I started reading Om in 2004 as a young tech reporter. He was the smartest guy writing about really geeky tech and putting it into context. He was able to discuss the nuts and bolts of technology and then extrapolate what new advances would mean and how people would react. All from a news release about a new type of fiber or a boost in Ethernet speeds. As someone bored with the speeds and feeds of trade tech journalism, I studied his writing to learn how to make those same connections. I’ve spent 25 years as a journalist and I’ve never been able to make the leap that Om did — writing effortlessly about how tech advances affected people in a way that connected with everyone.

He was able to do this because he was a humanist. Yes, he was cranky and unimpressed by bullshit or sloppy thinking, but he fundamentally believed in people, was interested in people, and wanted to see them succeed. This is why so many people are affected by his loss. Om would invite you over and casually give you a book you admired or answer the text for advice with a two hour phone call where he would explain clearly how you should set up your media business. He was generous with his ideas, his time and his opinions. Reading the stories from people who knew him, it’s clear that Om did this at a scale many of us would find impossible.

Om hired me to work at Gigaom at the end of 2007 after I tracked him down at an event to tell him how much his writing had influenced me and to ask him how he planned to deliver venture-style returns for a journalism site. He called two days later to offer me a job that then later took two months to finalize because Om didn’t focus long on the details of running Gigaom when there was news to cover and startups to discover. My first day on the job was right after his heart attack before it was public. I was devastated that I may have lost my chance to learn from him and felt that the entire tech world had suffered a blow.

My first orders were to go out and buy a MacBook (I challenge anyone to produce photos of Om with anything that wasn’t beautiful or well designed) and to start writing. For weeks I spent my days trying to cover the semiconductor and broadband beats that Om had covered, feeling like I had come into my idol’s house, stolen his shoes, and was tromping all over his clean floors. And then I started getting the emails from Om. He’d send a link to a story and tell me that I did a good job, but did I see what this new capability would mean for a competitor? Sometimes he’d say I missed the real story and lay it out. Other times he’d tell me I did well.

Those last emails were the best. This giant of the industry was closely reading my stories and helping me get better while recovering from a heart attack! A year or two in, Om was back in the day to day and I knew I had made it when Om would send a news item to me to cover without telling me what it meant. He knew I got it. He was my mentor and changed the trajectory of my life.

He brought together some of the smartest people covering their industries and convinced them to work as hard as he did and somehow made us all into a family who went through the struggles of a late 2000s-era tech blog and came out better writers and better thinkers. He platformed us and genuinely hoped we’d become bigger and better than him. He did the same for anyone else who met him. He’d invest in you, push you, and try to make you better. I once watched him lecture a group of GSMA executives who came to the offices of Gigaom on their failures to meet the moment when it came to mobile broadband. Om was in the center of a circle of executives calling them out and they were rapt. And he was right. Om was usually right when it came to his opinions on technology.

When Gigaom imploded in 2015 it devastated Om. In Silicon Valley the founder is ultimately the man, the myth, and the legend behind every successful company. But companies have many moving parts and many people to oversee them. Om has figured out several business opportunities that generated the profits the newsroom didn’t. Conferences were profitable, but they were not “scalable.” Research could be both profitable and scalable. But there was only one Om, and he needed to rely on others to enact that vision. And despite that persistent Silicon Valley myth, founders have to let some things go. And what was wobbling along before he left in 2014, stopped moving entirely in March 2015.

I hate that Gigaom still exists in a zombie fashion. I think Om hated it too, although the most he would do to indicate that would be to give wry advice telling people not to name their site after themselves. (I didn’t listen.) But what else could he have done? Om built Gigaom because he wanted to talk to people. To connect with them and have conversations about the topics he loved so much. And Gigaom was a way to scale that. Om was always in the comments, reading them and having arguments. He would email with anyone who reached out. And when he hired people for the site, he pushed them to do the same. To evaluate technology the same way he did and to listen to others and reevaluate. What he did for colleagues and startup founders, he also did using Gigaom.

