It’s been a long time since we’ve covered the news, and the DMZ’s newest contributor, Doug Krug, helps us wade through some of the news we missed. Will.i.am breathes new life into Wink; Ring, Schlage, and Sylvania bring new products to market; and Thington is, sadly, no more. Plus: Doug has some good advice on how you should prepare for the inevitable hub failure and recovery process.
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Show Links
- i.am+ buys Wink
- Will.i.am and Wink’s First Z-Wave Devices
- Microsoft Shows Off a Thermostat Based on Cortana
- Video: Johnson Controls Reinvents the Thermostat
- Video: A Day Made of Glass
- Ring adds battery and solar-powered security cameras and lights
- Tile Pro Can Help You Find Your Keys
- Logitech Harmony skill is much better now
- Schlage Sense HomeKit Bluetooth Deadbolt is shipping
- ilumi now works with IFTTT
- Sylvania Smart+ HomeKit compatible accessories available to order
- Thington shuttering
- CEDIA Show
- Attend this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit (use promo code HOMEON for 25% off tickets)
- Follow Doug on Twitter at @dougkrug
- Read his posts at Smart Home Primer
- Check out a preview of the DMZ’s newest podcast, Story Players
Home: On is listed at Technology.FM, a curated collection of technology podcasts, including great shows like The Smart Kitchen Show, The HomeTech Podcast, and The NextMarket Podcast.
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Your discussion neglected the non-cloud zwave players like HomeSeer, ISY and Vera. It also missed the crux of the problem: security.
You don’t want someone to walk up with a controller on a battery pack and take control of your locks. You need people to have physical access to the devices to migrate them. This is why replacing a dead controller is hard.
Zwave has a mechanism to migrate devices from one controller to another. I can take a working Vera3 and a new VeraPlus, set the veraplus to be master and migrate the devices over. The Vera3 “introduces” the devices to the VeraPlus and passes over any encryption keys.
Vera’s support local and cloud backups, so you can often replace a dead vera with a new vera without too much pain. You can backup the logic/scenes/rooms and the zwave mesh. I imagine the same is possible for HomeSeer and ISY though I don’t know for sure. Some devices, like locks, probably have to be reassociated as their “fail safe” condition is likely “don’t let this unknown person tell you what to do”.
Lastly, HomeSeer, ISY and Vera are completely locally operated controllers. They have remote control features just like HomeKit. And yes, for Echo/GoogleHome they need the internet and a cloud….but so does HomeKit to use Siri.
There is nothing magic about Bluetooth or Insteon protocols that makes them local and therefore better. There can be cloud based hubs for them at any time. The automation logic is independent of the device communication method.