The smart home is dead. I’m not sure exactly when the time of death should have been called, but it happened at some point between Google trying to rebrand the smart home as “the helpful home” and the publication of this article, which expresses dismay that at five years of age, Amazon’s Alexa offers little more than a new way of interacting with things, without deep functionality or truly new use cases.
This week in New York, at an IoT Consortium event, I listened to executives of dozens of companies associated with the smart home talk around its death but never address the fact directly. Instead, they talked about a lack of compelling use cases, how to move beyond a device-specific mindset, and the ways they are trying to handle consumer demand for interoperability in the smart home without actually providing such interoperability.
For example, Google’s Mark Spates, who works in the smart display and speaker division, said onstage, “I don’t think we’ve done a good job explaining our value proposition to consumers. We have to come up with new stories that isn’t just ‘Go buy another Mini.'”
The subtext of his comment — and really of the entire panel, which was about voice and smart speakers — was that consumers still largely use their Alexa’s and Google Home devices for playing music and perhaps communication. The things consumers are able to do in a home filled with smart speakers haven’t changed, just the ease with which they can do them.
And while that might be a function of marketing, I think it’s more a function of how hard it can be to trust and use new technology. For example, Spates suggested showing new parents how they could use a smart display as a baby monitor, thus reducing the amount of gear they’d have to buy.
But with Google’s cloud still going down every so often, most parents who initially had their Google Display or Nest Cam set up as a baby monitor have since swapped them out for fear that a cloud outage will leave them unable to see their child when it might matter most. Greater redundancy and the addition of more local information sharing between devices could help in case of a cloud outage, but that level of local redundancy is not here yet.
And in many ways, that is the story of the smart home. Consumers had a vision of either a Rosie the Robot from “The Jetsons” or perhaps the millennial Pat from the movie “Smart House,” but today’s smart home doesn’t even come close (which is good, since Pat went a bit off the rails). Device makers didn’t meet that vision because they were working on individual gadgets or, in certain cases, a business model that could help monetize some kind of whole home operating system.
So I get why Google has backed off the smart home moniker and instead begun labeling the connected home as “helpful.” It needs to dial back expectations to something it can deliver. That’s likely to consist of an assistant pulling in device data so it can remind you to lock your front door when you go to bed, or lowering the heat when you leave your home so as to save on electricity. Even things like Amazon’s Guard, which listens for glass breaking to determine if a burglar has broken in, is only of minimal interest to consumers.
Because while these are nice functions, they are not glitzy functions. And they are not going to persuade people concerned about privacy, longevity, added complexity, security, or costs to shell out for connected devices. Another good example of this ambivalence to the smart home could be seen on a panel about smart TVs, connected displays and voice. The panel featured executives from Warner Media and Fox representing the content business. Neither of them were able to offer a compelling reason for being at a show all about the IoT other than wanting to make it easy for people to access content around the house, in their car, and on their phone.
I’ve felt this lack of creativity for a while. Everyone who has been watching this space has. Maybe it’s because the first decade of the smart home has been such a messy free-for-all and we need some space to clean things up, lower expectations, and focus on making devices and integrations usable. Either way, I walked away from the IoT Consortium event glad to have re-connected with so many of the folks I’ve met with over the last few years, but without a sense that there was anything new or exciting on the horizon.
I think there’s too much emphasis on remote control and not on *automation.* Turning lights on and off from across the world isn’t regularly useful. But having my lights change color temperature throughout the day and scheduling heating and cooling is nice.
Smart homes have enough ‘brains’- now we need more ‘arms.’ Sadly, the devices are pretty pricey… Unless you DIY. It’s not really that difficult to get a $35 Raspberry Pi, install HomeAssistant and Mosquitto, and use $2 ESP8266 modules to make your own IOT devices, and it gives you the flexibility to do whatever you want as well as the security of not having it connected to the cloud. I can’t tell my Google to do it, but each room of my apartment will open and close the shades automatically based on indoor vs outdoor temperature and how much light is hitting the window, keeping it cooler in the summer and warmer in winter, and my cat sits in front of his automatic feeder instead of bothering me for food. I can easily check temperature and humidity trends and energy usage, and do stuff based on it, without the data leaving my network. I’m also a type one diabetic that uses a CGM, so with a little extra work I can do things like turn the kitchen lights on at night if my blood sugar is low and I need to go get something to eat.