And he found a way to make that scale. I don’t care about venture returns. If you look at the investments Om made in people, in direct advice or by writing a roadmap of where their technology inventions or ideas should go, Gigaom generated huge returns. He influenced entire industries.

Which is why his loss now, at a time when he was building back up to deliver a roadmap for the current technology industry, is so jarring. After Gigaom imploded, Om retreated and focused on photography and craft. He indulged in his love of beauty and design, writing eloquently about cameras, pens, men’s clothing and more. Even there he made sure he understood the underlying “technology” that went into each craft.

Om knew you had to understand something deeply before you could see a thing for what it is and what it could become. After doing the work, he’d kindly translate that thing into something accessible and eloquent for the rest of us. He’d show us why the thing matters and make us care too. For Om, technology was a way to connect people. Sure it may make money, but he cared about making it easier for people to communicate.

And as technology more often acts to divide us and companies serve a balance sheet more than users, we need Om’s voice more than ever. This week I am reminded of the position I was in almost two decades ago when I joined Gigaom. I am devastated that I have lost my chance to continue learning from him and know that the entire tech world has suffered a blow.

The post Thank you, Om Malik. appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

Our guest this week is Jennifer Pattison Tuohy from The Verge. I’ve known Jenn for almost a decade from her work covering the smart home for a variety of publications. She is smart, tries everything she writes about, and has the history in covering technology to see the bigger picture. She’s on the show to talk about where the smart home is today, the state of Matter, and what business models are likely to work for connected home devices. She gives us some insights into some cool things the Connectivity Standards Alliance is planning, her thoughts about smart home infrastructure versus devices, and even shares her current smart home setup. It’s the perfect note on which to end the show.

The post Episode 437: Goodbye and good luck appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

Most of y’all know that I am stepping back from producing the weekly Internet of Things podcast, and that I’m also stepping back from creating this newsletter focused on the internet of things. But it is not a true goodbye. I will keep posting on Bluesky and will likely send out the occasional newsletter when I feel strongly about something.

Before I say anything further about why I’m doing this, or my next steps, I want to offer a sincere thank-you to everyone who reads the newsletter or listens to the podcast. I started this business in 2016 after leaving my role as senior editor at Fortune, and many people questioned my decision to leave an established publication to create my own.

But I wanted to really dig into the issues that would arise when we added computing to everything, be it technological or social. Thousands of y’all joined me, and without you and our sponsors I would never have been able to make this work. I am exceedingly lucky to have been able to do this, and it’s all thanks to you giving me your time and your stories.

I am truly grateful.

Like I said, this isn’t necessarily goodbye. You may find a blog post or two from me over at the Consumer Reports Innovation Lab, and it’s possible I’ll freelance for other publications in the near future. But ultimately I’m trying to take a break from the life of a journalist after more than two decades spent focused on daily and immediate news, with only a bit of time to dig into the bigger picture and long-term implications of the products and innovations I so relentlessly tout.

And yet, I think often of the larger implications of IoT everywhere. Even when I started covering the smart home in 2012 I knew that those devices added complexity to a user’s life along with the potential risk of government or corporate surveillance. And as devices launched and folded, it became increasingly clear that the business model of connected items was toggling between pricey subscriptions and rampant data grabs.

Meanwhile, outside the home, new technologies were being used to monitor employees and push them to their absolute limits while optimizing mostly for the bottom line. The latest focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) actions by corporations has led to businesses making investments in technology for carbon reduction and efficiency, but it feels like too little, or a way to greenwash activities that we shouldn’t be doing in the first place.

I love technology. And I fundamentally believe that people who are trying to solve problems with new technological innovations can make a difference. But I’m burned out, and increasingly cynical when it comes to new startups or research. That prevents me from getting excited about the truly good ideas out there.

