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One of the themes of CES 2024 was “Make smart home easy.” Home Depot reintroduced its smart hub called Hubspace, and OliverIQ introduced itself as the first “smart home as a service.” What they have in common is that they both cite problems with the smart home process as a driving force. For Hubspace, it's the cost of smart home devices and the need for many apps, and OliverIQ eliminates the confusion of setup, the fact that smart devices don't always work with each other, and the general hassle of maintenance and automation. I'm pointing it out. These aren't invalid concerns either, but after looking at both services, I'm not entirely sure they deliver the promised value or solve these problems. In fact, I believe you're still better off if you follow a few simple rules.
The premise of “smart home simplification” generally means that smart homes are on the verge of real-scale adoption, and that feels like a good thing. Home Depot is not new to the smart home field. When the first products started appearing, Home Depot was one of the only places you could buy smart products. They take all their brands like Husky and Hampton Bay and provide Hubspace, an app that ensures connectivity for those devices and makes it easy to connect them. OliverIQ is a monthly service that can be purchased from plumbers, electricians, and cable technicians to install, monitor, repair, and connect smart home devices. It cannot be purchased directly from OliverIQ. You will always go through a service representative. Service representatives can set the price as they like or give it away for free. Although their approaches are different, both want to take some of the work out of the user's hands. And I suggest that you can serve them better if you do it yourself.
Setting up your device just got easier
First, we need to start with the concept that smart homeization is complex. It aims to do just the opposite, and over the past 18 months we've noticed that devices pair faster, easier, more consistently, and rarely go offline. While the pace of adoption of Matter hasn't been as fast as everyone would like, the reality is that it's widespread enough to be useful in most smart industries. His QR code for setup, used with most Matter and Thread compatible devices, makes the process smooth. Hubspace also uses his QR code for pairing settings, but the service also lacks Matter, Thread, Zigbee, and Z-wave. It only works with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and Bluetooth is only used for setup. So even though Hubspace may reduce setup pain points, it doesn't prepare you for the future and makes you overly reliant on Wi-Fi. OliverIQ takes over the entire installation process. However, this could mean calling the service every time you install a new device or repair a connection, which feels like a way for service providers to generate a new revenue stream.
Before using your first smart home device, we recommend choosing one smart home hub: Apple Homekit, Amazon Alexa, or Google Home. While there are certainly other hubs (such as SmartThings), few are as widely supported as these three. Then choose a product from a leading name brand in the smart home space that supports Matter and Thread and install it yourself. For example, there are many smart plugs available via Amazon. Choose from well-known brands like Phillips, Meross, GE, and Aqara that work with their hubs, or research online before you buy. Although this may feel like an additional burden, you would probably do the same research before purchasing the appliance. Lifehacker will continue to review these items and provide trusted advice.
The real smart devices we all use are getting cheaper all the time
The next assumption about smart homes is that the products are too expensive. Sure, we wrote about expensive smart grills and vacuum cleaners coming to CES, but the reality is that the smart devices most of us buy, whether it's a light bulb, a wall switch, or a vacuum cleaner. , which are not much more expensive than the unconnected smart devices that have commonly relied on these products for the past decade. There is now a huge ecosystem of brands whose competition is driving prices down with the help of rapidly evolving technology. Ten years ago, a connected light bulb cost $70. Now it costs less than $10. The good thing about Home Depot's plan is that their products aren't exclusive to his Hubspace. It also still works with Google Assistant and Alexa, so even if those products connect to more product lines, we'll all benefit. Only Wi-Fi is enabled (again, choosing Matter, Thread, Zigbee, and Z-wave means you're not always relying on the cloud).
The way around this problem is to select future-proof products using modern criteria that increase lifetime value. Additionally, build your smart home slowly and choose smart home products only to solve existing problems. If you're bothered by lights being on all the time, purchasing a sensor and smart bulb will solve your problem. While we appreciated that OliverIQ recommended both products and automation based on the customer's home settings, we were not impressed with the solutions themselves that were mentioned on the call with the CTO. He used the example of suggesting a timer for smart garage lights, but a more “smart” solution would be to use a sensor or trigger device to alert the lights if someone is actually in the room. . Of course, if a service person has to come to your home, the cost will be higher.