I don’t think the smart house is dead, it just needs to evolve a little bit.
Why are you peeing in my Cheerios Google!? I want so bad for this stuff to work. I hate that my Google Assistant cannot figure out how to reconnect to my smart hub after a power outage. Similar to the old reboot fix, it doesn’t have to be that smart to figure that out does it? Every time there is a tiny issue, I have to delete the hub and reset up the entire house (fans, lights, sensors). It is nice …when it works.
Problem is, big companies like Google and Amazon have missed the point. Take a look at communities around open source projects like Home Assistant, or openHAB. Those projects have made devices actually be smart.
Agreed on all points. Privacy and Security are huge, and the lack of actual innovation with these IOT platforms is really disappointing.
I think another thing worth addressing is whether the device or service will be around or supported from one year to the next. Best Buy’s insignia products come to mind. The options to consumers if pretty poor, as the goal for things like Nest is to hook you on the service related fees for cloud usage, trap you in their ecosystem (due to disparate systems and controllers for different devices), and can ultimately leave you hung out to dry when they find the platform, service, or device unsupportable.
You are tripping if you think smart home tech is on the down slide. People are buying so many iot devices, products like doorbell cams are on the rise. Maybe some products have missed the mark for sure and need improvement or need to be scrapped altogether but it doesn’t mean the entire market is doing poorly and is finally crashing as your click bait title claims. There are some tech markets like VR that are actually struggling right now, smart home devices are certainly not one of these failing markets, people are eating it up. I’m sure you’ll see upticks in many closing 2019 numbers.
I’ve got two Echo Dots and two Google Homes. We have a Dot and Home in the living room, and one in each bedroom. I have 4 smart plugs and I’m getting ready to buy more. I live in an apartment so there isn’t much I can do. But, what I have I love. With the assistance of IFTTT, my lights go on at sunset, my bedroom light and radio come on 30 minutes before sunrise, and the radio shuts off when I leave. We went away for vacation and I set the lights to turn off at 12:30 am, which is around the time we would normally go to sleep. I think with IOT you just have to get creative. Also, I’m a techy person and so is my son. I realize that’s a big factor because I actually understand what’s going on, less savvy will not and won’t want IOT. Education, education, education!
Smart TVs eavesdrop on us with little actual return in features. Earlier ones offered their own apps which quickly became outdated and then no longer functioned.
Then there is all the security issues that were found with IoT devices.
Is it any surprise that the internet of things has not taken off?
Consider home lighting. Simple motion sensing lights are more convenient, cheaper, and have no security flaws like smart home ones.
Programming a toaster app versus turning a simple dial, your old toaster will work for over a decade; whereas the smart one will not be supported in 3 years.
Smart homes will come eventually, but we’re just not there yet, not by a long shot
One of the big problems is that everyone (Google, Amazon, Apple) wants to build their own walled garden. If there were open standards that everyone could use, there would be a lot more incentive to create the next killer app.
This article is pathetic. Like hell the smart home is dead. You have to be a complete idiot to even try making such a ridiculous claim
With a little extra work you can get a very functional, true smart home. I propose Home Assistant. You get to choose local, rather than cloud based, it supports thousands of components and you just need a little time and some logical thought to get something up and running.
Let the big two battle for their glitz. I always have a warm home when it needs to be, lighting when I walk into a room, a burglar alarm, push notifications to my phone for key events when I’m not home, my home reacts to situations such as me leaving the home, returning home, even watching TV and working on my PC. I get notified when there is traffic on my commute, which changes when my alarm goes off in the morning and the house reacts when it’s raining or dull outside.
All of this made possible with my choice of sensors, cloud only when I want it and a choice of price point. To summarise, you do have choice if you look past Google, Amazon and Samsung.
I think the really exciting, well interconnected stuff is happening in the user space, with things like bass.io
Hacking together devices like lightbulbs, switches, motion sensors and smart speakers, and creating routines, and automations can make the home feel like magic.
Very good points. As someone trying to do more, it’s frustrating when smart home devices won’t talk to each other or the various smart hubs that were designed to bring everything to the same table. I could do more, but right now that requires lots of research and guesses in edge cases.
Maybe one day it will get better..
