As promised (to me personally, natch), all Hue HomeKit details will be revealed this month… and they’ve started trickling out a bit earlier than Philips had anticipated. By way of two overseas leaks, we get a sense of the updated Hue bridge. The squarer, more sophisticated-looking unit will be available as a standalone purchase, for possibly 60 euros, enabling folks to … Read more
The Kevo smart lock, which we heartily endorse, breaks free from the phone today with the announcement of Moto360 support. Soon you can lock or unlock your doors in the presence of your Bluetooth LE Android Wear. For folks like me, who frequently stroll around the neighborhood without my smartphone, and those more exercise-oriented this seems like a pretty … Read more
By way of the FCC, we see August is primed to shortly expand their lineup with a Smart Keypad. Whatever that is. While we loved the aesthetics of their original Yves Behar-designed smart lock, we ultimately preferred Kevo to August — choosing functionality over form. Yet, August appears well-funded with a stellar team… so we do expect … Read more
In other Amazon Echo news, the companion iPhone app has been rechristened. Where “Amazon Echo” once lived, I now find “Amazon Alexa” — curious, no? CNET’s John Falcone reasonably wonders if this signals additional Alexa-capable hardware in the pipeline. Indeed, Amazon has opened the voice-powered platform up to third parties and this might be a nice, centralized … Read more
Drop that zero and get with a hero. Amazon Echo is about to link up with Samsung SmartThings – a more reliable home automation platform with presumably better long term prospects compared to Wink, a prior Echo integration. We’re excited to announce that SmartThings is now compatible with Amazon Echo! By starting sentences with “Alexa,” you can play … Read more
By way of the FCC, we learn something that looks like a third generation Nest Theromostat is en route… with 5GHz joining the party. Now I can’t say for certain the unnamed Nest device is another learning thermostat. But the round profile, with label on back, identified as model ZQAT30 (versus the 2nd gen’s ZQAT20) sure seems … Read more
Perhaps due to frustrating and unreliable home automation products that seemingly haven’t caught on combined with some bad bets by Quirky, Wink appears to be in dire straights – despite cash infusions from GE and a decent retail footprint. Amidst that backdrop, Michal Wolf wonders who might step in to pick up the pieces and walks us through a variety of large companies … that probably have zero interest.
So the big news is that Amazon Echo is now available for all to purchase, with a July 14th ETA. And, instead of going mass market at $200 as originally presented, it arrives at an even more palatable $180 (having dropped the physical remote). Considering a decent Bluetooth speaker could run that much or more, the voice-controlled, multi-function Echo is really a fantabulous deal when you consider all it offers.
When originally introduced as an Amazon Prime exclusive in limited numbers for $99, I picked up two. Back then, it didn’t do a whole lot — it was largely a silo-ed experience that I mainly used as a voice-controlled alarm clock and iHeartRadio terminal. But the product team has been iterating at a furious pace, bringing native Pandora, Hue control (!), and Audible integration… with promises of more to come and a developer SDK.