Qualcomm Technologies is demonstrating at CES a prototype application for its new Smart Home Reference Platform. The platform is based on the Snapdragon 212 processor and provides computing, voice recognition, audio, display, camera, connectivity and control capabilities for home control hubs and smart speakers, Qualcomm said. It will extend to home appliances and multimedia devices “as use cases evolve.” Platform capabilities can help accelerate the use of high-end computing, voice recognition, audio, displays and cameras in the smart home, it said.

Real estate giant Coldwell Banker wants to be “the conduit” between smart home manufacturers and home buyers and sellers, it said Monday, announcing results of a home marketplace survey about home technology ahead of CES. The survey found that 45 percent of Americans either own smart home technology or plan to invest in it this year. Of those, 36 percent don’t consider themselves early tech adopters, it said. More than half of homeowners said they would buy or install smart home products if they were selling their home and knew that doing so would make it sell faster, and of that group, 65 percent would be willing to spend $1,500 or more. The most popular type of smart home technology that people already own is smart entertainment (44 percent), such as smart TVs and speakers, followed by smart security (31 percent) and smart thermostats (30 percent), it said. When asked what qualifies as a smart home product, respondents said locks and alarm systems (63 percent), thermostats and fans (63 percent), lighting (58 percent) and fire/carbon monoxide detectors and night lights (56 percent). One smart technology product doesn’t qualify for a home to be smart, said three-quarters of respondents. Older generations are adopting certain types of smart home technology faster than younger ones, said the survey. Some 40 percent of those surveyed over 65 who own smart home products currently have smart temperature products, compared with 25 percent of those 18 to 34, it said. Seventy percent of people with smart home technology said buying their first smart home product made them more likely to buy another. Coldwell Banker Real Estate is co-sponsoring the Smart Home Marketplace at CES, the first time a real estate company is sponsoring it. The company is hosting the "Selling Smarter: Real Estate and The Smart Home" conference Wednesday, with representatives from August, Lutron and Nest, who will discuss "smart" as a new trend in real estate. CES is the latest smart home initiative for Coldwell Banker. CEDIA said last month it's in talks with Coldwell Banker (see 1512230052) to involve member integrators in the sale of homes valued at $1 million or more. The smart home survey was done in October by Harris Poll with 4,065 adults ages 18 and over, including 1,009 who owned at least one smart home product. For the survey, "smart home technology/products" were defined as products or tools that aid in controlling a home's functions such as lighting, temperature, security, safety, and entertainment, either remotely by a phone, tablet, computer or with a separate automatic system within the home itself.

GreenPeak will demonstrate at CES its Family@Home system that’s being tested by global service providers, it said Tuesday. The system comprises cloud intelligence, wireless connectivity and battery-powered sensors. Use cases for Family@Home include checking on door and window status, monitoring pets, managing temperature when not at home and being alerted to leaks from water-based appliances, GreenPeak said. The system, based on a self-learning algorithm with behavior pattern recognition, doesn’t require rule-based programming, and exceptions to behavior patterns are automatically reported, the company said. Intelligent status updates are shown on a dashboard app that generates alerts to homeowners when unexpected events occur, GreenPeak said. “The tech industry has been telling consumers that they need a Smart Home but, up until now, all they are being offered are connected devices -- creating a ‘house with sensors,’” GreenPeak CEO Cees Links said. The Family@Home application is an end-to-end system-level reference design that allows telecom operators and cable providers to complement current business offerings with smart home services that are robust, virtually maintenance-free, low cost and easy to install, Links said. The system works with Sensara’s cloud-based algorithm and analytics and interfaces to a cable system operator's billing and support system, GreenPeak said. It can be customized and branded to meet an operator's business and market requirements, it said. The model allows operators to offer smart home subscriptions at a low initial cost with an “attractive monthly fee,” allowing the provider to accelerate consumer acceptance and increase average revenue per user, it said.

Lowe’s is using its Iris smart home technology to offer families a Santa Tracker designed to show kids that Santa came at Christmas and “exactly how he moved throughout their home.” The Iris by Lowe’s mobile app prompts a series of questions that, once answered, allow the physical Iris devices in a home to sync with the Santa Tracker, Lowe’s said. The app has virtual invisible “Santa sensors” and a “Santa camera” and on Christmas morning, the app will reveal when, where and how Santa visited the home, said the retailer. Using the app, users can select where Santa is likely to arrive, indicate what he’s expected to do in the home and snap a photo where Santa is expected to appear. Users can check the app before Christmas to make sure the sensors are working and open the app Christmas morning to confirm when Santa visited, Lowe’s said. “Smart homes shouldn’t just be smart -- they should be fun and make life more enjoyable,” said Mick Koster, Iris Home Systems general manager. The app is available to non-Iris users at the Apple App store and Google Play.

Some 30 percent of U.S. broadband households intend to buy a smart lightbulb by year-end, said a Parks Associates research report, while 17 percent plan to buy a smart kitchen appliance and 14 percent plan to buy a smart thermostat. The top five brands of lightbulb manufacturers -- GE, Philips Hue, Insteon, Belkin and Lifx -- have 78 percent of smart bulb market, it said. In addition to current use cases such as changing bulb colors, adding security tie-ins and creating scenes, smart bulb makers will experiment with new use cases in 2016, said Parks Associates President Stuart Sikes. Smart lighting will be discussed at Parks’ Smart Energy Summit, Feb. 22-24, in Austin.