So I’m stepping back. With a little bit of a break, maybe I’ll get excited about technology and human ingenuity again. Maybe I’ll see stories that I cannot wait to explain and share with everyone. In the meantime, I’m working on a few personal projects, including taking on a consulting role with Consumer Reports’ Innovation Lab to focus on cybersecurity and privacy issues associated with connected devices.

So I will still be eager to hear from y’all about your experiences, and will be reaching out to many of you to talk about how we can make connected devices safer, more secure, and better for everyone. Please keep in touch by emailing me at stacey@staceyhigginbotham.com.

The post So long, and thanks for all the insights appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

I wasn’t going to write anything more in this newsletter, but I was feeling inspired and so decided to leave y’all with one final opinion — and one final mandate.

During a webinar Thursday focused on how journalists can use generative AI, one of the panelists bemoaned the fact that developers in the newsroom don’t want to invest in building AI verification tools because the problem of detecting deepfakes is constantly evolving, meaning the tools would need to constantly evolve. I instantly empathized because for years I’ve been bemoaning the constant maintenance I have to put into my smart home, my phone, and my other tech services to keep them up to date.

This goes beyond applying security updates and involves swapping out home automation rules when one provider changes its APIs, or figuring out a new workflow when a link between Zapier and one of my digital services gets shut off. I’ll even include the moments of confusion that arise when I get into my car and find that Tesla has issued a new software update and changed the position of information on my dashboard. Living with technology means living in a state of flux.

Instinctively we know this, but operationally and mentally we have yet to adapt to the need for constant change. Mentally recognizing that a connected device is valuable because the feature set can continuously expand is one thing, but getting frustrated when the UI changes or a new recipe setting on your smart oven cooks your chicken differently is another. Most of us aren’t equipped to deal with constant change in all aspects of our lives, so the friction when your car or oven works differently is jarring.

Operationally, businesses have yet to adapt as well. Google provides a very good example of this. Google rewards its employees for creating new tools and software, which means that if you want to get ahead you need to invent. This leads to a culture where employees are incentivized to innovate as opposed to maintain. But as users, this means your favorite tools are in a constant state of decay or that when partners make changes, Google may not react as quickly.

Google isn’t alone in valuing innovation over maintenance. You can see the clash in industrial settings when the IT staff accuse the operations engineers inside a plant of creating a culture of no, refusing to add automations or new technology to the established way of doing things. But one reason those OT staff are hesitant is because ops engineers have a decades-long history of building up processes that are consistent and knowable. Adding IT to the mix adds entropy and a need for new maintenance procedures that IT can sometimes balk at.

But while the OT side has an established culture of valuing maintenance, the IT side does not. And that’s what we need to move toward as we embed computing in more and more devices and processes. Software decays. And it does so rapidly.

Software’s inevitable decay will continue to have more and more impact on our day-to-day lives, so we need to incentivize developers to maintain as well as innovate. We need to give employees time in their work weeks to adjust to new user interfaces or changes in their services. We also need to leave them time to play around with new tools and advances, and recognize that as productive work.

Much like law firms and doctors are required to get continuing education, any profession that regularly deals with technology (which will soon be most professions) needs a similar ethos that both incentivizes and supports employees as they try to adapt to continuous change. This includes, but is not limited to, the advances posed by artificial intelligence.

And yes, it will take a more curious and engaged workforce, but it can’t be all on employees to muster up that energy and enthusiasm. Maintaining services and adapting to changing software and services will become an economic value and will need to be treated as such.

On the home front, it may mean that consumers subscribe to a product over time to ensure that the company behind said product pays the ongoing developer costs needed to maintain it. Or perhaps it means a company sells a product with a set expiration date for when it plans to stop maintaining it.

If we want to add intelligence to our everyday products, we can’t simply focus on new features and innovation. We have to think about how to maintain those products, and how to pay for that maintenance. And as computing enables more software and services to infiltrate our workflows and more jobs require the ability to embrace new innovations, businesses need to invest in maintaining their employees’ skills.

Constant innovation is exhausting. And because that innovation is currently based on software, it’s prone to rapid entropy. We have to value the people and the time it takes to counteract that entropy while also ensuring employees and consumers have the space to adjust to this change.

