GigaOM » consumer devices

Belkin’s WeMo builds an internet of things in your kitchen

Stacey Higginbotham — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:12:23 +0000

Attention forgetful people of the world, or those who just have to check (twice!) to make sure their stove is turned off before they leave the house: A deal between the maker of the WeMo switch and a popular brand of consumer devices will make it easier to turn your space heaters, coffee pots and slow cookers on or off from your smartphone.

Belkin, the maker of the WeMo switch, has signed a deal with Jarden Corp., which is responsible for brands like Holmes space heaters, Crock-Pot slow cookers, Mr. Coffee coffee pots and assorted other appliances names like Oster and Sunbeam. The details of the partnership weren’t spelled out in the release announcing the deal, (it’s a lure to get you to the Belkin booth at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Vegas) but it does show how Belkin hopes to build an ecosystem around the WeMo. The first Jarden products with WeMo will launch later this year, with additional product offerings through 2014.

The WeMo is a switch that you plug into an outlet that lets you turn things on and off using your Wi-Fi network and the smartphone app. My colleague Laura Hazard Owen reviewed it for our Gift Guide in December, judging it pricey at $50 per connected device, but easy to implement. When the WeMo was announced at last CES, GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel thought it would help the masses implement a connected home because the kit used Wi-Fi and was simple to implement.

I’ve asked Belkin what the deal means for end users, but at a minimum it should allow Jarden devices to populate the smart phone app automatically, so users don’t have to manually type in the name of their Crock-Pot so the app recognizes it. I’d love for it to go further, allowing for finer-grained controls. Right now, the WeMo lets you turn something on or off. Combined with its motion detection device you could step out of bed in the AM and trigger the motion detector to turn on the lights in your bedroom and the coffee pot downstairs, but you would spend more than $100 for the privilege. And a better solution might just be programming your coffee pot.

But the release announcing the deal touts the ability of Jarden to reinvigorate its brands with connectivity and mentions services that it could build around connected apps. That’s something I’m profoundly interested in, especially with regards to the kitchen. It also positions the WeMo as a gateway for the connected home, with much of the required intelligence running in the cloud as opposed to on a box somewhere in the home.

For more on the emergence of the internet of things check out these two stories:

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Nest and the Apple-ification of the thermostat

Erica Ogg — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:47:10 +0000

The Nest burst onto the tech scene in the last few weeks, making waves unheard of for a product you’d never guess anyone would care about: the home thermostat. But there’s a reason the device sold out in 72 hours: the creator, Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod, took a page from the design and usability gurus at Apple to create a good-looking, efficient and easy-to-use device. At GigaOM RoadMap on Thursday, Fadell talked about how he and his team are rethinking a 50-year-old industry with lessons from the king of consumer-friendly electronics.

Fadell looked at an industry that was badly in need of innovation. Not just in the technology under the covers, but in terms of usability and design. “Thermostats looked like PCs from the 90s: square, beige, nothing innovative, and very expensive,” he said. So when he was contemplating home heating and cooling, he wasn’t inventing something new so much as rethinking and improving an established product — much like he did with the iPod in 2001.

Here’s how he consumerized an otherwise boring, staid product:

Make user interfaces as simple as possible. The Nest is styled like a dial. Fadell said this design was inspired by what you actually do with a thermostat. “Ninety-nine percent of the time you’re turning it up or down,” he said. Hence the dial and a single button.
Embrace proven technologies. The Nest is basically a smartphone on the inside, with the same computing power. It has two types of wireless connectivity, five sensors for temperature, humidity, light and two activity sensors to detect when people are in front of the device. And it has a removable — and therefore user-serviceable — battery.
Use technologies that will delight users. Fadell and team did something you wouldn’t be surprised to see from Apple with regard to how the device blends into its environment — something they call “chameleon design.” There’s a mirror inside with “a special edge that picks up incident light”, and through internal reflection it picks up the color of whatever’s around it. “So we didn’t have to make a specific color, we could just reflect back the color around it to make it blend in,” he said. It also uses sensors to passively learn about the owners of the home where Nest lives. It can learn about the heating and cooling patterns in your house, knows your activity, like how often you walk in front of it — and therefore how much time you spend at home — and can learn your patterns of how you like your temperatures. All of that means the thermostat can self-adjust its energy use to save money and resources.
Keep standards high. Of all of it, the most difficult thing was to handle this as a startup and not as a company with billions of dollars in the bank. And Fadell cautioned not to think cheaply or cut corners with the excuse that you’re just a startup. At Apple, he said, you have “a huge sandbox of technologies, capabilities and resources. You can’t go back [after that] to the startup way. You want to do it the best way possible.”

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Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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Life After Chrome: What’s Next for Android

Sam Dean — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:30:58 +0000

When Google recently announced its upcoming Chrome OS and emphasized that it is headed for netbooks, many people wondered what that would mean for Android. There had been a lot of talk about Android’s prospects on netbooks, but Google’s announcement seemed to make clear that its not-yet-delivered operating system is in fact its own favorite entrant in the netbook race. But that doesn’t mean the Android OS is going to languish outside the smartphone market.

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