This week’s show is a celebration of Matter actually hitting devices, with Google announcing its Matter roll out and Eve allowing users to update its devices to Matter as well. We’re super excited to play with Matter, and you’ll read more about in the newsletter or hear us chat about it next week. We also discuss how Z-Wave’s open-source efforts have gone, and the first port of Z-Wave technology to a third party chip. Energy management is becoming a compelling use case for smart home tech given the high price of heat this winter, so we share what might help and how it may change the conversation around connected devices. Then we dig into a new Comcast report on home security that points out the things you’re worried about getting hacked in your smart home are not necessarily what’s getting hacked. In smaller news, we cover gestures and accessibility features for the Echo Show, smarter alarm systems, and a new sensor that’s itty-bitty. We close with chip news about a new RISC-V microcontroller, a new integrated Matter chip from NXP, and Qualcomm’s new LTE Cat 1 modem for IoT. We end the first segment of the show by answering a listener question about outdoor smart lights for cold climates.
Our guest this week is Sean Petterson, the CEO and founder of StrongArm Tech, a company that makes wearable safety devices for industrial and warehouse workers. We talk about the company’s history of building exoskeletons and its pivot to data analytics and wearables, and then the challenges associated with converting worker safety into an ROI. Petterson makes the case that analytics can drive home the importance of keeping workers healthy despite the costs of the system and the perceived costs in terms of productivity. He gives a good example from a warehouse customer using StrongArm’s analytics to send workers home after they meet their quota for the day, even if it means they get sent home early. Petterson says it’s simply not efficient or smart from an ROI perspective to keep them working. We also talk about the ethics of such software and how StrongArm tries to make sure its data isn’t used to retaliate against poor performers. Enjoy the show.
Eve will let users sign up for early access to the Matter firmware, then says stay tune for news in early January. We have to wait longer to update a device to turn a light on than to buy a handgun.
A few hours later I got the email for Test Flight and the Beta Eve app. I was able to update my eve energy after having to literally move all of my thread devices to the living room with the Apple TV before anything used Thread rather than bluetooth. It was a mess and confusing why I had to move nano leaf bulbs to lamps in the same room before they would activate a thread network. Zigbee on the otherhand can reach clear across the house with just one device and a controller.
Now I have to see if I can get thread 1.30 working so that my AppleTV, nest hub2nd gen and Eero’s all work together in one network.
I have Z-wave devices that are 22 years old and working great in Apple Homekit now thanks to Hubitat.
That’s really good to hear. It’s an intriguing development for Hubitat, for sure.
It’s taken the steam out of early Matter being able to easily get every zigbee and zwave product into Apple, Amazon and Google. My Smartthings hub keeps asking where I went…