And now, I’m off to go make some changes of my own.

The post We are entering our maintenance era appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

Verdigris has raised $10M for smarter buildings: I am so excited by this news, because roughly eight years ago I met one of the founders of Verdigris in an Austin coffee shop to talk about how to use AI and connected HVAC to make buildings greener. The company just raised $10 million in funding (in this environment!) led by DCVC and Solea Energy to continue selling the product. I’m happy to see that Verdigris is still around and that the overall hype around AI will help a company that has long been using IoT and AI to make buildings more efficient. (Verdigris) — Stacey Higginbotham

Nordic Semiconductor has purchased a TinyML player: Nordic Semiconductor has purchased the IP of Atlazo, a San Diego, Calif.-based company that was developing technology to build low-power MCUs optimized for machine learning. Nordic, which makes low-power wireless chips for the IoT, says this is a bolt-on acquisition that will benefit the company within 12 to 18 months from closing. Given the demand for on-device machine learning and Nordic’s focus on the IoT, bringing ultra-low power MCU expertise makes sense. (Nordic Semiconductor) — Stacey Higginbotham

ChargePoint is taking a page from telcos to make EV charging more reliable: ChargePoint says it has built a network operations center (NOC) to monitor the health of its 243,000 EV chargers across the United States and Europe. As part of new legislation to promote the adoption of electric vehicles, the federal government is requiring new uptime requirements, which has prompted ChargePoint’s investment in the NOC. Honestly, I was surprised it didn’t have a NOC already, since the entire business is about providing customers EV charging when they roll up to a charger. It seems insane to not have had some way of monitoring that before now. And I would argue that any company providing connected services or devices should have similar teams in place to monitor for uptime, but maybe that’s just because I’ve accepted that we’re in a maintenance era. (Ars Technica) — Stacey Higginbotham

Are video doorbells simply security theater? That’s what this BBC article asks, and I’m on the fence. I think they can be convenient, but I also think porch pirates have adapted to the technology by simply hiding their faces. I’m interviewed in the story saying as much. (BBC) — Stacey Higginbotham

Shelly now has a premium subscription option: The lure of recurring subscription revenue is powerful for smart home device makers, and Shelly is no exception. The smart home device maker has added a premium subscription that is tied to energy management. The service is for Europeans and is available in the U.S. For €3.99 ($4.34) a month, subscribers get notifications when they leave lights on, alerts when products use more or less electricity than normal, ways to monitor their devices’ energy consumption, and more. Shelly says the service should shave up to 18% off an electricity bill, so it may be worth it. (Shelly) — Stacey Higginbotham

Some pure speculation about Google Nest: The Information is reporting that Verily, one of the businesses that Alphabet tracks under “other bets,” is preparing to stop using Alphabet’s corporate services in preparation for an eventual spin out in late 2024. The reporter who wrote the story notes that this could pave the way for additional spin outs of Alphabet “other bets.” And the “other bet” that we care most about in this newsletter is the Google Nest division. I debated posting this story because it’s pure speculation, and it’s behind a paywall. Yet, given how Alphabet is promoting Ruth Porat, who has been behind the culling of unprofitable Google services, and how Google has been pulling back on support for some of its Nest displays, I figured y’all might want to hear about any plans to spin out businesses that are part of Alphabet’s other bets. Because if Google decides to spin out Nest, that would have a huge impact on the smart home ecosystem. (The Information) — Stacey Higginbotham

New Aqara LED light strip gains Matter, but… The latest Aqara product launched this week and it’s a bit of a good news/bad news situation. First, the good news. Like the recently released Nanoleaf Essentials light strip, the Aqara LED Strip Lights T1 support the Matter standard. Priced at $49.95, you can order the T1 now and have it work with your choice of smart home platform. The bad news is that Matter doesn’t support Adaptive Lighting, the feature that automatically changes the brightness and color temperature of lights based on the time of day. You can get that feature working on the T1 but only if you opt not to use Matter for the connection. In that case, you need an Aqara hub for the light strip’s Zigbee radio. So while it’s a bummer that this is an either-or situation, that sort of summarizes the entire Matter implementation so far. (The Verge)  — Kevin C. Tofel

