Hello Automators! Thanks for tuning in again. It's time to go through all the
latest for the smart home and home automation industry here, give you all
the latest news for these products, so by the end of this you're going to know
what's coming out for your favorite product maker. We're gonna go through
things from Google, Amazon, Phillips Hue down here, and some other makers that are
very important in the industry. So let's get going.
This week I'm starting out with Cortana which might seem a little strange to you
but what Microsoft is doing right now I think is going to impact the big players
in the market in terms of how they approach their own voice assistants. What
Cortana and Microsoft are doing or what's happening right now is they're
moving off to the side they're not going to try and directly compete for overall
voice assistant dominance with Google and Amazon. I think they've realized that
they're a little out of their league here and they're not going to produce
enough devices to keep up with these guys, so they're moving on from that.
Cortana will be in limited devices but what they are doing is creating an app
or a service and integrating it in terms of specific experiences and when you
think about Microsoft, you think about Office, you think about Windows, and you
think about all of that capability. Now what I have on a Windows 10 PC I have
Cortana and I've started to actually use her in specific situations it's
interesting integration but a couple of things that they've done recently that
are really important to you are the ability within the app to set scenes and
essentially run smart home products so you know you're seeing the ability to
now go and create some integration with Cortana on that side great we already
have that in our other devices but for those of you who don't have one of these
devices just want an assistant on a phone you can do that with Cortana now
in the past we saw if this then that integration and that actually opens up a
lot of opportunities on your PC or your laptop but with Windows 10 on it on top
of that what they've actually done is split it out Cortana from
the search bar in Windows 10, or that's coming in the next update. It's expected
in April and it's intended to allow the search bar to go further and we're
really noticing Microsoft paying attention, they're being very sneaky
about how they're dealing with search, I'm very impressed with
how they're kind of eliminating Google and on the flipside Cortana is being
separated to do very, very specific things,
and to give you specific experiences with Cortana. If you haven't already
heard Project Alias is something that's intended to go on Google Homes, the
standard speakers, or some of the Echo products and what it is is a at home
do-it-yourself basically you can print out the cover which looks like a
parasite in you can get a Raspberry Pi yourself programmed and the ability here
is to actually stop those devices from listening until you use your own chosen
Wake word so it gives you the ability to eliminate the Wake word for Google or
Amazon. Arlo has changed their free cloud storage capability with their new
cameras to a paid service. Now what I'll tell you is you still get a trial year
they say with that cloud storage service and the other difference from you know
makers like Nest is they do have a local storage option where you do have an SD
card capability here on some of these new cameras, but they have made this
shift away from totally free storage. You get a year but after that you've got to
pay and it is per camera around $60 for a year. We've seen a number of things
coming from Ikea they had the tradfri system here that that have the smart
lights on it and they're moving in different directions with that system
including some new smart blinds that they're putting out which i think is a
really good implementation for them and for there's whole suite of products but
what they're continuing to do is develop smarter relationships I think with other
companies and Sonos is their latest so the Symfonisk set of speakers
essentially that will be integrated with different IKEA furnishings as well as
being standalone speakers sold in IKEA stores with really obviously powerful
sound from Sonos in the ability I think in the future to integrate with voice
assistants. Philips was at CES 2019 and we didn't talk about them a lot here on
the channel but they did expand their outdoor lineup actually of products they
announced three new fixtures and the ability to include an outdoor motion
sensor, that's a relatively good choice if you
already have a Philips Hue system in terms of a security option and with the ability
to trigger on lights through a number of different means you could go ahead and
trigger on your outdoor lights as you see fit, so some good new products from
Philips. Abode is a smart home security system, essentially a bunch of different
sensors, some very different sensors, so I I suggest you actually check them out,
very interesting, but they are getting HomeKit integration, and they will put
out a new hub with new kits here in kind of mid 2019. Now the sensors that I
was talking about just to give you an example to have a vibration glass sensor
so not necessarily somebody breaking it but they sense vibration so that could
mean a lot of different things, you could do a lot of different things. Lots of
people have an existing PetCube. there are two new products that were released
here recently the PetCube Bites and the PetCube Play - both of those have
additional integration so what's happened is they've actually put
Amazon's voice assistant on board as well as a speaker, so you can play music
through these little PetCube devices so really turning these pet related
technology into something more usable in general in your home not just a pet
monitoring solution smart home security speaking of the head topic if you
haven't already heard nest had a number of different of their customers have
their accounts essentially hacked is what was the statement in the media and
I'll talk about that in a minute but you know their accounts were hacked
and then there were fake warnings of a nuclear missile attack being broadcast
on one of them so this was obviously a big story in the media here and fur nest
a really concerning thing now what I want to tell you about this situation is
hacked doesn't quite mminton and I'm really frustrated that media continues
to use this word hack you're not hacked when your passwords and your ability to
login or your account information is already out on the
internet so if you use the same password and the same account basically user name
or email address and that gets stolen in another service and you don't upgrade
your home security this is your problem not nests problem a couple more things
to talk about Apple has put out a new patent that is very interesting so you
know everyone who kind of raises their phone up to take a picture you know that
you're going to take a picture and sodas Apple so as you do that action and you
raise it to the right level there new patent suggests and this will be on the
2019 versions of iPhones they are saying basically as you raise it the camera
application will open up so some automation there in terms of their
functions on their phone now another thing the Amazon echo wall clock or the
Amazon Amazon echo clock here has not had a great rollout and amazon has
actually pulled sales of that here and has paused everything until they get
some connectivity issues fixed up so that's all I have today from the smart
home home automation side of news here hopefully you have a lot of great new
information to go and apply to your smart home now of course on the channel
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