How much does money from advertising play into it? While delivering music or video, companies can make additional income by inserting ads. Once they have sold me the sensors, switches, and controller to make my home smart, then that becomes the end of the revenue stream for them.
There’s a lot wrong here.
A smart home is not supposed to be oriented around voice control or an assistant that you have to otherwise command. That’s a very low bar to set and if anything is dead, it’s that thin veneer these companies – who have never been innovating to begin with, and are by no means original players – were trying to push. This is amplified by the fact Google’s products are very unreliable and so nobody wants make them an integral part of their life and home.
But far from dead are all the other options, ZigBee and ZWave for us lowly working class folk and the options that have always existed for the more well to do, and a handful of options for controlling your home automatically.
What ought to be happening – if Google and Amazon et al want to meaningfully contribute – is some AI assisted routines or feedback. But the only reason that isn’t taking off is doing so would probably be best integrated at the heart of the control system and these companies are nowhere near it because of the aforementioned lateness to the game.
So sure, I guess I agree smart homes as far as low tech (how “tech” is relative and changes with time) users is suffering.
Or perhaps it’s corporate greed to try and lock in the consumer into a particular platform or capturing personal information to sell?
None of these smart home companies provided bulletproof security that someone can’t hack into these systems! There way way too many smart home systems on the market, it is hard for consumers to choose between them all, and why some smart systems are going away…and you have many products that do not interact with more then just one system, they are hundreds of exclusive products…. And yet we have multiple a products that do the exact same thing but do not interact with each other…
Why does a consortium of the major players not exist (Google, Apple, Samsung, etc.), if not to working together to develop IoT technology, then at the very least so IoT can play nicely with one another? Have we (they) not learned anything from 20+ years of proprietary BS?
I think the consumer has understood that:
1- They are at the mercy of vendors deciding the servers running the backbone their purchased equipment depends are not sufficiently profitable, usually within a few years of rollout. That is not an acceptable model for the consumer. One could easily describe it as “delayed-theft”, “delayed-fraud”.
2- “The cloud” really means “Someone else’s computer”.
3- Most of what the market offers is cheap unreliable app-locked garbage designed to move product, while more robust, flexible, reliable backbone protocols like zigbee or zwave are virtually ignored as they often don’t lock a customer into a service, and can be integrated into a local, non-vendor controlled system/hub, instead of the newest piece of crapware or abandonware their business model depends on us continuing to purchase.
4- Security is an even bigger afterthought for vendors than longevity or reliability.
5- their own data is becoming the product being sold to others by these vendors.
I know what’s needed to make the automated home work. ?
You mean the Smart Home is dead again? It’ has died several times since the X10 80’s. Forty years later and it’s still easier to flip a light switch? Go figure.
You can rattle on about convenience, but all i want is a single app that can:
– control all the devices
– Schedule a time or time period
– Do something with another device Or devices when something happens
It’s really not that hard,
There will never be any level of adoption until someone can offer this on one app For all devices.
Google home does that right now. It’s lame the UI is shit
I believe the death of the smart home would be more attributed to the fact that to do it right, you’re going to need to replace expensive light switches and buy expensive timers for the water heater and don’t forget the thermostat. By the time your home is fully rigged with the necessary equipment to have a real smart home, the cost is prohibitive to the average consumer.
No.. this may not happen. There are startups coming with single app and same time integrating all the devices … its just matter of time.
No.. this may not happen. There are startups coming with single app and same time integrating all the devices … its just matter of time.
I have set up my home with Home Assistant. It’s free and talks to all my devices across a variety of brands and allows me to manually interact with them and also create automations that add real value. For example turning off the lights when we leave home and arming the alarm.
I probably have spent $300 altogether – the software is free but you need to buy the devices. I bought cheap Xiaomi sensors and smart bulbs and plugs from TP-Link.
Home assistant make it very simple to set up and get going – I did not need any of my technical skills I just followed the instructions.
To the author’s point – selling individual devices does not a smart home make. Someone needs to make it easy for the average consumer to get an ecosystem up and running. That is not specific to one vendor but is multi-platform.
I think it’s a matter of time before consumer friendly offerings like Home Assistant (there are others) pick up traction and are eventually offered by the well known brands.
@noshy
What your suggesting is already here. It’s called Loxone. This is one system that more or less does it all.