Want a non-cloud video doorbell? Here’s a DIY option: I don’t expect many of you will take me up on this one, but I found a nifty little video doorbell project this week. Using an ESP32 and open source software, you can follow the instructions to make a privacy-centric video doorbell. The current implementation works with Home Assistant, however I’m sure it could be adapted to work with other DIY-style smart home hubs, too. (CNX Software) — Kevin C. Tofel

A second-gen EveCam is expected next month: Thank goodness for Google Translate or I wouldn’t have been able to bring you this news. A German site spilled several details on an upcoming EveCam, expected to debut at next month’s IFA event. I don’t normally share rumors without some credible evidence but I’d say the FCC documentation on the new webcam qualifies. The new model appears to have been tested for both 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks and has a small 50mm square footprint. Although Eve Home products have only just expanded support beyond HomeKit via Matter, the Matter spec doesn’t include webcams so this is very likely a HomeKit-only solution. (appgefahren) — Kevin C. Tofel

The post IoT news of the week for August 18, 2023 appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

Our guest this week is Mariusz Malkowski, founder and CTO of Trident IoT, who tells us about the company’s origin and what it means for the Z-Wave community. He also explains how Matter will work with Z-Wave, and the importance of bridging between the two standards. We discuss the future of Z-Wave, including the plans for Z-Wave Long Range and planned security upgrades. We then cover how Trident is going to build Z-Wave chips, but also how it will focus on building or integrating other smart home radio protocols into devices, and will act as a Z-Wave certification house as well. Enjoy the show.

The post Podcast: Can Alexa (and the smart home) stand on its own? appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

This is huge news for the smart home and the Z-Wave standard in particular. For decades, when I spoke to people about the Z-Wave standard, I heard praise for the mesh network’s reliability and frustration that only one company, Zensys, provided the silicon. This worried customers because they wanted a second source for chips to keep pricing in line, and act as an option in case Zensys went out of business.

In 2008, Zensys was purchased by Sigma Designs, and hopes for another silicon provider or an opening up of the standard rose, but Sigma Designs didn’t open up the radio protocol. In 2018 when Silicon Labs decided to buy Sigma Designs, Z-Wave customers got excited again. And in 2020, Silicon Labs started the process of opening up the standard by spinning out the Z-Wave Alliance. Then in 2022, the Z-Wave Alliance announced that the source code was available for anyone, and that the technology had been ported to a new chip.

So it’s been a long road to get to Trident IoT and a second source of Z-Wave chips. And in that time the smart home got more popular and talk of radio standards were subsumed in talk of interoperability between different vendor ecosystems. Instead of focusing on Z-Wave or ZigBee, customers were trying to figure out if a sensor worked with Nest or Alexa. Security companies still used Z-Wave in their systems, and hardcore DIYers could buy hubs that included Z-Wave radios, but after the big tech vendors said they would get behind the Matter standard for the smart home that would use Wi-Fi and Thread, it seemed like Z-Wave would fade away.

And it might, but not without a fight. I still talk to companies building security system hardware and access control devices that are invested in Z-Wave, and the Z-Wave Alliance has put a lot of effort into creating a long-range version of the mesh network that can send data over distances of a mile. As of March of this year, there were more than 4,000 certified Z-Wave devices, and Trident IoT Founder and CTO Mariusz Malkowski, says he’s talked to potential customers about building more.

Malkowski also explained that Trident IoT would focus on other protocols to ensure its customers could build devices that worked with Z-Wave, Matter, Thread, ZigBee or whatever the client needs. The company has engineers that specialize in many different IoT protocols. Trident’s embrace of all standards reminds me of Silicon Labs’ focus on becoming a dedicated IoT chip company.

