There are already a lot of “smart” products available in the market that let you control lights, temperature and many other things with your smartphone or tablet. However most of the time the user experience might not feel as seamless as it should. After all, nothing is as easy as simply saying out loud what you need done. Homey is a product that wants to enable you to do that for just about anything in your home.
With eight radio modules including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, ZigBee and Z-Wave as well as powerful Infrared the Homey orb will be compatible with most devices. All radios are connected to a Raspberry Pi Compute Module which runs custom software developed by the startup behind this project.
The orb itself is 4.3″ in diameter and comes with a multi-colored LED ring in the middle that gives feedback. A companion app for iPhone and Android is available allowing users to configure their Homey on the go.
Its creator Emile Nijssen drew inspiration from Star Trek with the idea being to let users rely solely on their voice for total control of the home. Homey even has apps which can be published by developers to its Labs section.
The team is seeking €100,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter to start production, they’ve already raised nearly €95,000 so this project is definitely getting funded. With estimated delivery in June 2015 the least you can pledge for a Homey now is €229 ($340)
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