Savant is embedding its new smart home software in the Smart series sound bar, the first “of many” coming Savant products to bring Siri and HomeKit compatibility to the company’s connected home experience, it said Wednesday. HomeKit-compatible products will directly control HomeKit and Savant third-party devices via the control company’s software, allowing users to manage door locks, smart thermostats, light bulbs and other compatible devices using Siri on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, HomePod and through the native voice button on a Savant Pro handheld remote. The company also introduced a high-fidelity smart audio amplifier that will support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit and streaming music services, featuring 24-bit 96 kHz music playback with ultra-low latency and 125 watts per channel power. As part of a Savant control system, modules provide energy usage and reporting data across all electrical load types and can be the foundation for a net-zero-compliant home design, it said. The modules meet California’s Title 24 energy regulations and are Apple HomeKit-compatible. Savant is developing intelligent automation for New Home Co. that will allow lights and color temperatures to be set at certain levels based on executed scenes; it will also enable a single room or entire home to be put into a default circadian rhythm mode to promote health and wellness. It's part of a new initiative called EVO Home Tech, about “updating today’s new homes with tomorrow’s ideas,” said Megan Eltringham, New Home corporate vice president-marketing.
Austrian company USound received a $30 million equity tranche earmarked for a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) micro speaker, said to extend battery life of wireless earbuds and other wearables to 12 hours. The company’s current MEMS micro speaker offers more than 50 percent extended battery life vs. systems with electrodynamic speakers, said the company Tuesday. The next-generation technology integrates an energy recovery audio amplifier. When voltage is applied to the membrane housing the micro speakers’ lead zirconate titanate (PZT) material, crystals in the PZT expand or shrink, causing the membrane to vibrate and produce sound waves. The approach produces less heat and distortion than conventional speaker systems due to fewer moving parts, it said. USound’s products also have voice fingerprint, inherent mic functionality and analog-to-digital converters, it said.
The smart home will create new revenue streams for technology and service providers, drive efficiency and convenience for homeowners, and help address climate change goals by reducing the carbon footprint within the built environment, Navigant Research reported Tuesday. Analytics and automation are making the smart home a “dynamic asset for orchestrating how power is generated and used through automated devices and systems,” said Navigant analyst Casey Talon. Coordinating major energy-consuming systems such as air conditioning and hot water heating with distributed energy resources including solar, storage and energy efficiency measures will “maximize the value of a smart home in the Energy Cloud by offering demand flexibility into the grid,” said Talon. The market research firm recommends that architects, designers and developers use building information modeling; OEMs enhance solutions with digital capabilities; service partners explore partnerships with digital technology and OEMs; and utilities develop partnerships “for a stake in the smart home market.”
Apple quietly rolled out a new generation of iPod touch Tuesday starting at $199 for a 32 GB model. Based on the Apple-designed A10 Fusion chip, the device is positioned as a music playback and gaming handheld offering “immersive augmented reality experiences” and Group FaceTime. The company pushed its “three time faster” graphics performance that will enable smoother operation for games, including those available from its Apple Arcade game subscription service due in fall. Additional models include a 128 GB version ($299) and 256 GB model ($399), Apple said.
Hubitat’s Elevation mobile app is available for Android and iOS users, giving customers availability of remote access, presence detection and push notifications for their home automation systems from smartphones and tablets, said the company Thursday. The mobile app offers geofencing -- only transmitting that a geofence boundary has been crossed -- ensuring that GPS data “stays on the device, is never transmitted or stored and users’ location privacy is protected," it said.
Savant and sister company Racepoint Energy showed Power over Ethernet lighting at Lightfair this week, including ControlDirect PoE LED drivers and “easy-to-use” configuration tools. The PoE solutions offer integrators single-wire installation, IP control and direct Bluetooth Low Energy communication, which gives integrators a direct path to configure and control an LED. BLE communication speeds up the on-boarding and configuration process and helps isolate issues after fixtures are installed, it said. Also at Lightfair, Savant announced it's the first company to control circuit breakers via Apple HomeKit using its circuit breaker companion modules for lighting and energy. The company’s full lighting lineup is HomeKit-capable, including its own smart bulbs and LED light strips, along with any third-party fixture connected to its lighting controllers, it said. Homeowners can control connected lights via Savant and Apple Home apps.