Malkowski says Silicon Labs supports what the company is doing and there’s a quote from a Silicon Labs’ employee in Trident’s press release. I expect that if Trident does become successful it will encourage more companies to use Z-Wave or keep existing Z-Wave customers happy, as there’s now a secondary source of chips. This benefits both companies.

And frankly, it’s beneficial for customers too, especially if hubs are indeed making a comeback. Matter so far has its growing pains, and the potential benefits of a long-range Z-Wave option to power sensors in yards or distant access control devices is large. It looks like that XKCD comic about there being yet another standard is playing out in the smart home, but at least if you’re a company betting on Z-Wave, you have another option.

The post Z-Wave gets a boost with new chip provider appeared first on Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis.

Depending on the devices you have in your smart home, I see great potential in the Homey Pro, but it’s not for me. I’ll explain why shortly. First, let’s cover the basics.

Homey Pro is a more powerful version of the original 2019 Homey Pro with what it claims is 3.5 times more CPU performance. The Pro also has double the storage and memory (8 GB and 2 GB, respectively) than the Bridge. And there’s a good reason for those upgrades: Unlike the Homey Bridge, which is more cloud-centric, the Homey Pro uses local control as much as possible for your smart home.

That’s good from a privacy standpoint. It also means the Homey Pro works when there’s an internet outage. You can still control your devices and have your automations run provided they don’t rely on the cloud.

From a features standpoint, both models effectively do the same thing. You can add or manage devices and set up automations, and both have largely the same radios. For the U.S. model, there’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared, Zigbee, and Z-Wave.

The more expensive Pro adds a Thread radio — 833MHz for older devices — and gets past the five-connected device limitation of the Homey Bridge. With the lower-cost Bridge it costs $2.99 a month to add more devices. The only subscription available on the Pro model is a $1.99 $0.99 monthly fee for cloud backups if you want them.

I found the Homey Pro setup process easy, much as Stacey did with the Homey Bridge. I powered the Pro device with the included USB-C cable and charger, downloaded the Homey app on my phone, and answered a few basic questions. I really like how the Homey app asks how your home is set up, specifically how many floors you have as well as which rooms are on what floor. I think this is a time-saver compared to how most other smart home apps and services work.

Once I got the Homey Pro connected to my home’s wireless network (the Pro has both 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi), I started adding devices. Or rather, I tried to. Homey says it supports more than 50,000 devices, and on the surface, that sounds great. However, I was only able to get it to support about half of the devices in my smart home.

I was able to add my Lutron Caseta switches, Philips Hue bulbs, and Sonos speakers, for example. But Homey fell short with my Schlage door lock, Ecobee Thermostat, Nanoleaf bulb and light strip, Govee electric kettle, Wyze cameras, Eve Home devices, Logitech video doorbell, and all of my smart plugs. I can forgive Homey on the smart plugs as most of the ones in my home are Matter-certified and Matter support isn’t yet in the Homey Pro, although it’s expected to be later this year. (Update: A Homey representative reached out to us to say that if a Matter device works over WiFi, it should be possible to add it. All of my Matter devices use Thread, which explains, for example, why my smart plugs did not work.)

The rest of the devices? While many of the brands I own appear in the Homey app, the specific devices I own from those brands do not.

Take Nanoleaf, for example. All of the non-traditionally shaped Nanoleaf lights show up; the triangles, hexagons, and lines are there. The regular Nanoleaf bulb and smart lights, though? Nope. Again, that could be a Matter problem, as they support the new standard. But not even the older Nanoleaf Essentials are available in the Homey app. The same goes for my Meross Garage Door opener.

My Schlage Encode Wi-Fi lock does appear in the Homey app. Unfortunately, when I follow the process to add the lock and sign in with my Schlage credentials, the Homey Bridge says, “No devices found.” I got farther with our Govee Wi-Fi kettle, but instead of “no devices found,” the Govee integration returned an error message.

