Samsung joins race for smart homes
FIRST came the PC, then the internet, then the smartphone and tablet. Now, technology companies want to link them all to your front door, your bathroom light, or your furnace – anything with an on-off switch, and some things that do not yet have them – using myriad sensors throughout your house.
Samsung Electronics will begin selling a starter kit for a connected home this month, stepping up competition with Google and Apple in the industry’s bid to sell systems that turn off the lights when nobody’s in the room and let you control your thermostat from the car or subway.
Called Smart Things, the line of devices includes electrical sockets, sensors and a central hub that connects to a home’s internet router to co-ordinate different appliances. It would go on sale in the UK and US by next Friday and would be made more broadly available sometime next year, the company said at the IFA trade show in Berlin yesterday.
“We think it’s a great new engine for growth,” Samsung’s UK head Andy Griffiths said in an interview. The proliferation of sensors to connect objects to each other and the web would create a “new age in technology and electronics”.
Getting connected
With Samsung’s version, customers can use a smartphone app to set up routines, a suite of actions for a time of day, such as “Good Morning” which turns on the radio, starts the coffee brewer and raises the temperature of a house. Nightlights can be activated when a sensor notices someone getting out of bed. Users can see who is at the front door and open it remotely, get an alert when their vacation home’s pipes start leaking and a warning if their window’s been forced open.
What made Smart Things different from Apple’s Home Kit or Google’s Nest was that it was an open platform that’s freely available to developers, increasing the number of appliances that could connect, Griffiths said.
Intel is making a similar push into the automation of homes, hotels and workplaces. At IFA, it is demonstrating wireless charging plates that can be fixed under desks and tables to quickly charge devices placed above them.
Panasonic at IFA said it would start preorders this month for Nubo, a security camera that connects through mobile networks, allowing users to monitor places without wi-fi connectivity.
Samsung is still working out how it will charge for the service to monitor and connect them via the app.
For now, customers can buy the starter kit for £199 (R4 089) in the UK or purchase individual sensors.– Bloomberg