Typically, people who use either the OpenHAB or Home Assistant open source smart home platforms tend to run the software on their own computer or a low-cost Raspberry Pi. Can you actually run these on cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud or … [Read more...]
We need a standards-based solution for smart home device and automation backups
News this week of Comcast shutting down Stringify has surely upset the service's user base. Granted it's a small group of affected users - Stringify had 100,000+ downloads in the Google Play Store compared to more than 5 million IFTTT installs, for … [Read more...]
Is Mistral a next-gen mesh network Google Home Hub with ZigBee, or maybe even Thread?
Google appears to be developing a next-generation Home hub that will include mesh Wi-Fi, a ZigBee or thread-based radio and better audio quality according to the evidence I've found in Google's code base. The code I've unearthed refers to "Mistral", … [Read more...]
On-device speech recognition on smart speakers: Only half of the cloudless smart home equation
When Google announced its "end-to-end, all-neural, on-device speech recognizer" for the Gboard phone keyboard two weeks ago, I was initially excited. That's because speech recognition can now run locally on Gboard, even without a network … [Read more...]
Switching hubs? Here’s why you should always remove smart devices from the old one
I was doing some research on how to back up smart home hub configurations (spoiler alert: you generally can't) when I had a startling revelation. Several of the devices in my home were actively sending data to Samsung's SmartThings servers. Why was … [Read more...]