Eliminates the use of a plethora of smart device apps without intermediaries
An annoyance that we all have when it comes to smart home technology, and I've mentioned it many times, is that apps that have to hang out in the background, especially when it comes to low-level devices such as light bulbs and plugs, are not available on our phones. That's a lot on the phone. Here he is in a year, and I'm not entirely sure whether Matter will solve this problem, and the subtler control over the device is likely to remain in a dedicated app rather than a hub like SmartThings or Alexa. I gradually realized that it was high. The hub allows you to turn the bulb on/off and dim it, but it probably won't affect the color or movement. I also don't expect all the functional controls on a robot vacuum to be accessible from the hub. It would be a great benefit if Home Depot could eliminate the hassle of installing the Hampton Bay app, Husky app, and Ecosmart app. But we'll have to see if Hubspace can really adopt all the functionality that individual apps do in his UI. It can be used properly. In speaking with OliverIQ, OliverIQ was planning to put most of the devices behind his hub, which was white-labeled by the service provider they were purchased from, but did not actually eliminate the need for the original app to remain on the customer's phone. I finally accepted that I couldn't prevent it and that was all I could do. To take advantage of the integration technologies each company has made available, they simply need to leverage their end customer base and hope that they can access integrations that others cannot. We found that this assumption is unlikely given that most brands have fairly large user bases, and that loss of integration is often due to security issues rather than lack of users.
The only real answer to avoiding having millions of apps installed on your phone is to work with fewer brands. Find one company to buy all your light bulbs from. Even better if they also provide plugs and sensors. Otherwise, accept your fate. If you're concerned, use a folder on your phone to throw all your apps in.
Remote services and new apps don't solve most common problems with connected devices
The biggest problem for me as a smart device user is that my connected devices often go offline. Occasionally, you may experience issues here and there, and an update may automatically resolve the issue. Often the connection is just lost and every smart home super user knows that the only solution is at best a reset, at worst a factory reset and reinstall. Masu. Neither service can solve this problem, but OliverIQ hopes to avoid this problem through regular monitoring and driver updates. I'm sure this will fix the problem, but at the end of the day, I can't remotely remove the device or factory reset and reinstall it. OliverIQ will try to diagnose this remotely, but if it can't, it will send a ticket to your service provider. That means the service provider has to access that ticket, respond to it, and potentially come out. This can be time consuming and costly. Sure, most things can be solved with money, but I don't think it will help you sell smart homes.
The reality is that living in a house equipped with all kinds of devices and appliances means at least acquiring enough knowledge to keep them running and calling in reinforcements for major repairs. Masu. How companies like Comcast work with customers to resolve why their Wi-Fi is cutting out through AI bots that guide troubleshooting and escalate to a phone technician for one-on-one attention. or, ultimately, sending someone to your home is how incredibly painful the process is, despite millions of dollars being poured into research. At some point, everyone can benefit from learning how to unplug and plug back in.
These services can exploit and cut off access to those who could most benefit from them.
Finally, what both services don't say is that I believe, as do I, that these services are aimed at older or less tech-savvy users. No one wants to spend Thanksgiving explaining how to connect a light bulb to grandpa, but I think you can do it more effectively than a hardware store clerk calling you from a customer service center. . Also, you're not trying to sell something to grandpa, these services are. Ask anyone who has outsourced their aging related technology to a service like her Geek Squad about the results, and you'll see how a service like OliverIQ plays out. It is mainly a source of income for service personnel. It is not directly affiliated with OliverIQ.
Hubspace seems harmless enough for a sentient app, but it makes users dependent on Home Depot. I'm happy to have Home Depot on board, but I'm still bitter about the endless back-and-forth I've had with them over the past decade when trying to buy connected devices. In many places I've visited, employees don't seem to be very educated about the smart technology they're selling, and smart workers often confess to me that they have no training on the technology or products. did. I often heard store employees give false information about products to customers in order to sell them. Recently, while shopping for home appliances, I had to repeatedly correct a salesperson's comments about a smart home appliance I was considering. Does Hubspace mean a fully fleshed out educational program for employees and customer service members?
Importantly, smart technology is more than just the complacency of the blinds opening automatically at sunrise and the coffee maker saying good morning. They play a very important role in accessibility. So older people and people who aren't really into technology are the ones who actually want to be able to use smart technology. I'm not convinced that intermediaries are the way to go about it.