An Indiegogo-backed smart bulb project, Qube, sought additional funding Tuesday as part of a stretch-goal effort to add features to its Wi-Fi bulb. The color-changing Qube bulb is to ship to early adopters in April and general buyers in June. Qube solicited additional feedback from backers to provide their “dream feature” that will be part of stretch goals to be announced soon. Leading stretch goals so far include an alarm mode with fast red blinking lights, Christmas and other festive holiday mood lighting, an away mode to simulate occupancy, Apple HomeKit integration, increased light output to 1,000 lumens and a circadian clock to coordinate lighting with sunrise and sunset, the company said. The project is funded at $143,313 by 1,360 backers.

Blink, a smart home monitoring startup with $6.8 million funding from Kickstarter, venture capital and supply chain partners, is out of beta and into production, said the company Monday. Blink includes HD video monitoring, motion-based video alerts, night vision, onboard storage, temperature sensing and a built-in microphone, said the company. Limited-time preorder pricing starts at $79 for a one-camera system with no monthly fees. A whole-home, five-camera system is $289, Blink said.

Half of U.S. consumers believe smart home technology will have a major impact on their lives, said a study from GfK on 11 leading-edge technologies. Smart home edged out mobile payments at 50 percent of respondents, while 42 percent of U.S. consumers said wearables would be important to their lives, said GfK. Participants could choose multiple categories, it said. For U.S. consumers, smart home technologies with the most appeal were energy or lighting (55 percent), security and control (54 percent), entertainment and connectivity (50 percent), health (45 percent) and smart appliances (42 percent), said GfK. The top barrier to smart home acceptance is cost, mentioned by 37 percent of respondents, followed by privacy concerns (26 percent). A quarter of U.S. respondents saw no barriers to smart home product adoption. The smart home has the potential to be one of the “biggest tech adoption revolutions” in decades, said Rob Barrish, GfK senior vice president-technology, North America. To counteract high-cost perceptions, smart home marketers need to focus on usefulness and emotional appeal, Barrish said. For the study, GfK interviewed more than 7,000 adults 16 and older online in September and October in Germany, the U.K., U.S., Brazil, South Korea, China and Japan.

Tech startup Nucleus hopes to overhaul the 50-year-old home intercom market with a Wi-Fi-based do-it-yourself wireless touch-screen system, CEO Jonathan Frankel told us Thursday. Philadelphia-based Nucleus, recently fortified with $3.37 million in seed funding -- including $1.5 million from its contract manufacturer Foxconn -- is taking pre-orders for a connected home device that can hang on the wall and combines the family phone, intercom, video chat and security alert functions. Pre-order price starts at $209 per unit, with availability slated for spring, and drops with the number of devices purchased. An eight-unit system is $179 per device, said the website. Nucleus has an 8-inch screen with a wide-angle lens designed to capture a complete room in one shot. It has night-vision capability and a noise-canceling mic and responds to voice commands. Users can tap on the touch screen, or issue a voice command, to reach family members in another room to convey a message or check on a sleeping baby, Frankel said. “Instead of running up and down the stairs, or yelling or texting in the home, you just tap or use voice activation to connect between rooms in the home.” Wi-Fi enables the communication to extend to Nucleus devices around the world, he said. In typical usage, a parent might call a teenager to dinner using just an audio call from room to room but call a grandparent in another state using video chat, with connections occurring in a “fraction of a second,” Frankel said. The wide-angle lens and noise-canceling mic allow users to walk around the room and have a conversation with someone “like they’re in the room with me,” said Frankel. Nucleus is based on the open-source WebRTC communications platform that keeps all devices “constantly connected,” said Frankel. Nucleus can connect to the Nest cloud and an Insteon hub to add smart home product control including lights and door locks, he said. The Nucleus app allows users to extend usage to a smartphone, giving devices a Wi-Fi-based push-to-talk-like functionality. Frankel gave the example of being able to tap on the app to reach his wife rather than having to place a call or type a text. Nucleus was designed for the DIY channel but will offer a power-over-ethernet adaptor for the CEDIA channel, he said. The company will roll out the product in stages and hopes to be in most major retailers over the next 12 months, Frankel said.

Juniper Research is forecasting consumer spending of $43 billion for smart home devices this year, jumping to $100 billion by 2020. Entertainment services including Netflix and Spotify are enlarging the smart home market on “universal appeal” and low-cost service, Juniper said, but emerging segments including home automation will begin to catch up, driven by falling hardware prices and growing consumer awareness. To date, numerous home automation subscription services, such as AT&T's Digital Life, “have struggled to address the mass-market,” Juniper said. Unit product purchases, rather than systems, are the most likely entry point to the smart home for consumers, Juniper said. It cited Nest and SmartThings as companies that have “successfully added subscription services to their hardware sales in order to generate lifetime value.”