The IoT at Home

Last month I blogged about how the Internet of Things (IoT) is converging with the sports industry. Today, I’m taking a look at an industry that hits a little closer to home for every one of us – that’s right, the connected home industry!

The market for smart gadgets for the kitchen, bedroom, garage, and backyard has been rapidly expanding, despite an early reputation as a hard sell. As one startup CEO recently told the Wall Street Journal, “Last year, there was a great deal of optimism and bullishness around home automation … The reality is it’s a lot harder and tougher than everybody imagined.” Still, Apple, Amazon and Google have their own hub offerings, while lesser-known brands offering automation technology seem to be popping up everywhere.

Here are a few items that have me thinking:

Ecobee

You might recognize Ecobee as a long-standing smart thermostat maker, but a recent Fast Company article brought to light their ambitions to be a major smart home player. The way I see Ecobee being able to compete with more well-known brands is by continuing to offer unique features like they did in 2014 with the Ecobee3’s room sensors.

Offering unique technology at a competitive price is an attractive selling point for consumers during product comparisons and I’m willing to bet that enough people will spend a little bit extra to get amazing features they can’t find elsewhere.

We’ve done a pretty good job at Tracker Now of meeting this thought process and offering our own exclusive technology. Our largest breakthrough is that we’re the only truly global tracking device and that feature will catch the headlines. But dig further and you’ll find we offer a combination of technologies other brands just aren’t matching:

Anova

Food is a big deal around my household and - to point out the obvious - if you want great food, you should be at least a half-decent chef. Cooking often comes down to having a good eye for when things are done, when water is the right temperature and other nuanced details that come with experience.

But what if we could have a tool replace  limited cooking skills with precision?

Enter: Anova. Their sous vide Bluetooth-capable precision cooker is an example of how 21st century technology is impacting the kitchen in meaningful ways. The tool attaches to a pot and can boil water to a temperature within 0.01 degrees and hold it. That’s insane! To think, at one point in history all we had was an open flame and a set of eyes, and now we have this… it’s just fascinating.

Anova’s precision cooker can be controlled from an app on your smartphone, making it technically a smart gadget. But what if it was truly IoT-capable and synced with other cooking appliances based on what a recipe calls for? Imagine tapping a “Start Recipe” button on your phone, preheating an oven and delay-starting a precision cooker until the exact time it’s needed, resulting in all your food being done at the same time?

For Tracker Now’s purposes, I like the idea of data from one device affecting the behavior of another. For example, if you’re on a treadmill and Tracker Now realizes your heart rate or blood pressure is too high, the speed of the treadmill is reduced to put you back in a safe zone. Situational, data-driven adjustments like that are at the heart of what the IoT should truly become.

What’s Next?

As Ecobee and Anova have shown, smart gadgets for your home are more than a gimmick – they’re efficiency-driven tools that are already used by real people in households worldwide. To stand out in a crowd, the gadgets are challenged to offer unique features, precise data, a secure connection, and friendly IoT capabilities.

Tracker Now will offer these great qualities as we introduce disruptive products and continue our march into the IoT industry and we challenge others to uphold that high standard of excellence as well!

Keep dreaming and keep achieving!