Insteon’s universal app will be loaded on new Toshiba laptops shipping at the end of August, making it the first built-in IoT application shipping “to the masses,” Insteon said Tuesday. Users will need a separate Insteon hub, not included, to be able to control the 200 Insteon-enabled smart home products on the market, including automated lighting products, thermostats and motion, leak and smoke detectors, it said. The Insteon app will be available on a majority of Windows 10-based Toshiba consumer laptops that will begin shipping this month, Insteon said. Microsoft has been selling Insteon products in its retail stores since last summer (see 1407010064). On plans for similar deals with additional PC makers, a company spokeswoman said Insteon is open to partnerships with other device manufacturers.

Companies including Amazon, Jarden, June, Microsoft, Moen and Plated will participate in the Smart Kitchen Summit, a daylong event in Seattle Nov. 5 at Sodo Park. Billed as “first connected kitchen event” by event producer NextMarket Insights, the summit will host startups, established brands and innovators, it said. On panels including The Connected Appliance Opportunity and The Subscription Kitchen, participants will discuss home brewing, food commerce, emerging kitchen technologies, smart design and “reinventing the cookbook as we know it," said NextMarket. The event will end with a cookoff where entrepreneurs can pitch their smart kitchen concepts, products and companies to members of the IoT and connected kitchen hardware community. Sponsors include Control4, Soundwall, WeMo and Zonoff, it said.

Philips Hue and Frima Studio have partnered on Chariot, an Xbox One videogame that can be synced to smart home lighting. When the lights and game are connected, Hue smart lightbulbs’ colors change to provide effects that match scenes in the game, Philips said. To link the game to the bulbs, users follow normal Wi-Fi setup instructions for the Hue bulbs, including setting up a bridge and naming each bulb. When they launch the Chariot game on the Xbox One, they choose “Philips Hue setup” from the options menu, according to setup instructions. Users are prompted through a pop-up message to press a button on the Philips bridge. From the setup menu, they select the Hue bulbs for that room and the actual bulbs will glow and blink to indicate they’re ready to sync with the game, instructions said. The Hue kit and game are sold separately, a company spokeswoman told us. In addition, Philips Hue and Syfy have partnered to create a specially designed “light track” to accompany Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, premiering Wednesday on Syfy at 9 p.m.

More than 40 percent of the 10 million thermostats forecast to sell this year in the U.S. will be smart, said a Parks Associates blog post Wednesday. Smart thermostats will account for more than half of the total market by 2017, it said. "Smart thermostats already account for more than one-half of the smart home devices in U.S. broadband households," said analyst Tom Kerber, citing utility programs that have employed smart thermostats as part of energy management initiatives. Utilities and other energy service providers are developing strategies to leverage the big data from smart thermostats and other smart home devices for their demand-response and energy-efficiency programs, said Kerber. "The cost of heating and cooling a home accounts for as much as 50 percent of the overall utility bill." Leveraging data from smart thermostats can help consumers cut energy use and meet energy efficiency goals while enabling energy providers to “monetize the mountain of data derived from both smart meters and smart devices," he said. Retail sales of smart thermostats are growing, too, Kerber said, accounting for most of the units sold last year. Retailers such as Best Buy, Target and Walmart are increasing their smart thermostat offerings in the smart home category, including designating dedicated space to demonstrate products and build consumer awareness, said Kerber.

Netgear launched the AC1750 Smart Wi-Fi Router ($149) that’s said to boost long-range performance by up to 80 percent over the company’s previous-generation R6300 router. The AC1750 is targeted to large homes with a growing number of wireless devices. It includes three high-powered external antennas and Beamforming+ that’s said to improve range and extend coverage to reduce the number of dead spots in a home. The Airtime Fairness feature prevents network lag when slower devices connect, and Advanced Quality of Service automatically recognizes and prioritizes applications for smoother HD video streaming and low-latency multiplayer online gaming, Netgear said. One of the two USB ports is SuperSpeed 3.0, it said.

SDI Technologies’ iHome said its HomeKit-compatible iSP5 SmartPlug is based on Marvell's EZ-Connect IoT platform and SDK (software development kit). IHome is taking pre-orders online for the $39.99 device due to ship July 15. With the iHome smart plug, consumers can use Siri or the iHome Control app on iOS and Android devices to control lamps, fans, air conditioners and other devices, said SDI. Users can group several iHome plugs into scenes to control multiple connected devices in the home and create custom scenes to control multiple plugs with one command or scheduled event, it said. The Marvell platform combines a Cortex-M3 microcontroller and 802.11n wireless radio, which together enable a HomeKit solution, said Marvell. Hardware manufacturers using Marvell's SDK for HomeKit benefit from a complete, supported implementation of the HomeKit framework, which Marvell said can save them months of development effort.

Smart home technology provider Vivint said it's offering Vivint Internet, a wireless service with download and upload speeds of 100 Mbps. That's more than nine times faster than the average connection speed in the U.S., the company said in a Wednesday news release. Vivint is providing the service to 15,000 customers in San Antonio and El Paso and in many cities throughout Utah, the company said. Plans are to expand the service to three new markets this year, and to eight new markets in 2016, Vivint said. The standard price of the service is $59.99 monthly, the ISP said.

Frontier Secure is knocking $150 off the price of a Nest thermostat to $99 for subscribers who update the speed of their Internet service, the company said Tuesday. “The Internet has become so much more than smartphones, tablets and computers,” said Kelly Morgan, general manager. The connected Nest thermostat helps consumers save 10-15 percent on energy usage, said Frontier.

Cree’s connected LED bulb is compatible with SmartThings, the bulb maker said in a Tuesday news release, four months after launch of the company's first smart bulb. The Connected Cree LED Bulb is dimmable and controllable via the SmartThings app and was designed to work with other market platforms as well, said Cree. The 60-watt Cree bulb is said to consume 81 percent less energy than an incandescent and has a rated lifetime of 25,000 hours, which the company backs with a three-year warranty. The $14.97 bulb, sold at Home Depot, uses Cree's 4Flow filament design that creates optically balanced lighting inside a shatter-proof housing, said the company. Bulb ratings are 815 lumens with 2700K color temperature.

ILuv introduced its first smart LED light bulb, in the company's “entry point into home automation,” it said Tuesday. With the iLuv Rainbow7 app for iOS and Android devices, users can dim and turn lights on and off from up to 30 feet away, said iLuv. A color wheel on the app lets users scroll through a color spectrum of 16 million combinations and choose tones to match an activity, it said. The $39 bulbs can be customized to follow a schedule or to turn on automatically in response to an event such as the owner entering the home, said the company. Up to six Rainbow7 bulbs can be connected in a group, and a total of 10 groups can be operated by the app, it said. Bulb life is given as 20,000 hours.