Home automation integration

Picking from where I left off on HomeKit, I was reading up on smarthome hubs from different vendors including some from Belkin and Revolv and Smart things. What I was kind of drawn to was revolv as it looked more promising.

Revolv had its own game to integrate different workflows. People had reviewed it and gave it a hard time saying that the device do not integrate the applications which control each of the devices effectively. What some were expecting is that revolv will give you an all encompassing application which will allow you to access every feature of all the appliances it can interact with! That is not practical and I am happy Revolv is not trying to achieve it. Idea is to make sure the most common workflows that need to be integrated between devices are addressed and the piping is laid to connect them up. A T Joint or an LJoint is not supposed to give you a shower head:-)

I am not sure what the product gives, as I do not want to plunge using it and later  regret it. Being not in US, I have logistic issues procuring devices and later if I have to return it, it becomes a problem. There is not much information on the net to convince me for or against it.

I have plunged in  still with lesser guaranteed products and why am I holding off on this? Its because I have my eyes set on what Apple's Homekit has to offer!

Apple has all that it needs to give me this functionality by providing it all on the stack of HomeKit! Each individual appliances can come to table to shake hands on HomeKit and the workflow will work smoothly! This puts the onus on the appliances to make sure they act well on the interface than on a product like Revolv to tweak their code each time any one of the devices think different!

So I am betting my money on HomeKit. So wait, August Lock, wait, Hue lights, wait, dropcam. Till end of the year for the Homekit!

Roomba, Another pawn in the big plan!

After lot of debate and deliberation within, I have procured the Roomba 880 few days back. Some of the major concerns I have was sourcing components part of ongoing usage and practical performance of the product in Indian conditions.

When the first concern is yet to be fully addressed, my test run did not disappoint from  results perspective. My 6 year old could feel the difference, and so did my better half. Thats  a good sign.

It picked up a lot of stuff from under the cot, in a small room, it roamed around for a good 20 mins and stopped before it covered one strip beyond the foot board. I suspect that the algorithm got confused roaming around under the bed and bumping on to the foot board. A small issue, since I had to re point him to the strip which he is yet to take care of and he promptly set off to take care of it. Lesser problem than  what we have with the current maid!

So overall I am pretty happy with the splurge. I will be using it once a week. So will keep you folks posted with any new findings I do.

BTW, I liked the remote. You have to keep pressing the button to keep it moving in a direction, but, may be that's a good thing that you accidentally do not run him over wrong places.