I have been involved in smart home tech for over 15 years, and while it has come along way it still has a long way to go.
Most of the homes I have installed systems in you wouldn’t even know it’s there. It just works. Lights come on when they are supposed to, blinds open and close. You can still operate a light from the light switch if need be or your phone.
So I would say the smart home is still very much alive but still in its infancy.
The only difference now to 15 years ago is it’s a bit more plug and play.
Have you never used the Alexa rules engine or used that platform to string 10+ disparate iot platforms together?
It’s about solving a problem. Problem: it’s a pain in the butt to run around downstairs shutting off all the crap and lights that the kids turned on and left.
Solution: use your phone. This was a terrible solution. Get phone, unlock phone, open app, turn off stuff.
Better solution: Alexa, turn off downstairs, or use a routine to do it at a certain time. Even better, use a routine with a sensor to do it.
I’ve got this little Wi-Fi button that I use to shut off everything, regardless if brand/platform, when I leave the house, made by Fox&Summit.
Google just sucks at it because they half-arsed it. No native rules engine, only control certain devices remotely, very limited functionality except “turn on/off stuff”.
There are plenty of Raspberry Pi controlled homes using OPEN Source code. The commercial systems for the most part want walled garden ecosystems. When they don’t make millions, they get crippled or killed leaving people with a pile of expensive junk. Even my Google AIY Voice kit no longer functions after a change on the G’s side. I shouldn’t have to learn how to develop code to simply control lights or temperature. Vendors should come up with a good standard to allow inter operability and survivability.
Basic functionality is lacking. A 2 way intercom between Google mins for instance not duo voice call upstairs, or broadcast to a single room for example. Simple stuff that Google just ignores in place of downtime r and d which nobody wanted. Idiots. How about Google home voice search results casted to the Chromecast? Nah just read the first Google search result, said nobody ever that was actually searching for something.
The app format of let me talk to “all apps are akward” is beyond asenine. Forcing outdoor cameras to display leds when recording or whatever is like parental controls over your customers. Reminders at midnight for all day events is also a real winner idea. Works with nest being rebranded signed out migrated whatever bull crap hoop to have to jump through now. Just give us the api info and stop doing dumb controlling annoying “features”. The smart home platform is riddled with crap like this.
You won’t innovate if you can’t dream, and you won’t profit if you don’t want to work. US companies grown lazy and fat.
All you gotta do is move the control hub to a smart watch, the lights will work wherever you go, the speaker is always with you, geolocation functions trigger you leaving or coming back home, calendar events and other data curate the AI reactions and decisions, invest a LOT in routine and skill building.
Forget the boundaries of home, automate the entire environment, the car, the shopping, the work tasks, etc. IMHO they set out with a small goal and now complaining that they didn’t dream big enough… No worries China will do it.
These companies need to pick a standard and stay with it. I get tired of having to buy new equipment just because they change the way their systems operate. Zigbee and Z-Wave work perfectly why can’t they just stick with one of those? I use my smart home the way it is supposed to work and that is automated. When I come home the thermostat adjusts, the doors unlock, the light turns on. When I walk into the bathroom the lights automatically come on when I shut the door the fan turns on. you aren’t supposed to pick up your smartphone every time you need to turn on the light switch it’s supposed to do it for you automatically. That way if you have your hands full the light turns on automatically. People who say to flip on a switch the old-fashioned way are just ignorant to the way a smart home works and they need to be taught how to work it properly to get the most use out of it.
I think you have over simplified what a smart home actually requires to be able to be called a art home.
My last two homes have been smart homes before the speakers became a thing. They required sensors, cameras, controlled lighting and a local controller.
If you are not up for the effort or expense then don’t call a couple if smart speakers and possible a few smart light bulbs a smart home.
I can walk around my home at night and nights come on without having to touch the switches. I don’t have to talk or do anything else as I have setup all my scenarios on the Vera controller and it works 24/7 without fail. That’s a smart home.
This was a dumb read
A patently false and one sided view. Only true if your only consumer is technically ignorant. As mentioned in other comments, raspberry pi controlled smart homes are quickly on the rise. These are almost all diy projects that require a bit of technical know how. But to say that the smart home is dead is just not true. My home is getting smarter every time I add something to my network. You may not be able to go buy a “smart home kit” but hobbyists can build a custom tailored one in a weekend.