On this week’s podcast I speak with Daniel Herscovici, the head of Comcast’s Xfinity Home program, and he has some big ambitions. He is in charge of the smart home platform that aims to take over a huge number of homes in the US. We talk about the purchase of iControl, why Comcast isn’t keen on Zigbee and why Comcast isn’t sweating standards.
Also, this week there were two big stories in the internet of things. The first is that Google Home has expanded the number of companies it works with, adding Rachio, Wink, August and more. The other story is that Congress has repealed rules that prevented ISPs from selling your personal data. This will open up consumers’ search history to ISPs and marketers, but Kevin and I discuss what it means for your smart home devices and data. We also discuss IKEA’s new smart home products, Kevin’s poor Z-wave lock experience and hacked commercial dishwashers.
Rob Dyer says
April 5, 2017 at 2:22 pmCan you recommend a solution for replacing a classical dimmer switch with a wifi enabled switch that can be controlled via an Amazon Echo. Just want to control the light level in my lounge via voice.
Stacey Higginbotham says
April 5, 2017 at 10:39 pmLeviton has a Wi-Fi Decora dimmer that works with Alexa and doesn’t require a hub. WeMo is also supposed to have a Wi-Fi dimmer that works with Alexa coming out within the month.
Margaret Johns says
April 5, 2017 at 8:54 pmHaving been a Comcast customer in New Hampshire, I can say that while their security system may be OK, its installers are not rocket scientists. It took numerous frustrating calls to Comcast, and then ultimately my own diagnostics to get my system operating correctly. Not a fan.