That the smart home it would soon become the technology of the future we had known for some time. However, this would have laid the foundations for a fruitful collaboration between Google, Apple and Amazon. In fact, the foundations for the project have been laid in recent weeks Connected Home over IP, a union of intent in which these large companies and other giants of the sector will put their technologies together to create a common standard that will allow all the devices of the houses of the future to communicate with each other through communication protocols that are the same for everyone.
A dream that could become reality already at the end of 2020 and that will involve, retroactively, all the devices of the three companies so far marketed.
The project
Amazon, Apple and Google they are the main promoters of this project which has already created a large and large working group. Over the next few months, this will develop a single communication protocol for all wireless smart devices in our homes. This system will be based on protocols open source, will be freely accessible to anyone who wants to enter it in the future and will serve to improve compatibility and dialogue between all the digital devices that will populate our homes. All with safety as the first priority in creating this new one protocol: communications must be as secure as possible, with common network technologies that must be supported by the devices to obtain entry into the project and subsequent certification to be part of it.
Compatibility at the highest levels
On a practical level, all companies will be able to easily introduce full support to their voice assistants from Amazon, Apple and Google into their products. Users will thus be able to install a huge number of devices at home without worrying too much about compatibility with all the others, aware that the certified ones will be built specifically to be able to communicate with each other without problems. The first phases of study and adhesion, still in progress, will be followed by a real development of the unified protocol, based on wireless connections, bluetooth and wireless primarily.
The second step will be to promote everything and give it maximum visibility, certifying the products that are part of it with a sort of sticker that allows the public to be on the safe side with their purchases. Not a little effort, which will not undermine the independence of the companies involved but in a certain sense will dramatically enlarge the market of each product, where everything will be in some way compatible, more or less without limits, with the rest.
Big names
If the three big tech companies are the most visible within the alliance, the importance of the other names involved, all part of an already well-formed alliance of smart products, should not be underestimated. Zigbee Alliance. This, in essence, includes companies of a certain weight such as Ikea, Bticino, Samsung, Schneider, Philips, Somfy, Wulian, Silicon Labs, a good slice of all the products that populate our homes today will be included in a list that could become almost infinite, with the farewell to all those closed circles that until now had characterized home automation, between objects compatible with one product and not another.
Everything should become more open and simple, both for those who design the products and for those who buy them, with the user who will no longer have to struggle between different compatibilities that inhibited the purchase of certain objects rather than others.
Ease of use
Those who will already have a house well equipped with voice assistants and technological objects will not see any change whatsoever. Another main objective of the project is to guarantee full support also to all devices currently on the market. The dialogue standards and projects currently in place for each company will not be minimally affected, but integrated as soon as everything becomes a reality, indicatively by the end of 2020. In short, everyone will be more easy create devices that are equally compatible with Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant.
Each device will work easily, will be installed in a few steps and can be controlled by one of the main systems on the market today, with very few differences whatsoever. The user will therefore have maximum freedom to choose what he wants most, for the first time without worrying too much about long-standing problems incompatibility and interference. The technology you choose to “control” your home will no longer be a discriminating factor that will influence purchases, given that in the smart homes of the future everything can be controlled in the best possible way.
Technological standard
On a technical level, everything will be based, as the name says, on theInternet Protocol, already adopted for some years by Google for many of its Assistant compatible products. This system basically allows private and secure communications between smart devices, mobile apps and cloud services, all with maximum speed and without affecting users’ privacy. The Mountain View company is already contributing to everything with two of its open source technologies for the smart home, Weave and Thread, already built on the internet protocol and now present in many homes. It will be necessary to understand if these will also be used by others or if it will be decided to join forces and study other forms of dialogue. As soon as the meeting table is active, it will also be understood on a purely technical level how everything will work and what contributions will be made by the companies involved.
On the user’s side
What we have before us is, in no uncertain terms, the future of the smart home, a future where finally every major company in this market will travel on parallel but fully complementary tracks and where compatibility will no longer discriminate against user choices. In essence, the public will be able to choose the system that they prefer and that best suits their tastes, no longer worrying if this is compatible with the objects they already own at home or that they intend to buy in future.
A significant step forward, which will make it even easier to spread these home attendants and all the technologies connected to them. This potentially will allow the market to grow even more, become freer and more interconnected, increasing the diffusion of these products and demonstrating, for the umpteenth time, how much the internet of things is not a game at all, but a tremendously serious, one of those that will mark our future and that of our children.
