These 3 Systems Aim to Raise Your Home’s IQ
(Thinkstock)
At Demo 2014, where hopeful startups get four minutes to wow the world and impress investors, three smart home products stood out from the crowd.
The Umbrela Smart plans to give you total control over your home via a wall-mounted touchscreen. Curb is a device that plugs into your home’s electrical grid to help you cut down on your energy bills. And the Yonomi app aims to put your existing smart devices on speaking terms.
All three speak to the way smartphones and gadgets could transform the way we live at home in the near future. All three can also be categorized in the “smart home” category, which generally describes everyday household appliances and systems that can be tracked and controlled via apps and other high-tech gadgets.
Umbrela Smart: A pricey panel with big ambitions
Umbrela Smart wants to replace your standard wall switch with a 7-inch tablet that lets you control your lights, thermostat, music, security system, and more with a few swipes of your finger.
(Umbrela.co)
This rather ambitious device claims to do a little bit of everything. It can play music and produce ambient LED lighting with a touch of a button. It’s a Nest-like thermostat that can sense when you’re in the home and adjust its settings to your habits to maximize your energy savings.
You can use Umbrela as a home security system that will simulate that you’re home by turning lights and music on and off — and set off an ear-piercing alarm when it detects motion inside the house when you’re not there. It can even send you alerts about your kids’ soccer games and remind you to take your meds.
But all these smarts don’t come cheap. You’ll need a unit for every circuit you want to control; the first one will cost between $600 and $700, with additional units for around $300 apiece, says company President Salman Qureshi. And it’s not designed to integrate with existing smart home devices, making it a better choice for consumers who haven’t already invested in a Nest or a Dropcam.
Will Umbrela really perform as advertised? You can find out when it becomes available in early 2015.
Curb your energy enthusiasm
Just how much of your money is your teenager burning through when he cranks his space heater all night? Is your daughter bankrupting you when she binge-watches Psych on the big-screen TV? Curb can tell you.
This 4-by-4-inch energy management device installs inside your home’s circuit breaker box and communicates via Wi-Fi to a mobile app, which lets you know exactly how much electricity your home is using, what’s using it, and how much it costs. If your neighbors are also using Curb, you can compare your usage against theirs and even compete with them to see who can be more green.
(Energycurb.com)
The Curb app displays usage by each circuit in your home; the app can also identify different appliances operating on the same circuit by reading the unique electronic signatures emitted by different devices.
You can receive alerts when specific devices are turned on or off or when usage exceeds a certain threshhold. The app will also display tips on how to reduce your energy usage. If you’ve got a smart home system installed, you can use the Curb app to remotely control devices. At press time, Curb worked only with Samsung’s SmartThings devices, but the company plans to announce support for another major smart home system later this week, CEO Erik Norwood says.
The Curb device will cost less than $300 and be available in the first quarter of 2015.
Yonomi: A universal translator for smart devices
Unlike Umbrela Smart or Curb, Yonomi doesn’t require you to add new hardware to your home network or make you wait months to put it to use. This free app, available today in the Google Play store, makes common smart home devices work together better.
When you first launch the app, it automatically detects the smart devices in your home and adds their icons to your home screen. Creating routines to make them work together is as simple as dragging one icon on top of another and setting some parameters.
(Yonami.co)
For example, when your Jawbone UP 24 detects that you are awake, you can have Yonomi click on the lights, crank up the heat, play music, and turn on the coffee maker. Other smart home systems can perform similar feats of automation, but Yonomi makes it brain-dead simple.
Yonomi works with some of the most popular smart home gizmos — like the Jawbone, Nest thermostat, Sonos music system, Hue lights, and Belkin WeMo devices — but not all. Support for devices like Dropcam and Roku may be coming soon, CEO Kent Dickson says.
As for how Yonomi plans to make money, Dickson is mum, but he acknowledges that making recommendations for future smart hardware purchases (and collecting a percentage of each sale) is one possibility.
Questions, complaints, kudos? Email Dan Tynan at ModFamily1@yahoo.com.