My one non-Matter smart plug is a Cync by GE product. There’s no integration for that product line in Homey yet. And although Ecobee is a supported Homey brand, the only compatible devices in the app are the Ecobee 3 Lite and Ecobee Room Sensor. I have the Ecobee Thermostat Premium and a newer sensor, so it’s a no-go for Homey Pro there, either. Note that I long ago moved away from most Zigbee and all Z-Wave devices. If you have these, you may have better luck with the Pro.

I’ll reiterate that these specific integration challenges are based on the devices in my home. And I get that. However, I have to note what works and what doesn’t so you can make a smart buying decision based on the devices in your home. I looked on the Homey website to see a list of product integrations but didn’t find one. (Update: The integrations are found under this link, titled “Apps”) So your best bet is to download the free Homey app and search for your devices before considering the purchase of a Bridge or a Pro. And I should point out that my supported devices reacted nearly instantly when controlling them with Homey.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can create your own integrations for Homey Pro. Through the product’s web interface you can get an API key and a simple example of how to code your own using JavaScript and Node.js. For the developers out there, I strongly suspect that the Homey Pro is built as a Node.js server.

As noted on the API key support page, though, these are for “hobbyists and developers to create integrations.” I like the offering, but most mainstream consumers will never use this functionality or even be aware of it.

Having said all that, let’s get to the good news. The Homey app, which you use to control and view devices, is great. It’s more modern-looking than most competing apps and it exposes both basic and advanced features. I like how simple it is to add devices to rooms or floors, for example, although I wish this could be done during device integration. I had to go back into the settings of each device to assign it to a room.

I also appreciate the intuitive controls for each device. And I really like the estimated smart home energy use, which can be viewed in near real-time as well as historically.

I say “estimated” because you have to manually enter the wattage used for each device to get this feature. It takes a little more effort during the setup process, but I think it’s better than not having any energy management. And Homey Pro adjusts energy usage based on the light output, too. When I dimmed some lights to 50%, the estimated energy use numbers reflected half of the power draw. You can view the energy data in the app or on the web. If you choose the latter option, you can also view local temperatures, barometric pressures, and humidity, which is a nice touch. (Update: A Homey representative tells us that if a device can report actual electricity usage, Homey will show and use that data.)

For automations or routines, Homey uses something called Flows. Given their power, they remind me more of Home Assistant’s automations and less of the standard routines from Amazon, Apple, Google, and the like.

Flows take the form of IFTTT but use a “When…and…then” approach instead of an “If this happens, do that” one. Homey also allows for more complex logic with “else” conditions, and Flows can trigger other Flows. I set up a few Flows and they worked flawlessly. I created my Flows in the Homey app but you can also get seriously complex ones using an advanced mode in the Homey web interface. From there, you can also view or control your devices, just as you can in the mobile app.

Overall, I see the potential in a local smart home hub with just about every radio you’d want in a smart home device like Homey Pro. The market has shifted away from such devices as more smart home services became cloud-based. I like that we have a new hub with the capabilities found in the Homey Pro. And I like the overall user experience with the app for both initial setup and device additions as well as room management.

What holds me back from buying my own Homey Pro should be obvious, though. For $399, I can only use the device with half of my current connected devices. Will that change for the better over time? Probably, but there are no guarantees. For now, I’ll be sticking with my lower-cost Home Assistant setup where nearly all of my devices work.

As for you? The idea of a local, privacy-centric smart home hub may be appealing. And if it is, then Homey Pro may be the right choice. Just be sure that the devices you have, or plan to have, in your smart home are supported first.

Updated on 8/16/2023 at 11am ET with some clarifications and corrections based on communication with Homey representatives.

