Author: Craig Lloyd / Source: howtogeek.com
There’s a problem with the smarthome industry—multiple problems, actually. And after experiencing a huge boom over the last few years, smarthome as a whole has reached a plateau of sorts.
Don’t get us wrong; smarthome technology is a really exciting market, and it’s become so popular that big players like Amazon and Google have dived head first into offering comprehensive smarthome product lines.
The thing is, smarthome in general still has a long way to go.Smarthome Standards Are a Mess
The smarthome industry is fragmented. Every smarthome brand wants to create their own proprietary ecosystem, which results in a ton of products that you can choose from, but that don’t necessarily work well with each other if you have devices from different companies.
This is to be expected, of course. Every manufacturer loves the idea of a walled garden, locking users into using their devices. But from the consumer perspective, it might not be feasible to go all-in on a single brand of smarthome devices. For example, maybe you scored a great deal on a Nest Thermostat, but can’t really afford any of Nest’s other products—especially when similar devices from other brands are much cheaper in a competitive market like this.
RELATED: Enough With All the Smarthome Hubs Already
All of your products will still work on their own, obviously, but nothing will be centralized. And not being able to control everything from one place takes away a lot of the convenience.
Perhaps even more of a mess is all the different wireless protocols used in the smarthome industry. The two big ones are Z-Wave and Zigbee. They’re known as the “open” protocols that any smarthome brand can use in their devices.
In theory, any Z-Wave device should be able to communicate with any other Z-Wave device. Except that’s sometimes not the case.RELATED: What Are “ZigBee” and “Z-Wave” Smarthome Products?
You’ll frequently come across smarthome hubs or other devices that use Z-Wave or Zigbee, but they won’t connect to each other. Or if they do, they have limited functionality. So for example, if you have a SmartThings or Wink hub, they both have Z-Wave and Zigbee radios, but they don’t support just any Z-Wave or Zigbee device.
Instead, when you go shopping for Z-Wave sensors or Zigbee smart bulbs, you have to double check to make sure they work with your particular smarthome hub, which can be a real pain because it usually won’t just say it…
The post The Smarthome Industry Has Reached a Plateau. Here’s What’s Holding It Back appeared first on FeedBox.