How Google and Apple will smartify your home
The next big culture shift in consumer technology is clearly home automation. Over the next two or three years, a dizzying array of home appliances and devices will connect up with your phone and TV box to make everything “smart” (which, let’s face it, is a euphemism for “more fun but also more expensive and complex”).
In fact, “home automation” isn’t a great name because manual control of household objects is a major benefit. So let’s call it “smartification.”
As with all mainstream technologies — including PCs, laptops, mobile phones, tablets and now wearables — smartification is something that has existed for years as a technical hobby. Now, it’s about to become something ubiquitous.
Soon, everybody will be rushing to CostCo, BestBuy and Amazon.com to buy doorbells that connect with your smartphone to show you who’s at the door, lights that can turn any color, coffee pots that brew based on the traffic and hundreds of other smart products. …….
The buzzword that’s associated with home automation, and about which there’s too much confusion, is the so-called “Internet of Things.” (As I’ve written in this space, I don’t believe the Internet of Things (IoT) will unfold as predicted, but it will definitely be a big deal.)
IoT is nothing more than an overly broad and extremely generic label slapped on any kind of device that’s not a “computer” per se but has a low power radio in it for sending and/or receiving data, and a low-power chip for processing instructions. IoT technology also includes the electronics that provide some level of access to the functioning of the device.
Home automation is simply the domestic, consumer wing of the IoT. ….
- Google Brillo: A tech news site called “The Information” revealed last week that Google is working on an IoT operating system code-named “Brillo” that will probably ship as a version of Android. This appears to be a wholesale rethinking of the home automation approach Google took three years ago when it announced a platform called Android@Home. Google launched big — then nothing happened. The whole initiative kind of fizzled, and Google stopped talking about it. …..
According to The Information, one key feature of Brillo is extreme lightness. It can reportedly run on devices that have as little as 32MB of RAM. (Note that the current version of Android barely functions on devices powered by the minimum spec for the the operating system, which is 512MB.)
That will keep costs down, meaning Brillo-powered devices could be installed affordably in inexpensive home devices like light bulbs, doorbells and shower heads. It also means they won’t gobble up too much battery power. …..
- Apple Home: In two weeks, Apple will host its own developers conference — the Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts on June 8. Apple is famously secretive about upcoming announcements. But an apparently false report in Fortune inspired the company to reveal a few facts in advance of WWDC.
After a widely circulated report said Apple’s home automation platform, called HomeKit, was delayed until the end of the year, the company came out and said: No, it’s right on track. Apple even revealed plans to announce third-party home automation products at its developers conference, and those products will be available in June. Apple claims that it has “dozens of partners” for HomeKit. …… Read the complete article in ComputerWorld
DCL: This is all about specialized implementations of Real-Time Intelligence and CEP. How much CEP might possibly creep into these applications in the future?
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