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Here’s a bit more on Philips Hue’s potential as a home security play: On an earnings call the president of Signify, which owns the Philips Hue brand, said the company was working on a security camera for it. Now reports are saying that there are four cameras planned and some contact sensors. I’ve had Hue lights in my home since 2013, and after 10 years of watching others commoditize the lighting sector I think it could make sense for Hue to get into security. It has brand recognition, for one. Plus, there are only so many people who want to pay a premium for light bulbs (and if their bulbs are still good a decade later, the growth is probably not huge). Security is a logical next step, if only because everyone sees the potential for subscription revenue for video storage and monitoring as the primary way of making a buck on the smart home. (TechHive)

More Matter gear from TP-Link: For the past few months, TP-Link has been pushing out Matter smart plugs and switches under its cheaper Tapo brand, and now it has two new Matter switches under its Kasa brand. The Kasa KS205 Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch and Kasa KS225 Smart Wi-Fi Light Dimmer Switch will sell for $27.99 and $29.99, respectively. They will require a neutral wire and provide scheduling and support for an away mode. (Apple Insider)

Microsoft shuts down Cortana everywhere: Back in 2014, Microsoft launched Cortana as a rival to Apple’s Siri. As voice assistants go, it was not bad, but never had the platform on which to gain a lot of ground. Microsoft subsequently pulled Cortana from consumer products but left it enabled on Windows. But now, with an update to Windows 11, Cortana is officially dead on that platform and will stop functioning on Windows 10 in the near future. (WindowsLatest)

Tractian gets $45M in funding for industrial monitoring: Predictive maintenance is always going to attract buyers and investors, especially if you stop calling it anomaly detection and call it AI. Atlanta-based Tractian has raised more than $60 million since its founding in 2019 and makes its own software and sensors to track machine health in industrial environments. The new funding will help expand sales and fund more research. With more than 500 customers already, this feels like a good bet. (VentureBeat)

As insure-tech gets used against consumers, things will get scary: Insurance companies are feeling pressure to get out of states with high replacement costs for housing and high disaster rates. Since housing prices and inflation aren’t heading down anytime soon, and the climate will continue to change, it’s likely that insurance companies will try to stop underwriting in even more areas. Which means  pushing existing policyholders off their rolls as well. Indeed, in California they are turning to drones to do just that. Insurance companies are using drones to scan policyholders’ yards and roofs, and dumping those where drone footage shows riskier behavior. One person saw their insurance firm cancel their policy over a roof that looked like it needed maintenance (the owner protested, showed receipts, and was able to get their policy reinstated), while another was dumped because they had drained their pool. Insurance firms can legally use drones to evaluate policyholders’ claims, but the danger is that drones and other connected tech getting installed in people’s homes will become a convenient lever insurance firms will use to kick consumers off their rolls as risks rise. (ABC7)

Step into energy harvesting with new foam: Researchers in Scotland are showing off a form of graphene foam that can be used to create an energy harvesting floor sensor. When someone steps on the mess, it generates roughly 10 watts of electricity, powering the sensor. The sensor can run software to determine who is in the room and whether they are coming or going based on an analysis of their steps. We’ve seen efforts to harness people’s kinetic energy to power sensors, but I’m always happy to see more. (The Register)

SaaviHome is ready to franchise its smart home integration model: Ahead of the CEDIA professional installers’ trade show next month, SaaviHome is launching its call for franchise owners to join the company in helping set up people’s smart homes. SaaviHome was formed in 2004 and in 2020 created the software and services it plans to franchise. It looks like Control4 is the chosen software. SaaviHome is looking for franchisees in the Mountain West region, specifically in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. (SaaviHome)

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Our guest this week is  Muthu Sabarethinam, VP AI/ML product and services with Honeywell, who is on the show to talk about TinyML. We start off discussing how Honeywell is thinking about using data from equipment to build services, and then segue into talking about how Honeywell might use TinyML located on sensors. Sabarethinam explains the reasons Honeywell wants algorithms that can run directly on a sensor, and how it will help with security, power, and latency. He also shares his thoughts on how companies should package their algorithms to make it easier to deploy TinyML at scale. For perspective, Honeywell supports more than a million sensors in the field that could all use TinyML. We conclude by talking about business models and how customers want to access data. It’s a great show.

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