SmartThings, the smart home company acquired by Samsung in 2014, unveiled a new smart home kit that is designed for homeowners who want to connect their homes to the Internet of Things without making it difficult for them to do so.
Many people believe that to build a smart home, they have to have the complicated knowledge that will, say, connect the garage door to the thermostat to the lightbulb in a complicated web of communicating appliances, but the goal of SmartThings is to get rid of the intricacies and make it easy for homeowners to put the smarts in their home.
"We want to be the easiest way for normal people to turn their home into a smart home," Alex Hawkinson, CEO of SmartThings, says.
To accomplish that, the company unveiled its new SmartThings smart home kit, which consists of four sensors and a smart home hub that will link to the sensors and communicate directly with them. Other hubs normally require an Internet connection to connect with appliances, but the new SmartThings hub will continue to work even if the home Wi-Fi network unexpectedly conks out. The hub also comes with two AA batteries that will continue to provide power in case of a power blackout.
This hub is connected to a motion sensor, a presence sensor, a multi sensor and a power outlet, as well as some 200 other smart home appliances that are compatible with the SmartThings platform, including those made by Philips, Bose, Yale, Honeywell, LIFX and others. Hawkinson says the commitment to remain an open system, even after the Samsung acquisition, is central to the SmartThings philosophy, even as Apple's HomeKit continues to remain behind its walled garden of security requirements which Hawkinson calls unnecessary.
"Some of these are Wi-Fi devices. Some are Zigbee, some are Z-Wave. In the future, it's Thread, it's whatever," Hawkinson says, referring to the various platforms that are compatible with the kit. "We tried to just say, you don't have to worry about it because it'll support anything that has this stamp on it."
The kit also comes with its own free app, which is available for Android and iOS devices, and homeowners can control the hub straight from the app. One thing they can do is to create routines to trigger certain actions. For instance, a routine set for when the homeowner enters the house starts with the multi sensor placed on the front door triggering the lightbulb to turn on and turns up the thermostat when it senses that the front door has been opened.
The kit also now comes with support for video, so that homeowners can also connect their security cameras to the SmartThings hub. Unlike Google's Dropcam security camera though, Samsung's own camera will only store videos in the cloud if a certain action occurs, such as when the front door opens at a time when nobody is supposed to be home. Hawkinson says this assures homeowners that the company cares about their security.
And speaking of that, the SmartThings CEO promises "bank-level security" for its system, saying that the company uses end-to-end encryption, security checks and monthly third-party audits. He also says only homeowners will be able to access their data on the cloud.
The SmartThings kit, including the hub and the outlet, is available online for $99, while additional sensors will cost between $30 and $35 each.