Sales of connected consumer devices will exceed 520 million units by 2022, reported Parks Associates. While service providers are well-positioned to deploy, maintain and service the smart home, they generally don’t want to develop and maintain a proprietary system to do so, said analyst Brad Russell in a Wednesday email blast. Partnerships with vendors that offer turnkey solutions can enable providers to serve present and future use cases, he said. Michael Weening, executive vice president-field operations for Calix, said leaders are “starting with tools that provide visibility into the home and supporting systems so they can deliver best-in-class whole-home Wi-Fi coverage.” Parks found 24 percent of U.S. broadband homes subscribed to professional monitoring at the end of 2018, more than 50 percent of consumers with professionally monitored security systems had basic interactivity and 10 percent owned at least one networked camera.
At the company’s first North American dealers’ conference Tuesday in New Orleans, Sound United CEO Kevin Duffy rebuffed the idea that millennials aren’t willing to invest in a high-quality sound experience, saying, “We don’t agree with that.” While the audio business focused over the past decade on convenience and “commoditized” product, Duffy referenced what Sound United sees as a “flight back to quality.” Duffy cited content providers’ efforts, including the Imax collaboration with DTS, to bring “very high-fidelity content into the home.” Netflix is streaming in Dolby Atmos, and Google, Hulu and Apple are spending “billions of dollars to create good content that must be displayed with great audio, too,” he said. That audio content needs high-fidelity equipment, “properly installed, properly configured” to enjoy the music, and large tech companies are putting marketing dollars toward “driving people into their living rooms to do that," said the executive. Among features highlighted in four Denon and Marantz AV receivers that launched this week are auto low-latency mode; voice control support for Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant and Josh.ai; Apple AirPlay 2; HDCP 2.3 support; and HEOS wireless multiroom music streaming.
Smart home technology had a solid presence at the Lightfair International trade show in Philadelphia this week, with the Friends of Hue program taking the spotlight among connected home companies. Silicon Labs and Signify announced they’re working on an extension of the Friends of Hue program to enable ecosystem partners to develop smart light switches for Philips Hue systems. Silicon Labs is providing the software tools to help companies certified by the program design and produce light switches with its software development kit that are “guaranteed to work flawlessly” with Philips’ Hue smart lighting systems. Silicon Labs worked with Signify to define the Zigbee cluster and provide compliant software for advanced light switch functionality, including “user-friendly setup” in the Hue app and deployment firmware updates via the Hue cloud, it said. The SDK enables a variety of smart switch designs, increasing the choice of compatible switches for Philips Hue users, it said. Signify believes “smart lighting should be accessible to everyone, and convenient smart light control via the light switch is a key part of this vision,” said Duncan McCue, Signify’s head of partnerships. When consumers turn off smart lights using legacy wall switches, the lights can’t be controlled using apps, voice commands, schedules or sensors, said Silicon Labs. Friends of Hue switches enable “reliable Hue smart lighting control directly from wall switches, keeping the Hue lights ‘always-ready’ while providing a familiar interface everyone knows how to use,” it said. Lutron joined the Friends of Hue program and introduced at Lightfair the Aurora smart bulb dimmer, which mounts over a toggle switch, to keep Philips Hue smart bulbs and fixtures “ready for use.” Lutron noted that smart bulb users lose control of smart lighting when a light switch is accidentally turned off, and the wireless, battery-powered Aurora device prevents loss of smart control by locking the existing toggle switch in the on, or up, position.
Nearly half of U.S. adults have some familiarity with robotics technology, and 84 percent are eager to use it in “everyday life,” a CTA study found. CTA canvassed 2,000 adults online in late April and found 90 percent expressing appreciation for the convenience of products such as robotic vacuum cleaners. There's “widespread enthusiasm” for educational robotics, it said. Though few consumers reported firsthand interaction with robotics in the retail or hospitality sectors, 83 percent of those surveyed said they “would be open to using the technology for services such as in-store assistance and room service.”