It is said that competition is the mother of innovation. And faced with competition not only from other hotels, but also from disruptive players like Airbnb, some hotels have taken meaningful steps to differentiate their guest experiences by adopting innovations in technology.
The connected home may still be a distant idea for most average consumers, but in the meantime the technology is becoming big business. Today, British Gas announced it will buy AlertMe, a developer of platforms for running various domestic “smart” devices, in a deal worth £65 million ($100 million), lining up the energy company to provide smart electric services covering heating, lighting and more.
Breed Reply, the London-based Internet of Things (IoT) incubator run by Italian publicly listed Reply, has announced that it’s backed three new startups in the smart home, health and energy sectors: Cocoon, the UK smart home security startup; BrainControl, an Italian startup that has developed an assistive technology to let disabled people control a computer with brainwaves; and Netherlands’ Greeniant, which provides analytics for smart meters.
Personal Robot, the latest humanoid AI device from Robotbase, adds autonomous navigation and emotion recognition to its long list of helpful capabilities.
The home security industry once dominated by complicated, expensive systems is in for a rude awakening. Piper, Canary and Scout are all offering affordable options to keep an eye on your home’s safety, and Piper just announced a new system equipped with night-vision called the Piper NV.
The smart home needs a remote, and one startup debuting on Kickstarter today thinks the smartphone isn’t necessarily the best option of that. NEEO is a dedicated device that includes a remote, as well as a brain to centralize control of your home, including your home theater equipment as well as connected gadgets like the Nest, Philips Hue and more.
NEEO is a Cupertino-based startup with a co-founding team that shares over 25 years of experience in the home automation sector between them. CEO Raphael Oberholzer is an electronics engineer with experience at Bang & Olufsen and Smart Home SA, a Swiss firm specializing in high end smart home system installation.
A smart home hub is a dumb purchase if most of your appliances aren’t smart, too. So Ukrainian startup Branto developed a hub that has a built-in 360-degree camera and speaker for security and telepresence, in addition to being able to operate gadgets over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and infrared. That’s a lot of functionality for $399, and it works even if your power or Wi-Fi goes down.
Today, Branto unveiled its stylish little smart orb at TechCrunch’s CES Hardware Battlefield, and its now available for pre-order on Kickstarter.
Sutro, a startup presenting at TechCrunch’s Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas, is aiming to remove one of the big headaches of owning a backyard swimming pool or spa.
Now, I don’t have a pool myself (weird, I know), but co-founders Ravi Kurani and Amanda Nagai told me that owners are expected to constantly check and adjust the chlorine and pH levels of their pool — otherwise they could end up with water that has a nasty chlorine smell, burns their eyes, or ruins the lining of their pool.
SmartThings unveiled a major update to its Hub smart-home device today, enabling it to work even if your Internet or power goes down.
SmartThings made the announcement onstage today at the 2015 CES conference in Las Vegas during Samsung’s keynote speech. The announcement came shortly after Samsung chief executive Boo-Keun Yoon made the audience an interesting promise: “In five years,” he said, every single one of Samsung’s products will be a connected “Internet of Things” device.
This is the first holiday season that smart home products are widely available through all the major retail channels — and have full marketing weight behind them from companies like Nest, Wink, and Philips Hue. But do consumers care? The Logitech Harmony team conducted a quick survey of holiday shoppers* a few weeks ago to find out, and the results were surprising.
Our research revealed roughly one in four people either want, or are planning to give smart home products as a gift this holiday season. Also, 85% of respondents said they are familiar with smart home products, while 23% reported owning at least one, with 3% owning three or more.
