The article discusses expectations for smart home announcements at the upcoming IFA tech show in Berlin. While companies may unveil new smart speakers, cameras and robot vacuums, the smart home remains fragmented as the Matter interoperability standard has yet to fully deliver on integrating devices. The author argues the industry needs to provide more utility than novelty by allowing different smart devices to work together seamlessly. Examples mentioned include lights notifying users of doorbell activity or a robot vacuum taking on multiple household chores autonomously. Overall, the smart home needs solutions that are essential rather than just novel if consumers are to see the value beyond the initial cool factor.
I have Home Assistant on an old Intel NUC, with mostly Z-Wave switches and two IP based switches, one Kasa IP switch and one Shelly switch. The Kasa and Shelly show the divide in IoT. The Kasa is everything wrong with IoT, requiring an Internet connection to function and is slow to respond. Shelly is everything right as can be. It will work just fine locally without an Internet connection if you set it up that way, but can work cloud based if you don’t have a system to control it.
I’m still on the lookout for Matter switches actually for sale, instead of projects announced and nothing else. So I still buy Z-Wave switches.