Verizon Wireless pitched subscribers in a Monday email to check out smart home accessories from Verizon, giving Google Home, Nest’s Thermostat and Philips Hue lights top billing. Customers clicking through on the advertisement found a Canary ($199) connected webcam and the upcoming Arlo Pro, billed as the "first completely wire-free, weatherproof, rechargeable HD smart security camera with audio and 130° viewing angle." The Arlo Pro, with two-way chat, operates over Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Users can get camera notifications and have a two-way conversation from their phone via the camera’s speaker and mic. Videos can be stored in the cloud, but on Arlo’s, not Verizon's, a Verizon chat specialist told us. Pricing plans on the Arlo website show seven days of storage as free; 30 days of cloud recordings up to 10 GB for up to 10 cameras is $10 per month, or $99 per year; and 60 days of recordings up to 100 GB for up to 15 cameras is $15 per month, $149 per year. Users also can connect a USB drive to the Arlo Pro base station for optional local backup. Users can sound a 100-decibel siren remotely when triggered by motion or audio, said the company. Prices start at $249. Best Buy is selling a four-pack of Arlo Pro cameras for $649. Featured smart home brands on the Verizon website are Belkin, Canary, MyQ, Kevo, Nest, Philips, Sengled and Tile.

Dome Home Automation bowed at CES the Guardian by Dome, billed as a water damage prevention system. The three-part device includes a smart water valve controller, water detector and smart siren. It notifies users when there’s a leak and shuts off the water main to prevent further damage, said the company. The device operates over Wi-Fi and doesn’t require a smart hub to operate. More than 14,000 water damage insurance claims are filed every day, costing insurance companies $5 billion per year, said insurer Grange.

The penetration of U.S. broadband homes with a smart thermostat is up just 6 percentage points in two years, to 11 percent, said a Parks Associates report Thursday. Most of the devices are stand-alone products and not integrated into a smart home system, said the research firm. Cloud-based application programming interface frameworks such as Works with Nest and interoperability initiatives such as the Open Connectivity Foundation are providing “a path for multivendor ecosystems,” said analyst Tom Kerber. Smart home platforms face new competition from Apple, Amazon and Samsung, and interoperability initiatives also will have an impact on the competitive landscape, said Kerber. Parks will address interoperability issues for smart home devices such as thermostats, door locks and networked cameras at its Connections Summit at CES Thursday at The Venetian in Las Vegas.

Samsung plans to debut three smart TV services at CES 2017 next month in Las Vegas, it said in a news release Tuesday. The services -- Sports, Music and TV Plus -- will offer personalized content through Samsung's Smart Hub platform based on users' TV preferences, it said. Sports, for example, will have on one navigation page information such as scores, details on when favorite teams are playing and where those games can be watched, Samsung said. It also said its Music service will let Smart TV users search and identify songs on TV programs and make recommendations, while TV Plus will offer IP-based channels.

Osram subsidiary Ledvance will ship early next year a smart, multicolor Apple HomeKit-enabled A19 LED bulb, it said in a Tuesday announcement. The Bluetooth-equipped bulb can be controlled by the Siri voice assistant or the Apple Home app without a separate hub by using an Apple TV or iPad running iOS 10 as a home hub, said the company. Users can set lighting scenes and combine activities with other HomeKit-enabled devices to create scenes via the Home app. Osram gave the example of being able to turn on lights, unlock the front door and turn up the heat by saying to Siri: “I’m on my way home.”

​Samsung will use CES to unveil its first ever “Wind-Free” wall-mounted smart air conditioner, following the “huge success” of a floor-standing model in South Korea, the company said in a Christmas Day announcement from Seoul. Its Wind-Free models give users “a cooler indoor climate and optimal energy efficiency without the discomfort of direct cold airflow,” Samsung said. They disperse cold air through 21,000 “micro air holes,” it said. A two-step cooling system first lowers temperatures in “fast cooling” mode before switching automatically to the “Wind-Free” mode that creates “still air” once the desired temperature is reached, it said. The AR9500M wall-mounted model to be shown at CES is Wi-Fi-enabled so it can be controlled from anywhere in the home through Samsung’s Smart Home app, it said. “Users can remotely regulate temperature, adjust settings, receive real time updates about performance and daily energy usage, as well as troubleshoot solutions when a repair is needed,” it said. Samsung applied Sept. 9 to register “Wind-Free” as a trademark for air conditioners and other smart appliances, including air purifiers, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records show. But the agency preliminarily refused the application in a Dec. 2 letter on grounds that “Wind-Free” as a trademark would be “merely descriptive” and therefore cannot be allowed. PTO gave Samsung six months to appeal the refusal.

The ZigBee Alliance and Thread Group demoed products running ZigBee’s language for smart devices on Thread networks, they announced Thursday. Among members of both organizations that demonstrated prototypes at the Thread's member meeting last month and that will show products in both organizations’ CES booths: MMB Networks, Nortek, NXP Semiconductors, Osram, P&G, Resolution Products, Schneider Electric, Silicon Labs, Somfy, Yale and Zen Thermostat, they said. The demos are a milestone in the groups’ liaison agreement toward an ecosystem of connected products that interoperate over Thread IP networks using the ZigBee language, they said.

Delta Faucet will exhibit at CES for the second time, spotlighting its Leak Detector that’s due on the market mid-year. Delta positions the smart home sensing unit as a way to know about leaks before they turn into a bigger problem. The round device, designed with iDevices, was engineered to detect a range of water levels from pooling water to a few drips. When water is detected, an alert is sent to a homeowner’s phone or tablet, it said. The device originally was due to hit stores by the end of this year. The company didn’t respond Monday to questions about the delay or anticipated price.

A new smart plug from TP-Link allows consumers to control electronic devices in the home using its Kasa app without the need for a smart hub or bridge, said the company in a Thursday news release. Users can program lamps, fans or other devices plugged into the Wi-Fi-enabled HS105 ($49) to operate on schedules or timers, and an away mode gives the appearance a home is occupied when owners are out of town, said the company. The plug can be controlled by voice using Alexa or Google Home devices, it said.

The global smart thermostat market is expected to approach $3 billion by 2022, said a Grand View Research report Friday. Utility companies play a prominent role in smart thermostat adoption, offering them as part of a home energy management package, said the researcher. North America and Europe generated about 90 percent of smart thermostat revenue last year due to demand for smart home products and favorable government mandates, it said.