So…there’s yet another smart home assistant announced. The real question is, why is this important? There is already a myriad of other home assistant products that have been flooding the market. Alexa, Amazon’s Echo, Momo, Hayo, there are just a ton of home assistants that all do incredibly similar things. There’s even one built into a coffee table and doubles a fridge for crying out loud. Well, there are two reasons to look at this new smart gear: One; it focuses on privacy and security, and Two; Andy Rubin created it.
For those of you who need a quick refresher, Andy Rubin is the creator of Android, the operating system found in more than two billion smart devices across the globe. He also worked at Google to manage the robotics division until October 2014, in which he left his nine-year position at the company to start up a new company called Essential Products.
While Essential Products has been focusing on Phones for the past couple of years, their newest product is the Essential Home, a smart device that…well, is pretty much exactly like every other smart device for your home. It is voice activated, you can tap on the screen, or you can “glance” at it to activate it. The Essential Home can set timers, play your favorite music, dim your lights, remind you of important events on your calendar.
So what makes this smart home device different from the others?
Image courtesy Uncrate
Well, because of the many rising concerns of IoT devices being hackable, the Essential Home focuses more on Privacy and Security. “Your home is your private space and we want to make sure that your privacy is taken seriously,” says Dwipal Desai, Business Unit Lead of Essential Products. “We designed Essential Home to directly talk to your devices over your in-home network as much as possible in order to limit sending data to the cloud. Essential Home’s proactive assistant also runs its AI engine locally on the device. We will continue to work on innovative ways to make the device smarter without compromising privacy.”
So if you’re looking for a home device but want one that’s got an outstanding pedigree that isn’t from Google and Amazon, then this one might be for you. However, one cannot help but think that this device is coming out slightly after the hype of home devices has died down. Maybe after it’s release in the summer, there will be new features added to it to make it stand out more against the sea of other home devices.
Sam is a GTA- based freelance Writer and Graphic Artist.While she's new to the tech world she's had the opportunity to write for various publications. She has spent 5 years of her life dedicated to making people laugh via her comic Let’s Ask Violet.Originally, Sam submitted a drawing of herself in a giant purple dinosaur costume terrorizing Toronto, but the editors realized that there is such a thing as "too awesome", and asked requested a normal photo instead.
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If this smart home “pod” is sending some information to the cloud for operating purposes BUT wants to limit it. What are the other smart home devices sending to the cloud?
When you can combine a few of these and the IoT, you can really make your own smart house if you think about it.
We have seen a couple of companies come along with these types of home pods, but security was never brought up before was it? I do not understand why it would be brought up now for this one.
I never really thought about the security of these things until now. I guess that is a bad thing, but you assume that when connected to your home network, for the most part you are safe.
Do these companies really look for ways to make things more secure when adding the smart devices to the list? I am not sure about it. Until there is a security pro that brings it up, I am sure its not really that big of deal to them. Just my thoughts.
At some point, a company is going to come along and make one of these that is the end all device, right?
I don’t know. Each device that arrives has a lot of features, but NOT all of them.
Even though consumers have plenty of options, I am going to say that one that even thinks about improving security is going to be near the top of a list somewhere.
I wouldn’t say that this product is late to the party, but it does have an uphill battle, that is for sure. For today, there does not seem to be any market that is too saturated, so why not give it a try?
I will try one, but I always have this voice in the back of my head saying things like, “Just wait, there will be another one released next month with more features.”