 55 percent of all homes. In it’s latest report, Berg Insight said that the current install base of smart homes in Europe and North America is roughly 30.3 million, as of 2016.

The U.S. is considered “the world’s most advanced smart home market” as the region accounts for more than two-thirds of that number. Berg Insight’s report shows that the U.S. had an install base of nearly 22 million last year, which was a 47 percent year-over-year growth.It’s that strong growth that Berg expects to continue, driving the increase in smart homes over the next few years.

“2017 is anticipated to be a good year for smart home technology as entry-level smart home systems have become affordable for the mass market, at the same time as the reliability and features have improved significantly,” Anders Frick, Senior Analyst at Berg Insight, said in a statement. While the U.S. smart home market has taken off in the past year, the European market is still lagging behind, according to the Berg Insight report. Just 8.5 million homes in Europe were considered smart homes last year. That number is expected to reach some 80.6 million by 2021—a greater number of homes than in the U.S., but that would represent just 36 percent of all homes in Europe.

According to Berg, the most successful products on the smart home market include thermostats, security systems, smart light bulbs, network cameras, and multi-room audio systems. And the most commonly bought products are produced by a handful of companies that include IKEA, Philips Lighting, Honeywell, Belkin, Nest, Ecobee, Comfy, Sonos, Canary, Netatmo, and D-Link.

Consumers that seek out comprehensive whole-home smart home systems with a mix of energy, security, and communications services turn to service providers like Vivint, ADT, Comcast, Control4, and AT&T in the American market. Overseas, names like Verisure, eQ-3, RWE, Deutsche Telekom, and Loxone control the market.
 

The Role of Voice Control

Berg Insight’s Frick said that voice control platforms have helped speed up the proliferation of the smart home. Services like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home have introduced consumers to the idea of the simple smart home through platforms that are equally as simple to set up. Those products, as Berg pointed out, have quickly risen in popularity.

And now, other tech giants like Apple and Microsoft are getting into the smart speaker game with products that tie into different smart home platforms, offering consumers ways to control their products with their voices.

Berg Insight said it anticipates that the popularity of voice enabled speakers will continue to increase and that smart speakers will “be one of the most significant user interfaces in the home environment.”

“Amazon is still the leading player but Google’s and Apple’s ecosystems are stronger, at least outside North America,” Frick said.

The products by the big four tech giants only scratch the surface of the smart speaker market. There are tons of other options out there, some of which rely on the same voice assistants that have already been mentioned. That list includes a recently-announced Lenovo voice assistant, Japan-based LINE Corp’s WAVE with the Clova virtual assistant, Mark 1 from Mycroft, Inee Voice, Invoxia’s Triby, JAM Voice, Cubic, Fabriq, and Zettaly Avy—to name a few."

http://www.dealerscope.com/article/half-u-s-homes-will-smart-homes-2021/